I just completed "Laboratories" - Day 7 of #AdventOfCode in #TurboPascal on the #Xi8088 computer.

Part 2 fits inside the same loop as part 1 with very few modifications.

Then I could make it read the file line by line as it goes, instead of building the entire map in memory.

By keeping track of the left and right limits of potential change, I could also reduce the memory accesses.

With 1.3 second of total runtime, I'm very happy with my solution today !

#Retrocomputing #Pascal #DOScember

I just completed "Trash Compactor" - Day 6 of #AdventOfCode in #Turbo Pascal on the #Xi8088 computer.

Once again, we face input lines too long to fit in a 'string' and numbers too big to fit in a 'longint' (these are only 32-bit signed), but I'm getting used to all that so in the end, today was pretty much uneventful.

Let's take a moment to thank our very good friend the #i8087 artithmetic coprocessor for its help!

#RetroComputing #Pascal #DOScember

I just completed "Cafeteria" - Day 5 of #AdventOfCode in #TurboPascal, but only in #dosbox for the moment, not on the #Xi8088 because I'm at work 😅

Again, 8087 to the rescue!

I can't wait to see how long it will take on the real hardware, probably only a few seconds.

Did you know that #Pascal does not provide any procedure to sort the content of an array? Turbo Pascal did come with a very helpful example of a #QuickSort implementation as a reference, though.

#Retrocomputing #DOScember

I just completed "Printing Department" - Day 4 of #AdventOfCode in #TurboPascal on the #Xi8088

I have to confess that I abused the structure of strings in #Pascal to keep my indexes in range...

I was afraid it would be unbearably slow due to all the memory accesses, but I managed to make part 2 run in 45 seconds. For reference, the same code takes only half a second on the 486. Caches do help, I suppose...

#Retrocomputing #DOScember

I just completed "Lobby" - Day 3 of #AdventOfCode and I'm still doing it in #TurboPascal on the #Xi8088 computer!

The solve was reasonably straightforward today, with no limitations coming from the language itself. The generalized solution even fits nicely in a single 50 lines screen.

Part 1 is pretty much instant, but part 2 takes about 7 seconds to finish. That's how slow memory access is on this CPU.

#retrocomputing #pascal #DOScember

I just finished "Gift Shop" - Day 2 of #AdventOfCode in #TurboPascal on my #Xi8088.

An input file with lines longer than 255 characters, numbers too big to fit even in a LongInt, no regexps, no arbitrary large sets, these were all challenges posed by Turbo Pascal in addition to the slow 8088 CPU.

Part 1 finishes in 1 second but part 2 takes about 7 minutes...

#pascal #retrocomputing #DOScember

I just completed "Secret Entrance" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/1

Solved in #TurboPascal on my #Xi8088 computer. Perfect for #DOScember !

Slight content warning, the picture shows most of my (pretty dirty) solution.

#retrocomputing #pascal #dos

I did some work under the microscope the other day and assembled this lovely 8-bit NE2000 network adapter for my #Xi8088, both designed by the prolific Sergey Kiselev. Soldering that QFP package with 0.65 mm pitch was a good exercise.

The board is working great despite the chip's legs being very slightly twisted (used part from ebay).

Now I can finally transfer files to and from my computer without swapping the Compact Flash!

https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_eth

#electronics #retrocomputing