SGI, BASIC, OPL and so
======================

I'm  running my  SGI O2  once  more. This  is  what I  am doing  rather
randomly since  I have  got the  POWER9 machine for  a desktop  and the
ARM-based MNT-reform for as a laptop.

The main issues seem sto be the SSL apocalypse - the poor old O2 cannot
open such basic sources at the Wikipedia. There is a workaround [1] but
it's of course text-only, This is  usually OK but sometimes one need to
- with some  effort - see formulas  and then one is out  of luck. Well,
not exactly as  the Wikipedia can be accessed through  the FrogFind [2]
(no formulas  anyway) or  downloaded with use  of the  Cameron Kaiser's
"carl" utility [3] (then the formulae  can be extracted from their text
representations).

The easiest  way is of  course to use a  more modern computer.  But why
power on the SGI then?

Well,  my SGI/IRIX  environment  is highly  customised  andit is  still
comfortable for me (for  some reasons I never have felt  so well in any
modern OS).

I only  wanted to make a  OPL program which will  approximately compute
the Dew Point. The  basic formula is simple: Tdp = T -  ((100 - H)/5) ;
where T is in degrees of Celsius and H is relative humidity in percents
(please note: the formula is useful for H>50%).

So I cheated by reading the Wikipedia on the Gemini PDA. The rest of my
work was done on the SGI O2 anyway.  I first have made a BASIC code for
the bwbasic  interpreter (that was easy  enough - I'm going  to use use
the "code" on other places).

Then  I  started  the DOSbox.  There  is  an  old  IRIX port  which  is
fortunately complete  enough for such  things. Here I have  the PSION's
Organiser 2 IDE/emulator. I used this thing for writing and testing the
OPL equivalent  of the  BASIC code.  I didn't  used it  for years  so I
forgot that I  have to boot the emulated Organiser  2 first (the "boot"
command)  and then  use it  as a  normal Organiser  (the "Menu"  key is
emulated  by the  "F2"). Also  the "RUN"  menu command  will start  the
debugger but  not the program  itself (the "F7" start  code execution).
The debugger is pretty useful anyway.

Now I should transfer  the OPL program to the actual  device. It can be
done  from the  O2  as all  needed  functionality is  here  but I  will
probably do it later from my MC600 laptop.

Of course  I should  be able  to do  all of  these things  (writing and
testing  BASIC  code,  ruggin  g=the  ORG2  IDE)  on  a  8086  or  8088
machine such  is the PSION  MC600 but it  will be less  comfortable (no
multitasking here and much slower execution - especially when emulation
the Organiser).

Actually, I re-typed the working program  to my Organiser II LZ. It was
an useful exercise because I almost  forgot how to use its keyboard for
programming  (it  usually  serves  just  as  an  alarm  clock  and  the
calendar).


Referecnes:

[1] gopher://gopherpedia.com/
[2] http://frogfind.com
[3] github.com/classilla/cryanc