The Lattice C Compiler was released in June 1982 by
Lifeboat Associates
Lifeboat Associates was a New York City company that was one of the largest microcomputer software distributors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Lifeboat acted as an independent software broker marketing software to major hardware vendors such ...
and was the first
C compiler for the
IBM Personal Computer.
The compiler sold for $500 and would run on
PC DOS or
MS-DOS (which at the time were the same product with different brandings). The hardware requirements were 96KB of RAM and two floppy drives.
It was ported to many other platforms, such as
mainframes (
MVS),
minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...
s (
VMS #REDIRECT VMS
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),
workstations (
UNIX),
OS/2, the
Commodore Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
,
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
and the
Sinclair QL.
The compiler was subsequently repackaged by
Microsoft under a distribution agreement as Microsoft C version 2.0.
Microsoft developed their own C compiler that was released in April 1985 as Microsoft C Compiler 3.0.
Lattice was purchased by
SAS Institute in 1987 and rebranded as SAS/C. After this, support for other platforms dwindled until compiler development ceased for all platforms except IBM mainframes. The product is still available in versions that run on other platforms, but these are
cross compilers that only produce mainframe code.
Some of the early 1982 commercial software for the IBM PC was ported from
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...
(where it was written for the
BDS C subset of the C language) to MS-DOS using Lattice C including
Perfect Writer Perfect Writer is a word processor computer program published by Perfect Software for CP/M, subsequently rewritten and released as Perfect II by Thorn EMI Computer Software for IBM PC compatible computers. It was written in C and famous for its st ...
,
PerfectCalc,
PerfectSpeller and
PerfectFiler. This suite was bundled with the
Seequa Chameleon and
Columbia Data Products.
* LMK,
make tool
* LSE, screen editor
* TMN, text management utilities
Reception
In a 1983 review of five C compilers for the IBM PC, ''
BYTE'' chose Lattice C as the best in the "superior quality, but expensive and unsuited to the beginner" category. It cited the software's "quick compile and execution times, small incremental code, best documentation and consistent reliability".
''
PC Magazine
''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...
'' that year similarly praised Lattice C's documentation and compile-time and runtime performance, and stated that it was slightly superior to the CI-C86 and c-systems C compilers.
References
External links
* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060321223926/http://www.lattice.com/otherdos.htm , date=March 21, 2006 , title=DOS and OS/2 compiler
C (programming language) compilers
Amiga development software
Atari ST software
DOS software
IBM mainframe software