First Business BASIC program in years

7/6/2014

I wrote my first decent business BASIC program last night. Amazed at how much I'd forgotten but it slowly came back - working in Visual Basic for 20 years hasn't helped.

I wanted a routine to search through a specified list of files and look for pieces of text.

The LIBR list file contains all the *C (contiguous) files that are likely to contain German text that's used by the operating system. For example, I wanted to find where the machines original owner name was stored - In MESSAGES, record 147 for the record.

It was a fun exercise and a real blast of nostalgia. I really need to get a second terminal up and running as just having the one is a real handicap.

I've actually managed to repair a second terminal. Next I need to assemble a suitable connecting cable for it.

As an update to this post, I've been messing around all day trying to get the second DAP4 to work over an IHSS connection for I'm having problems for some reason.

I know the DAP4 works ok, because if I put a V24 card in it and connected to the master port channel on the ALME it works fine. I've tried a different ALME and it's not that.

So it's either a problem with the interface cards (and I've tried several) or the cabling but if it is I'll be dammed if I can see the problem. I'll have another go tomorrow if I get the chance.

6 Comments

Peter Westerbeek

6/7/2015 01:21:23 pm

Hello Joe
Nice to read your stories about the 8870. I started my career as developer/troubleshooter at Nixdorf in Utrecht,Holland in 1978. Did a lot of programming of the Comet Master 5, mostly General Ledger and Debitors / Creditors. I still think Nixdorf did a wonderful thing with this machine and the software. Everyting went through menu's, which was far ahead of other business computers. There was no text in the programs: all text displayed on the screen was read from a file (GL.Param001 if I rember well) . So when you started programming you had to have your text cleared by Germany. A huge advantage was that you could easly use a Dutch or English param-file when you where on la customer location in say France .

First I had a wonderfull 14 Kbytes for my program to run in. Today the program "Hello World" takes a lot more bytes... Using every byte and often used it twice of three times which didn make it easy to maintain. After two years we were giving a extra Kb , so we had 15Kb. That was a reason for a big party.
You say you have some German text files. If you have a problem with the translation I will gladly assist ( did a lot of translation work for the Germans at the end of the 70-thies)
And yeah, I remember "install 0.1 command". I you typed "install 0.0" you got the wonderfull message "Do you really want to blow up your systemdisk".
That is it for now. There is a lot more to tell. If I can help you by rummaging through my brain for information about Nixdorf, Comet and 8870 , just let me know.

Kind regards

Peter Westerbeek

PS On July 22 I am going with my son to the Nixdorf Museum in Paderbon: just a trip through memory lane.

Simon Lloyds

7/11/2017 03:12:56 am

An amazing system it was. I loved it. Streaks ahead of anything today. Ingenious idea were the .param files Peter mentions above. I worked with Zeiss, Karstadt, B.Braun and more as a systems programmer. Miss it terribly. Cheers! Long live the Nixdorf memory.

Barry Dixon

10/5/2020 12:03:33 pm

I found a copy of the 8870 brochure on line which brought back memories. I worked in the City of London for a French bank and the 8870 was our first computer system. It ran software known as NIBSOL,
Nixdorf International Banking System On Line. It was written in business Basic.

Hendrik

11/3/2021 08:01:08 pm

I spent 13 years coding in Business Basic on Nixdorf in South Africa. It was the happiest time of my live. My first task from my boss was to teach the machine to play draw poker. He said that if I managed that everything afterwards would be easy. He was right. I miss those happy days. IT these days is not the same at all. Greetings from Swaziland.

Chris Nicolatos

1/9/2021 06:51:31 am

I started with Nixdorf in South Africa in 1978 writing payroll software as an addon to Comet for Triomf Fertilizers.

When I moved to Greece in 1981, I joined Nixdorf Greece and worked on Comet and Comet Top until Nixdorf closed its software section in 1989.

I remember going to seminars in Vianen in Holland, in Wiesbaden in Germany and also a fantastic global meeting in Arolsen Germany round about 1985.

Lovely years

Peter Westerbeek

6/9/2021 07:30:43 pm

Hi Chris
I worked in 1981 in Vianen. Maybe we have seen each other without knowing. I still think with pleasure at those times.

First Business BASIC program in years

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