Date : Mon, 04 Mar 1996 14:16:05 +0000 (GMT)
From : Chris Rae <clr1@...>
Subject: BBC: Radical rethinks! :-)
[I tried to post this msg about 5 days ago but due to our ***** CS people
it bounced...]
Hi folks.
I was inspired yesterday to get on with my BBC emulator and get some mode
4 emulation working so I could see it boot. However... it wasn't there
any more. It occurred to me that half of my programs were on one drive,
and half on the other when about 2 months ago I accidentally wiped both
(don't ask). I recovered all of one and none of the other and... guess
what... my BBC emulator was on the one that went.
Okay, I thought, what now. I've lost the whole thing (all the code, my
copies of the ROMs, the whole lot...) but it's a project I don't want to
give up on. So, I thought, I'll write another one.
Introducing... TOL. I think I'll keep the suspense about what it stands
for going for a while. While some of you may recall my last one was
written in assembler under a Turbo Pascal shell, this new one is written
in C under Linux. The reasons for this are various. Firstly, although
it's fast assembler is not that easy to follow. Secondly, I really like
Linux and since I put '95 on my system programming in Pascal has become a
tad boring. Thirdly, I don't really know C very well and I think a major
project like this would help a lot.
So far I have virtually nothing. I have the shell of a program, with
ideas of how I'm going to go about things, but not much else. I don't
have a copy of the 6502 instruction set (if anyone has this I'd much
appreciate it) because the book I have it in is at home. I also have not
the foggiest idea how I'm going to do graphics or sound support at a
later date because I don't know anything about programming either of
these under UNIX - if anyone has any ideas on that I'd much appreciate
them too. I also don't have the ROMs. I *do* have a BBC (in the attic
at home!) and I *did* have a copy of these - if anyone could possibly
send me them I would very much appreciate it because I really don't know
where else I could get them from.
I'm hoping that if I can find an instruction set from somewhere, I could
have a working 6502 with botched system calls up and going within a
couple of weeks. Honestly, you've no idea what it feels like to realise
that 9000 lines of sweated-over assembler has just gone up in smoke...
More hopeful today,
Chris
ps. I'm going to update my WWW pages to reflect this change ASAP - it
seems to be quite surprising how many people actually read your homepage.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Free Press: http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sa/personal/clr1/freepres
My6502 (a BBC B emulator for DOS 286+ VGA PCs which doesn't work):
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sa/personal/clr1/bbc