FTN77 started its life on an ICL 1900 series mainframe and ended as a compiler that runs under the Windows NT series of operating systems (Windows 2000, XP, Vista etc.). FTN95 is the successor to FTN77 but you can still download the FTN77 personal edition at: (will open new window and direct you to cnet.com) https://ftn95.co.uk/ftn95/ftn77pe.exe.
| Late 70s | David Vallance working for University of Salford Computer Center recruits David Bailey to work on a Fortran 77 compiler for the ICL 1900 series of mainframe. This became FTN77 |
| Early 80s | FTN77 is ported to the Prime minicomputer series. |
| Late 80s | FTN77 is ported to MS-DOS based 80386 based PCs running in protected mode. There was no way to run programs in 80386 protected mode at the time so a DOS extender DBOS was written to allow it. DBOS had such exotica as DLLs, paging to disk, virtual memory, source level debugging, integrated help and a disk-cache built-in. This became FTN77/386 |
| Late 80s | A coprocessor emulator, written by Bob Jackman, is added to DBOS allowing PCs without coprocessors to use FTN77/386 |
| 1988 | Salford Software Marketing (now Salford Software) formed to market and develop University of Salford compilers |
| 1990 | Weitek coprocessor support added to DBOS and FTN77/386 |
| 1990 | FTN77/486 introduced. Although compatible with FTN77/386 it enabled cache bits in the 80486 which allowed it to run much quicker than FTN77/386 on the same machine. |
| 1991 | FTN77/386 ported to 80x86-based Unix machines running System 5.3 |
| 1992 | Salford C released |
| 1992 | FTN77/Unix ported to Windows NT. This eventually became FTN77/Win32, the currently downloadable Personal Edition |
| 1993 | First versions of Slink a linker for Win32/COFF. Written by Bob Jackman, Slink is still in use today by FTN95 and supports dynamic linking to the Windows API and Virtual Common. |
| 1995 | First version of CleanWin+ |
| Late 90s | FTN77 retired and superseded by FTN95 |