GFA update released

Ok, revision 18 of the compiler is now up at my site. New compiler option $W for advanced users. Allows the insertion of assembler code directly into the binary at the line the command appears on. Read docs before use! I have also added the original editor to my download section for users who wish to code in SingleTOS, but wish to use the new compiler and library.

GFA update released

GFA-Compiler v3.6 (Revision 17)
GFA-Linker v3.6 (Revision 17)
GFA-Library v3.6 (Revision 6)
GFA-RunOnly v3.6 (Revision 6)
The official GBE Library (English release)

GFA update

When GFA was written the bios only had devices 0 to 5, thus it does not work correctly with bios devices 6 and up when the TT030 appeared with extra serial ports. I'm not going to go into details why it fails, suffice it to say its messy, and OUT generates strange error messages if these device numbers are used.

I've now corrected this situation so devices 6 and up are now working. Rewritten commands:
INP(), INP&(), and INP%() (byte, word, long input respectively)
OUT, OUT&, and OUT% (byte, word, long output respectively)

By some stroke of luck INP?() and OUT?() (inquire device status) happen to work fine, but I added some error checking in the runonly interpreter that should have been there.

These changes will require a new compiler and library and runonly interpreter.

OPEN does not support the extra devices. In order to fix OPEN a complete rewrite of the entire I/O sub-system in GFA would be required. Not something I really want to do. The 8 device commands above should be enough to write code for the new devices.

GFA update

Some more interpreter issues resolved. I just discovered virtually every command that has a procedure name as a parameter does not bother to check if the procedure exists at all. No error message or anything. Example:

ON ERROR GOSUB blah

This will run with no error message. Also if the procedure 'blah' does exist it cannot have a parameter list. The interpreter will ignore this also:

ON ERROR GOSUB blah
PROCEDURE blah(param&)
RETURN

It ends up just ignoring the commands completely and the built in error handler is called. This happens with EVERY/AFTER, TRON proc, ON BREAK GOSUB, and all the ON MENU GOSUB xxx commands as well. I've done some work on this so the updated runonly catches all these even where the procedure should not have parameters. It will now report 'too many parameters' in such a case.

MouseBoot by Scott R. Lemmon

I tried to track down the author of MouseBoot to obtain the source code. Its similar to XBoot but free as he gave me permission to distribute the registered version sometime ago. In doing so I discovered that Scott R. Lemmon passed away in 2004 at the age of 36.

Scott was a really nice guy. Somewhat sad day for me. :-(

Scott went on to write Proxomitron for the pc.

Atari clone news

I have upload my patched XControl to my site. Solves the random crashes related to the cpu caches. Never liked that clone application called Cops.

Also uploaded an updated ATI Mach64 (PCI) driver. It was never 040/060 friendly either. One can now boot at full speed with the caches enabled.

GFA Status

An update to the library is coming, as a few more bugs were found and squashed. A new interpreter is also in the works that is synchronized with the new library. That means all the changes that were done to the library were also done to the interpreter.

The documentation needs to be updated yet.

When this is completed, all components of GBE will finally be handled by me. I will not have to rely on anyone else.

A time to celebrate

MagiC celebrates a decade of no development. Nada, zilch, zippo, lol
The last known version is copyright 2000.

MiNT rules!

Almost

Another ad shows a homeless man curled up in a ball on a pile of rags. One ratty bed sheet shields him from the cold. The narrator says, "This is Jack Thomas. Today someone almost brought Jack something to eat. Someone almost brought him to a shelter. And someone else almost brought him a warm blanket." After a brief pause, the narrator continues: "And Jack Thomas? Well, he almost made it through the night."

You almost had me convinced.

That's gay

You know those TV commercials that tell you that its bad to refer to something as gay if you don't like it?

Those commercials are so gay.

Frank Naumann

Frank Naumann passed away on the 12th of March, 2010 at the age of 34. Very sad news. My heart goes out to his family. He will be missed in the Atari community.

GFA-Basic Library update in the works

A few more bugs squashed. This update will also contain a new run only interpreter for GBE.

Coming soon...