TURBO C

Turbo C was an Integrated Development Environment and compiler for the C programming
language from Borland. It was first introduced in 1987 and was noted for its integrated
development environment, small size, extremely fast compile speed, comprehensive manuals
and low price.

In May 1990, Borland replaced Turbo C with Turbo C++. In 2006, Borland reintroduced the
Turbo moniker.

Version History

Turbo C 1.0 startup screen.

 Version 1.0, on May 13, 1987 - It offered the first integrated edit-compile-run
development environment for C on IBM PCs. The software was, like many Borland
products of the time, bought from another company and branded with the "Turbo"
name, in this case Wizard C by Bob Jervis (The flagship Borland product at that time,
Turbo Pascal, which at this time did not have pull-down menus, would be given a facelift
with version 4 released late in 1987 to make it look more like Turbo C.) It ran in 384KB of
memory. It allowed inline assembly with full access to C symbolic names and structures,
supported all memory models, and offered optimizations for speed, size, constant
folding, and jump elimination.

Turbo C 1.5 startup screen.

 Version 1.5, in January 1988 - This was an incremental improvement over version 1.0. It
included more sample programs, improved manuals and other bug fixes. It was shipped
on five 360 KB diskettes of uncompressed files, and came with sample C programs,
including a stripped down spreadsheet called mcalc. This version introduced the
 <conio.h> header file (which provided fast, PC-specific console I/O routines). (Note: The
copyright date in the startup screen is 1987, but the files in the system distribution were
created in January 1988.)

Turbo C 2.0 startup screen.

 Version 2.0, in 1989 - The American release was in late 1988, and featured the first
"blue screen" version, which would be typical of all future Borland releases for MS-DOS.
The American release did not have Turbo Assembler or a separate debugger. (These
were being sold separately as the product Turbo Assembler.) See this ad for details:
Turbo C, Asm, and Debugger were sold together as a professional suite of tools. This
seems to describe another release: Featured Turbo Debugger, Turbo Assembler, and an
extensive graphics library. This version of Turbo C was also released for the Atari ST, but
distributed in Germany only.

Note on later releases: The name "Turbo C" was not used after version 2.0, because with the
release of Turbo C++ 1.0 with 1990, the two products were folded into a single product. That
first C++ compiler was developed under contract by a company in San Diego and was one of the
first true compilers for C++ (until then, most C++ work was done with pre-compilers that
generated C code). The next version was named Borland C++ to emphasize its flagship status
and completely rewritten in-house, with Peter Kukol as the lead engineer. The Turbo C++ name
was briefly dropped, eventually reappearing as Turbo C++ 3.0. There was never a 2.0 of the
Turbo C++ product series.
INSTALLATION OF TURBO C

Turbo C package includes all the files and programs necessary to run both the Integrated-
Environment and Command-Line versions of the compiler, along with start-up code and library
support for six memory models and 8087/80287 coprocessor emulation. If you are installing
turbo C for the first time, or installing the upgrade from the previous version (1.5), the INSTALL
program makes it easy.

Installing Turbo C on a Floppy-Disk System

* You must have at least 2 floppy disk drive available on your computer system.

1. Insert the distribution disk on a floppy disk drive (A).

2. Insert a preformatted diskette on another floppy disk drive (B).
3. Open the Command Prompt then type a: and press enter.
4. Type INSTALL and press enter.
5. When prompted on what drive to install the Turbo C, type B and press enter.
6. Follow the succeeding procedures until finish.

Installing Turbo C on a Hard Disk / Removable Device

1. Insert the distribution disk on a floppy disk drive (A).

2. Run INSTALL.exe folder on drive A.
3. When prompted on what drive to install Turbo C, type the drive letter of the device and
press enter.
4. Follow the succeeding procedures until finish.

CONFIGURING TURBO C

1. Run the program TC.exe.

2. Go to the option menu (alt+O).
3. Change the Include Directories and Library Directories.
4. Redirect the path of those directories on where the Turbo C directory was installed.

Building and Running a Single-File Program

Step 1. Load TC

 Go to the directory where Turbo C was installed then run the TC.exe application.

Step 2. Choose the Working Directory(optional)

  You could change the directory where your file will be saved by going to the File menu
and selecting Change Dir option on your IDE.
 This step could be bypassed.

Step 3. Set-up Working Environment

 Change the location of your environment on where the Turbo C folder was located.
 Environment:
o Include Directories
o Library Directories
 You could also change the directory where the output file will be placed but this is
optional.

Step 4. Load the Source File into the editor.

 The extension name of Turbo C file is .C (HELLO.C).

 Loading a source file is the process of opening a Turbo C file using the Load option under
the File menu.

Step 5. Build the Executable File.

 In creating an executable file in Turbo C, we must first compile the source code to create
an object file (a machine code file with an .OBJ extension). Then send the object file to
the linker to be converted to an executable file with a .EXE extension.
 In Turbo C IDE, we have a built-in option to do this. Select Compile menu and choose on
the sets of options.

Step 6. Run the Program

 In running a Turbo C program, select the Run menu then select Run option.
 The shortcut key for running and compiling simultaneously a program is by pressing
CTRL + Function 9 of the keyboard.