A85: Re: Usgard 1.0 + Sqrxz 1.0

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A85: Re: Usgard 1.0 + Sqrxz 1.0

WOOHOO!!!! THIS IS WHAT I EXPECTED OF USG!!!!!

Tom McNicholas
 ----
From: Jimmy Mårdell <mja@algonet.se>
To: assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org
Date: Sunday, August 24, 1997 8:01 PM
Subject: A85: Usgard 1.0 + Sqrxz 1.0

Just wanted to tell you all that USGARD 1.0 can be downloaded at
www.ticalc.org. Sqrxz 1.0 is found there as well.

The major change is that there are NO libraries in Usgard 1.0
whatsoever.
The minimum installation is about 1700 bytes.

Some unique Usgard features listed below

* RELOCATION
    The programs get smaller & faster

* INTERRUPT PROGRAMMING SUPPORT
    Make your own stuff going on in the background while the program is
    doing something else.

* TSR SUPPORT
    Want the possibility to change the contrast in a game, although the
    game doesn't have support for it? Want to use a debugger to correct
    hard-to-find errors in your game? Want to take a screen capture from
    some game? TSR support allows all that.

* EXTERNAL VARIABLE SUPPORT
    If you want to create, delete or change external variables used by
    TI-OS, Usgard is the OS for you. External levels, save game features
    etc is all very easy done with the external variable support.

* LOTS OF NEW USGARD CALLS
    Some functions in games and programs are used very frequently. For
    example, simple multiplications, random numbers, display a decimal
    number in menu font and a lot more - all these are built in the
Usgard
    core which makes games smaller (since they could be used by most
programs)

* EXTERNAL FUNCTION
    NEW! One of the advantages with libraries was that they were so
simple
    to use - you just had to call a function in it. External functions
is
    even better - it allows the programmer to use already written code
    in the program, without having to bother how it is coded. The main
    difference from libraries is that the code gets included in the
program
    rather than it's an external string on the calc. So, it doesn't save
    memory but it doesn't lose memory either (since it's not libraries,
it's
    single functions).

_ALL THESE FEATURES_ are missing in _ALL_ currently OS's out there (some
of the new calls are of course there, but definately not all). One
exception
is PhatOS which does have relocation, which is even better, but it has
several major disadvantages that we didn't like: the use of external
variables
gets VERY limited (at least in the current PhatOS version) and Interrupt
(and TSR) support gets VERY hard (if possible) to implement - one of the
major features in Usgard.


--
Jimmy Mårdell                   "We are the crown of creation
mailto:mja@algonet.se            we may do whatever we please
http://www.algonet.se/~mja       Fuck nature, man rules!"
IRC: Yarin                         Fuck Nature /Cat rapes dog