Re: A85: Features for a new shell
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Re: A85: Features for a new shell
Sorry if I offend anyone, but It was the release of 2 million
different shells for the TI85 that somewhat killed the programming
interest. I honestly do not think we need a new shell. Although saying
that your TI85 could multitask would impress some people, there is really
no need for it. Swaping back and forth between two games/programs is just
as easy as exiting one, and firing up the next one.
But hey, if you want to do it for the fun of programming it, go
ahead.
-Josh Christensen
On Thu, 24 Feb 2000 Farid76@aol.com wrote:
>
> I will try to add support for BASIC programs to my shell, but for Usgard
> and ZShell I think I'd rather not to do so. It will increase the size of the
> shell, and anyway, only programs written for the new shell can be run in
> multitasking mode. But the relocation will be the same as Usgard. Concerning
> libraries, I will first put a lot of functions in the shell itself to make
> programing easier. After that, maybe ...
>
> I have some questions about the way the shell should handle multitasking.
> But first, a little description of the system...
>
> There will be 2 kinds of programs: real mode and protected mode. Programs for
> the real mode will run like in other shells, and programs for protected mode
> will run in multitasking mode. Obviously, there is restrictions to protected
> mode:
>
> - Programs can't use areas of memory like GRAPH_MEM or TEXT_MEM, so the
> shell create a safe area and return a pointer for each program.
>
> - When the user switch between the different programs running, the
> program which is given focus must update the screen.
>
> I have imagined 2 solutions to this last problem. The first consists of
> saving the whole screen for each program (bad idea for a 28 Kb RAM), and the
> second would be creating a function in each program to redraw the screen when
> the OS call it.
>
> If you have a better solution or if you know other problems implied by
> multitasking, please report it. I'm waiting for your feedback...
>
> Farid Bouzaghti
>
>
>
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