
This directory (Archive/bbc) holds files relating to the BBC BCPL
System.

The directory Archive/bbc/bbccin holds object modules of the BBC BCPL
system and the 16k BBC BCPL sideways rom.

These files can be made more readable and placed in Archive/bbc/map/
using the command mapcode whose source is
BCPL/cintcode/com/mapcode.b. There are script files in Archive/bbc to
make these conversions more convenient.  For instance, c df BCPLSYN
will convert Archive/bbccin/BCPLSYN to /Archive/map/BCPLSYN.map using
the hints file Archive/hints/BCPLSYN.hints.

The resulting map file greatly assists the reconstruction a BCPL source
file that will generate the same code as in bbccin/BCPLSYN. The
reconstructed BCPL code is held in Archive/bbc/com16. A slightly
modified version designed to run under the modern 32-bit BCPL Cintcode
system is in Archive/bbc/com32.

The command: c bc32 bcplsyn will compile com32/bcplsyn.b using the
modern 32-bit BCPL Cintcode compiler to generate the file
cin32/bcplsyn.

The compiler consisting of the files bcpl, bcplarg, bcplsyn, bcpltrn
and bcplccg in directory Archive/bbc/cin32 can be used to compile the
16-bit BCPL files in com16 to produce 16-bit BBC Cintcode files in
cin16. These seperate files a combined into a single files bbcbcpl.b
and bbcbcpl32.b in distribution/BCPL/cintcode/com/ and so these have
become a standard bcpl commands. This first compiles to 16 bit BCPL
Cintcode and the second compiles to 32 modern Cintcode. If the
reconstructed compilers in com32 and com16 are correct the resulting
files in cin16 will be identical to those in bbccin. As of 28 may
2017, this is the case.

The standard BBC BCPL commands have yet to be reconstructed and similarly
the BCPL sideways rom.


Martin Richards
24 Sep 2020
