Isn’t not like I need a distraction from work, but I couldn’t resist this one. I saw a tweet about iDOS, a DOS emulator app just released for iPad and iPhone. For fear the app will be pulled from the App Store, I bought it right away. Besides, it’s only 99 cent.

I read a story about someone installing Windows 3.0 inside of iDOS. Sounds cool but I’m not interested in Windows 3.0. Instead, I decided to install Turbo Pascal. Embarcadero recently posted Turbo Pascal v5.5 as a free download so the first thing I did was to grab a copy of it. Next, I grabbed an unzip program so I can unzip TP55.zip in iDOS. (Save time and go here to download unz552x3.exe.)

Here are the remaining steps I followed to get Turbo Pascal up and running on my iPad.

• Connect the iPad to iTunes.
• In iTunes, go to the Apps tab for the connected iPad and scroll down to the file sharing section.
• Drag and drop TP55.zip and unz552x3.exe to iDOS.
• Sync the device.
• Once sync is complete, launch iDOS on the iPad. You’ll find the two files in the root directory.
• Copy unz552x3.exe to a new directory, or just run it in the root directory. This will uncompress the unzip utility files. I prefer running it in a separate directory to keep the root clean.
• Unzip TP55.zip. This will create two directories, DISK1 and DISK2. Again, I copied TP55.zip to a temp directory before unzip.
• Run install.exe found in the DISK1 directory. If your experience is similar to mine, you will get a message saying to insert the oop/demos/bgi/doc diskette. I’m guessing the installer can’t find the directory DISK2.
• At this point, I aborted the install. Not to worry. Turbo Pascal’s IDE, compiler, etc have been installed.
• By default, the IDE can be found in c:\TP. The program file to run is turbo.exe.

That’s it. Happy coding!

Update: If those not lucky enough to grab a copy of iDOS from the App Store, you can download the source code for DOSPad and build your own version.

Life has been crazy busy recently. Of course it seems my life is always crazy busy, and just when I think it can’t get any more crazy busy, it does. I’m behind on a number of things, and I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. Heck, feeling overwhelmed is probably an understatement for how I feel right now.

This year has been an amazing year for me, work-wise. I reinvented White Peak Software last year as company focused on iOS, and this year is shaping up to be my most exciting and enjoyable year in the company’s (almost) 7 year history. But a number of things are suffering as well. Progress on the book is suffering. Product updates are suffering. New product releases are suffering. Even client work is suffering because there’s simply no way for me to keep up with the demands. Despite of all this, I feel a bit better this evening after reading a posting from Jeff LaMarche.

I look up to Jeff, and I’m amazed at how much work he pumps out. I often wonder where he finds the time – not having a two year old in the house probably helps – and I’m convinced he never sleeps. In his posting Complaining About Success, Jeff mentions “time has become a scarce commodity.”

Ah, he is human. He does fall behind from time to time.

While I feel for Jeff, I admit reading his post makes me feel a bit relieved that I’m not alone.

And Jeff, if you are reading this, I plan to stick with the release then nil approach. It’s the approach I learned when first diving into Objective-C. Old habits are sometimes hard to break.

Life has been crazy busy over the last week but fun at the same time. I’m wrapping up a client project, and last week I spoke about iPad programming at the NYC iPhone Developer Meet-up. The next day I followed up the talk with a one-day training class on learning iPad programming. Thanks goes out to Julio Barros of E-String for keeping me busy last week, I mean for giving me the opportunity to talk and teach.

One of the more interesting things that happened last week was being interviewed by a reporter from the largest news service in China. Here’s a picture from the interview, and yes, I look like a zombie in the picture. The reported asked some really good questions, and I think the interview went really well. But it’s doubtful I’ll ever see the interview since it will only air in China and the interview is unlikely to be available online. Still, it was fun to do.

A highlight from last week was seeing friends, old and new, Thursday night for drinks after the meet up. Made me realize how much I miss living in New York.