A85: Re: universal calc issues

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A85: Re: universal calc issues

 There a lots of reasons why this is not possible (or at leat no a good
idea).

Ports:

The ports on the calcs are not the same, which means that no asm program
would be able to use the ports directly. I can not see any fast and easy way
to solve this.

Display:

The TI85 has a memory mapped display, and the ti82/ti83 has a display
controller. The adresse used by the TI85 for videa acces can not be used on
the ti82 because it is used by the system. On the TI82/TI83 you would then
need an extra buffer (756 bytes), and you would have to change all
occurences of FC00 to the adrsse of this buffer (but you have to make sure
theat it is meant as a pointer to the video mem, and not just some other
number). If you want to do fast graphics on the ti82 the best way is to use
the display controller, but since this is not supported by the ti85, how
would you solve this.

Another thing is greyscale. On the ti82 it is not possible to do good
looking greyscale, where as on the ti85 it is not that hard to do. Does this
mean that you wont be able to use greyscale ?

Ram:

The system part of the memory is different on all the calcs ! To make the
program work you would need a list in the shell which included the adrs of
all memory location in system mem. This takes up a lot of space.

Rom:

Not all the functions found on one calc has been found on all the other
calcs, does this mean that you will only support the ones found on all calcs
?

Interrupts:

The interrupts are a bit different on the calcs, and almost impossible on
the ti82. Does this mean that it wont be supported ?

Besides these questions i can easily think of others, but i think this
should be enough to show that a shell like that is not a good idea.

Dines


-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Kalos <raptorone@geocities.com>
To: 'asm-82' <assembly-82@lists.ticalc.org>; 'asm-83'
<assembly-83@lists.ticalc.org>; 'asm-85' <assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org>;
'asm-86' <assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org>; 'asm-shelldev'
<shell-developers@lists.ticalc.org>
Date: 11. oktober 1997 08:45
Subject: A85: universal calc issues



>I'm working on XCalc, an OS to run the entire link-enabled TI8x series.  It
will include a universal code system that will eliminate the need for
recompilation of binaries for each calc, and will hopefully be a bit smaller
than usgard.  I need recommendations as to what users want, and you guys
represent the largest pool of calc-savvy people.  Any recommendations will
be taken quite seriously.
> The bytecode issue involves using only z80 opcodes and library calls, and
we might toss in program relocation in order to facilitate the system.  To
top it all off, I would like to include an X*nder psuedo-loader with some
level of intelligence.
> I've already established that ROM calls will be used, but only through a
library, and the screen size issue should be handled soon.
> Before you all laugh, there are 4 of us working on this, so it might be
do-able.
>Thanks,
>Christopher Kalos
>raptorone@geocities.com
>raptor_one@hotmail.com
>Executive Director/Administrator
>Virtual Technologies Developer's Group
>
>
>Christopher Kalos
>raptorone@geocities.com
>raptor_one@hotmail.com
>Executive Director/Administrator
>Virtual Technologies Developer's Group
>
>