README file for PMOS

Overview description of PMOS

PMOS is a large library of Modula-2 modules, distributed in source form. Its primary purpose is to make it easy to write multitasking programs for real-time and/or embedded applications. However it also contains a number of modules of interest even if you don't want to write multitasking code: screen windows and screen graphics modules, various device drivers, and a variety of utility modules.

PMOS is free for non-profit use.

As distributed, PMOS is written for use on IBM-PC compatible hardware; but large parts of it are portable.

To obtain the PMOS source code, fetch the file pmos.zip (don't forget to set binary mode for ftp transfers), and unzip into a disk directory of your choice.

After unzipping, you will find another README file among the unzipped files. Read it for further installation information.

If you have trouble fetching from this site, look for PMOS at one of the following places (but they won't necessarily have the latest version). Remember that choosing a too-distant site might give you painfully slow transfers.

ftp.psg.com (North America).
cs.ru.ac.za (South Africa).
dutiba.twi.tudelft.nl (Western Europe).
ftp.cnit.nsk.su (Eastern Europe).
Fat City BBS, San Diego (USA); supports anonymous "gopher" type access. Send mail saying "help" to fileserv@fatcity.com to get started. Operated by bruceb@fatcity.com.
Cix, a subscription conferencing system in London (England); supports mail, Telnet, zmodem transfer. Conference modula.2/jpi. Conference moderator is Don Milne, mpack@cix.compulink.co.uk.
PMI BBS, 414-465-1656 14.4k baud v.32bis v.42bis.

Note that some of these were never intended to be general-purpose ftp sites, so there are no guarantees about how long the copies will stay there.

What's new in 2.2?

Version 2.2 was released on 23 March 1995. The main new features are

Improved portability. It now works with TopSpeed version 1.17, and parts of it now work with FST. (Sorry, I never quite finished the FST port.)
For TopSpeed version 3, memory models Small..XLarge are now all supported. You can now do multitasking without having to use the much-maligned MThread model.
Improved graphics.
Improved menus.
Polyphonic music.
Numerous minor improvements in many modules.

Related files

PMOS Reference Manual (Compressed Postscript. Warning: very long). If you are unable to handle Postscript files, you can get an abbreviated plain text version.
C header files for a subset of PMOS. This is a preliminary release, so don't expect much at this stage. (The next version, if it's ever finished, will be significantly different and more portable.)
Numerical analysis software (freeware).

The following files are already part of the PMOS package, and are provided for the benefit of those who don't want the entire package. Don't bother fetching them if you already have PMOS.

The PMOS preprocessor - you can fetch either the zip file with full sources or the documentation only. This is a preprocessor which allows you to maintain multiple variants (e.g. versions for different compilers) of Modula-2 programs.
Sources for low-level graphics operations.
3-part music player which lets you play music through the PC speaker.

The author of PMOS is Peter Moylan.
Last modified 12 September 2005.