6502.org

In the late 70s, a company called ARESCO here in NJ made a 6502 version
of the FOCAL programming language. It was also distributed by the
6502 Program Exchange. Does anyone have a copy of that software?
Does anyone know the name of the fellow who ran ARESCO? I might
be able to locate the author by name.

A lot of this older software might be gone forever, so I keep looking
for copies. Someone had an old 6502 version of Tom Pittman's
Tiny Basic, so we got that to Tom and he has been helping me
re-construct the source code. A copy of the original code is on his
site (http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/index.htm) and maybe he'll
put the new source code on the page eventually.

One old program recovered, many to go!

Bob

I have a listing for FOCAL for the 6502 but haven't run it on anything yet so I don't know if it's complete or correct. I'm not sure of whence it came either, I'll have to go look.

Cheers,

Lee.

I have Focal for the KIM-1 online, both manual and the program
at

http://www.hansotten.com - 6502 Infopages - KIM-1

Hello Hans,

Great site !, Thanks for posting the link.

To your knowledge, was the source for FOCL ever published ?

Regards, Wally

I have never seen the source of Focal nor have seen it for sale.

Hans, http://www.hansotten.com

In a way thats too bad. There were quite a number of
Higher level languages that were offered for Single-Brd-Computers
of that era. It would be nice if in the interest of historical
preservation that one could acquire the source(s) of many of
these.

-Wally

For source code, that particular version is relatively short (<6K) and could probably be disassembled without too much difficulty. Disassembly is something of a lost art these days, but there appears to be enough KIM-1 info online for this to be feasable. (I've never used a KIM-1 myself, but I've done my share of disassembly.) Locating the author and/or copyright holder to get their blessing to put it online could be an adventure, though.

Hì,

I was wrong about the source of Focal not available in 1977.
I have an article from Dr Dobbs about a Focal program for the KIM-1, the author lists the prices for the separate products, like the program, the manuals and the listing. Total was 75 dollar, the listing itself was iirc 42 dollar. This version of Focal has the name FCL65E, my version of Focal is called Focal V3d. I suspect it to be the same product, also made by Aresco and published by the 6502 program exchange.