Most recent revision dated Dec 22 2008. Links updated April 2023 Corrections appreciated.
Modula was developed subsequent to Pascal by Wirth, and like early Pascal and its P-code, was initially developed as interpreted "M-code". Many people have reported that Borland removed their Turbo Modula-2 product from the market "shortly after" announcing it, then subsequently refused to acknowledge it was once their product. Discussion of it in late 2008 on comp.os.cpm, led to discussions of other Modula implementations for CP/M. I relate it to earlier Pascal products of the CP/M era on this Web page.
My thanks to Peter Dassow and Steven Hirsch for their initial discussion, review of my text, and contributing Web links in comp.os.cpm for December 2008.
- Herb Johnson
Web site cpmwelt.de had a copy of an apparent press release on their Web site, many years ago. It made its way to a CP/M CD ROM and a copy of that document is at this link. (Programs and other documents are also on that CD-ROM.) They say the press release was downloaded from the Lillipute Z-Node Web site (no date). The note says "Z80 Turbo Modula-2 was created by Borland International, the creators of Turbo Pascal. It is an in-depth and professional implementation of Modula-2 for Z80-compatible computers running a CP/M-80 compatible disk operating system. This includes Kaypro, Commodore 128, Morrow, Osborne, Amstrad, and many other computers. The Z80 Turbo Modula-2 package comes complete with 500+ page manual; WordStar-like programming editor for creating and modifying program source code or any text file, compiler, extensive function library (modules), and installation program and terminal descriptor database....The price of the Turbo Modula-2 package is $69.95...Shipments will begin December 5th, 1986." The apparent seller is "Echelon, Inc...Los Altos, CA USA".
Wikipedia's entry for this product also says Echelon sold it, under license from Borland. The entry as of Dec 2008 says: "Turbo Modula-2 was both a compiler and an Integrated Development Environment for the Modula-2 programming language running on MS-DOS, developed by Borland, but never released by them. Instead, a group including Borland cofounder Niels Jensen, acting as Jensen and Partners, bought the unreleased codebase and redeveloped and released it as TopSpeed Modula-2. TopSpeed was eventually sold to Clarion, now owned by SoftVelocity, which still offers the Modula-2 compiler as part of its Clarion product line....Turbo Modula-2 for Z80 CP/M was briefly marketed by Echelon, Inc. under license from Borland."
An FAQ for Modula-2 at this Web link seems to confirm the Wikipedia information. Press releases from the era confirm Jensen and other Borland programmers "spun off" their group to form TopSpeed in 1987.
"Clarion" is described in this retrospective description by Paul Attryde, a Clarion programmer and former employee, on his Web site. ALternate names for the company are apparently "JPI / Clarion / TopSpeed / SoftVelocity". As Mr. Attryde describes the namesake product and corporate history, "Clarion is a database orientated RAD tool, similar in a way to Delphi or VB but with a more DB focus. It has it strengths (very quick development time) and weaknesses (crap debugger and no COM interface) like any other development tool, but overall it's not too bad. It was originally written by the TopSpeed Development Centre for TopSpeed Software, although now (Jan 2004) all rights to the TopSpeed products have been held by SoftVelocity for some time."
Other Web site pages with Clarion, TopSpeed and Modula history include this site of pisoft.ru.; and some retrospective notes about Modula-2 in BitWise magazine.
In late 2008, SoftVelocity. Inc of Pompano Beach, FL has an active Web site and promotes and supports the Clarion product line, of course as a Windows-32-based product. They say "In addition to the Clarion 4GL language, the Clarion product also includes both a C++ and Modula-2 compiler." They also say "The Clarion compiler is descended from the TopSpeed family of compilers..". They refer to Usenet newsgroup "comp.lang.clarion" as a forum they participate in. They offer Clarion Magazine on-line for over $100 a year.
Modula and its successors are still of some interest. There is a modula2.org Web site with some resources, but not directly for CP/M or 8-bit processors. There is also a Modula-2 Web ring, with 17 sites as of 2008. A number of relevant Web sites refer to retroarchive.org to download FTL (or Turbo) Modula 2.
Gaby's "unofficial CP/M Web site" has a Modula-2 Implementation from Hochstrasser Computing AG for CP/M systems using a Z80 processor. It was apparently freely offered by Peter Hochstrasser in 2002 after the company was liquidated in 1997, and initially made available on Hal Bower's Web site, and later on other CP/M archive sites. This compiler produces native Z80 code, not M-code; the compiler source is apprently not included but library source is. Peter Hochstrasser is (or was) working at the ETH Zurich, the "origin" organization for Modula.
In turn, today's ETH Zurich (an environmental research university) seems to offer RAMSES, an environmental modeling and simulation environment based on Modula-2. In turn, they offer Modula-2 packages for Mac System 7 and OS X, Win 3.1, and Sun Solaris 5.0. (no mention of Z80 & CP/M).
Herb Johnson
Contact information:
Copyright © 2023 Herb Johnson