Comment by whartung
2 years ago
Back in the day, the Aztec C development environment provided a "shell" experience for development.
Essentially, you coded in vi, you used make, had the basic shell commands (notably ls, cat, mv, cp). I can't speak to it much deeper than that. I used it for some time, but I had no Unix experience, so I can't say what was missing.
I'm sure, today, if I tried to work on it like a would a normal Unix environment, even a limited one, I would run smack into some deficiency. For example, I doubt you can shell out in vi, something that is bread and butter in my toolbox and workflow.
But, it was a very early (1985) "Unix on Mac" experience.
You don't happen to have access to Aztec C for the classic 68k? I (and others) have been trying to track down a copy for some time. There appears to be one on Macintosh garden, but that is for ms-dos.
Honestly I probably got rid of my final box of ancient Mac 3.5" floppies in my last move 5 years ago.
Can't say I actually had Aztec C at the time, but it wouldn't have surprised me one way or the other.
Short answer, no I no longer have access to it any longer.
I used to run it on my basement upgraded, 512K Mac with 2 400K drives. Spent real money on it. I think it was $499 at the time. Maybe less, it was certainly no Turbo Pascal that's for sure.
Ah thanks for sharing your memories, seems like computing was so much more expensive compared to now. I enjoy playing around with an old Mac Plus and a modern emulated HD20 drive. Eventually like to use it as a terminal, but really I just enjoy playing with an older retro computer that has a pretty clear lineage to my daily modern computer.
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