XT 5160

[Tom Jennings]

On Fri, 6 May 2005, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:

>> ALthough it was NOT the "first" one, I kinda liked DeSmet C.  I still use
>> it (now called "Personal C Compiler") to introduce my students to the
>> concept of a command line compiler.
> I remember using a very much UNIX-like C environment for DOS,
> called "Manx C".  It was small, has the usual "make-cc-as-ld-ar"
> setup, and produced nice code.  What happened to them?  This was
> around ~84 or so..

Slightly OT, my hands-down favorite C compiler to this day is Leor
Zolman's BDS C for CP/M-80. The fact it existed at all was
wonderful. Its still an amazing piece of software if you ask me, a
lot of functionality in a tiny package. No std library but that
was easy to write. Flexible, open (you got M80 source to the libs
and main() support), friendly (you could call Leor at home),
cheap, reliable, made small binaries, true standalone no runtime
crapola ala M$ basic compiler.

It should be on a short list of historically significant software.