Archive
Turbo Pascal Archive
Every file here came out of pascal.zip, 927 KB found on a backup drive: my first programming class at Balboa High School in the Panama Canal Zone, 1993–1994.
Balboa was a DODDS school serving American military families along the Canal. It closed in 1999 when the U.S. handed the Canal back to Panama. The .MIL email addresses, the BBS phone numbers, and the JROTC references all come from a place that no longer exists in that form.
The full story is in Learning Pascal in the Canal Zone. These are the featured files from that post.
Stats
- 14 featured files
- 1993–1994 timeframe
- Balboa High School origin
The Homework
Chapter exercises from Pascal I and II. Nine months separate the first file from the last.
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The First Program
September 14, 1993. Calculates the area of a circle with a radius of 21. The uses clause is annotated with "Tells the computer to use the monitor."
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Recursion
April 1994. Procedures with parameters, pre and post conditions, recursion, and a winky face in a formal comment.
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Waffle Sales Tracker
Chapter 6 era. A two-dimensional array indexed by an enumerated type: Plain, OatBran, RaisinBran, BlueBerry.
Blackjack
Built with Chris Goodno in January 1994. Two versions, escalating ambition.
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Blackjack, First Version
A straightforward text-mode card game. The goodbye sequence prints "Thank You For Playing..." one letter at a time, then scatters farewells in nine languages at random screen positions.
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Blackjack, Second Version
Opens with turtle graphics and spirographs, switches to Gothic and Triplex fonts for the title screen, and randomizes the color of every line of text. If you lose: "Cash can be paid up front to the disk drive, thank you."
The BBS Door
Not homework. A trivia game that ran on a real bulletin board system in Panama, over a modem.
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Trivia Door
Uses rmdoor for remote I/O, detects DesqView, identifies the CPU type, and reads the caller’s baud rate. Callers could play trivia and submit their own questions.
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Door Configuration Tool
Supports PCBoard, GAP, SpitFire, RBBS, Wildcat, TriBBS, and WWIV. Waits for input with a spinning cursor cycling through | / - \.
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Trivia Questions
The question data file. Caller-submitted questions were appended with attribution: (Question by: username).
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Title Screen
ANSI art title screen for the trivia door.
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Welcome Screen
ANSI art welcome screen.
Benchmarks and Artifacts
The files that have nothing to do with the curriculum and everything to do with 1994.
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Sorting Benchmarks
Compares Shell sort, Selection sort, and QuickSort by reading the BIOS tick counter at $0040:$006C. Comments include timings from a 386 running at 33MHz and FidoNet Pascal echo commentary on why Succ() beats +1.
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ProComm Dialing Directory
Binary dialing directory for the local BBS scene: Huracan por Racsapac, PCC BBS, Building 861, Panama Jack’s, Mickey Unix. Panama phone numbers at 1200 and 2400 baud.
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The Email
A letter drafted from pbaca@DODDS-PANAMA.ARMY.MIL, signed with three addresses across three networks, including a FidoNet node in zone 4. Sign-off: "To read next message press CTRL-ALT-DEL."
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The Internet Essay
A WordPerfect essay from circa 1994 arguing the Internet would transform education, written before the Web was mainstream. The predictions are vague. The thesis was right.