turbo-dev

A "quick" tutorial on how to setup Turbo Pascal in Ubuntu so you can code like it's '93.

Requisites

• Turbo Pascal 7 (or other version)
• 7-Zip for extractinng Turbo Pascal installation files (Optional)
• DOSBox or preferrably DOSBox-X. DOSBox-X has much better support for demos (ie Goldplay works as intended)
• DOSEMU2
• Somewhere to place DOS programs e.g. ~/msdos
• Somewhere to place your own source code e.g. ~/code/pascal

Install DOSBox-X (https://www.dosbox-x.com/)

~$ sudo snap install dosbox-x

Install Turbo Pascal 7 (https://winworldpc.com/product/turbo-pascal/7x)

Download Borland Turbo Pascal 7.0 (1992) (3.5-720k).7z to a temporary dirctory e.g ~/msdos/tmp Extract the file using 7-Zip. If 7-Zip isn't available, install it first.

~$ sudo apt install p7zip-full
~$ cd ~/msdos/tmp
~/tmp$ 7za x 'Borland Turbo Pascal 7.0 (1992) (3.5-720k).7z'

Mount each file image (right-click and run them with the Disk Image Mounter program) Exatract each image Disk001.img, Disk002.img, Disk003.img, Disk004.img into a directory e.g ~/msdos/tmp Run DOSBox

~$ cd ~/msdos
~$ dosbox-x

in DOSBox, mount the temporary directory where the Turbo Pascal files a extrected, and the run the Turbo Pascal installer

Z:\>mount c: .
Z:\>c:
Z:\>cd tmp
Z:\TMP\> install.exe

Install turbo pascal in a directory e.g c:\apps\tp7 (~/msdos/apps/tp7) (and with the *.exe files in c:\apps\tp7\bin) Exit DOSBox

Install DOSEMU2 (https://code.launchpad.net/~dosemu2/+archive/ubuntu/ppa)

On eg Ubuntu 20.04+ run the following to install DOSEMU2

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dosemu2/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install dosemu2

Go to the DOSEMU home folder:

~$ cd ~/.dosemu/drive_c

If the folder doesn't exist, run DOSEMU once to create the DOSEMU home folder, and the exit DOSEMU by typing "exitemu"

~$ dosemu

Create a soft link to the Turbo Pascal installation

~/.dosemu/drive_c$ ln -s ~/msdos/apps/tp7 tp7

~/.dosemu/drive_c$ ls -la
autoexec.bat
config.sys
tmp
tp7 -> /home/youruser/msdos/apps/tp7

For DOSEMU2, creata a file called userhook.bat and include TP7 to the path

~/.dosemu/drive_c$ nano userhook.bat

Add c:\tp7\bin at the end of the path

set PATH=%PATH%;C:\tp7\bin

Create the source folder

Check out the example code in any folder e.g ~/code/pascal/turbo-dev

Go to the source folder and compile a Pascal file from the command line:

~$ cd /code/pascal/turbo-dev/
~$ dosemu -K src/build.bat -dumb

or simply run

~$ ant

will hopefully result in something like

D:\code\pascal\turbo-dev\src>TPC pixels.pas -B
Turbo Pascal  Version 7.0  Copyright (c) 1983,92 Borland International
PIXELS.PAS(170)
567 lines, 6624 bytes code, 5192 bytes data.

Run the pixels.exe file with DOSBox

~$ cd build
~/build$ dosbox-x pixels.exe