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My exhibit could be one of the first public displays of Flex in a few decades, and I'm excited to show it off. Come early for best odds of seeing it working, as the PERQ is prone to hardware failure.

The #PERQ has made it through Day 1 of RetroFest in Swindon with no major failures. I suspect a hard drive cable needs a new connector, but if the drive (emulator) is positioned like so and doesn't get jostled, then things seem to work. We'll see how far we can go on Day 2...

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I'm miffed I didn't get to see it running! I had a quick run round just after the doors opened this morning but then saw people lurking at my table to went back to it. Next time!

That leaves Accent I guess :-) I've never met someone who's tried to use Flex in anger; did you have to deal with it that way? It does feel like an acquired taste. I have to love something that quirky, though.

When Flex was released I visited the creators at RSRE for a day to learn about it. That they had made a new, functioning microcoded system was a tribute to their engineering skills. /..

And I had even been an Algol 68 fan, briefly…I learned some PLs in high school by reading the books in the local library in alphabetical order: APL, Algol 68, C, …. I was charmed by Frank Pagan’s A68 book although undergrad exercises with an actual compiler took away some of the shine. /..