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While at Uni in the 90’s in England, we learnt and used Modula-2 extensively as our high-level programming language. Just restoring a Mac SE/30, which is also from that era, and would love to be able to run a decent Modula-2 compiler on it.

Reading StackExchange, it seems that the Metrowerks Modula-2 compiler was the preferred dev environment for the Mac at this time. It appeared to be delivered in two versions: the Professional Standalone Edition and the MPW version (and in addition, a student ‘StartPak’ edition)

Does anyone still have any of these Mac dev tools archived away anywhere, or can point me to a source? I’ve trawled the Internet extensively, but can find no active resources.

Also, any tips for books which cover use of early versions of MPW and CodeWarrior, which seem to have also been active at the time. Don’t think there was a book on use of Metrowerks Modula-2, but would be very happy to be proven wrong!

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  • Not what you are looking for, but this modula-2 page lists some other Modula-2 compilers, among them the freeware MacMETH from the ETH Zürich where Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of Modula, was a professor. I haven't used any of these, but maybe they are worth a look.
    – dirkt
    Nov 1, 2018 at 8:29
  • Thanks @dirkt - found the Modula-2 page helpful while doing my trawl of the Internet searching for Classic Mac Modula-2 implementations. Downloaded latest version of MacMETH from ETH website, but think I need to upgrade my SE/30 from System 7.0 to something later in order to run this - gonna try uplifting to System 7.5.5 - think that’s the latest an SE/30 can run without ROM changes - can anyone advise? Thanks!
    – Mark Riley
    Nov 3, 2018 at 18:15
  • I have Metrowerks Modula-2 v4.0.3 running on a Mac SE. Email me via the 'Email support' address on my Astrobe website and we can work out the best way to get copies of the two floppies to you.
    – CFB Software
    Aug 20, 2020 at 7:27
  • "upgrade my SE/30 from System 7.0 to something later in order to run this" - almost certainly the other way around, I'd be extremely surprised to learn this didn't run under System 6 or even 5.
    – Maury Markowitz
    Aug 20, 2020 at 13:29
  • MacMETH was a super fast compiler, but not integrated into MPW, but distributed as a standalone environment (that I, personally was not fond of). There was also another Mac Modula-2 compiler called MacLogimo.
    – microtherion
    Aug 20, 2020 at 17:32

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Hi and welcome to Retrocomputing StackExchange.

Two good archives for Classic Macintosh software, both of which include some Modula-2 dev environments for 68K Macintoshes like the SE/30.

Searching either one for "Modula-2" has some results, but nothing from Metrowerks, unfortunately.

"p1 Modula-2" appears to have been around since the 1990s, integrates with the MPW, and is still supported today for modern Intel Macs and Xcode. They offer a free demo version on their web site.

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  • Thanks @Brian - I’ve investigated p1 Modula-2, which by all regards looks excellent, but the demo version only runs on PowerPC processors according to the ReadMe file in the download package (support to run on 68k processors has, sadly, been removed from the demo). The full version (which will run on 68k) costs around 500 Euros (about the $570) so a little beyond my budget for home use!
    – Mark Riley
    Nov 3, 2018 at 18:04
  • Found another mention of Metrowerks Modula-2 here on StackExchange, from user @KJSeefried on the following post: retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/… Wonder if they be able to help me locate a copy of the MetroWerks M2 dev environment? Hopefully they might find my post here, not sure how to tag other users in posts yet - possible? Any tips??
    – Mark Riley
    Nov 3, 2018 at 18:20
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    @MarkRiley - Unfortunately, my classic Mac stuff as well as my copy of the compiler are decades gone.
    – KJ Seefried
    Nov 6, 2018 at 17:57
  • Thanks for responding @KJSeefried - I’m not surprised; it’s a long time ago, but hopefully someone somewhere will have archived a copy in their attic in a dusty old 3.5” disk box - I’ll keep searching!
    – Mark Riley
    Nov 7, 2018 at 9:46
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Metrowerks was a very popular set of dev tools for classic Macs, but I believe only C, C++, and Object Pascal. I don't remember them ever shipping a Modula-2 compiler.

CodeWarrior was the name of the Metrowerks GUI IDE running stand alone rather than as command line tools within MPW.

Apple sold an MPW Command Reference manual, and IIRC a tutorial book as well. I don't think anyone else wrote much: MPW was a sort of very strange Unix with Latin-1 characters replacing the ASCII pipe, redirect, etc. (An MPW terminal was briefly visible in the movie Jurassic Park on Nedry's Mac.)

Macintosh Revealed, volumes 1 & 2, by Stephen Chernicoff was the most popular tutorial for the initial wave of Mac developers. (Inside Mac was a reference, not a tutorial.)

Around the time of System 6 a lot of Mac development was done with MacApp, the Apple object orientated framework. First two versions were Object Pascal, after that switched to C++. Look for books or references with "MacApp" in the title.

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