Re: who
En/Je/On 2017-11-25 23:41, Frode Tennebø escribió / skribis / wrote : > who Hello, No SAM activity here at the moment... My last project (2011 and 2014) for SAM Coupé was an improved remake of Barry Jones' _Jolly Roger_ (1984), written in Sinclar BASIC for ZX Spectrum, an old but nice simulation/strategy/adventure game with some touches of arcade, which I liked. The port to MasterBASIC worked fine and looked promising (http://programandala.net/es.programa.bandera_negra.mbim.html). I used my MBim preprocessor for MasterBASIC (http://programandala.net/en.program.mbim.html), which makes things much easier and lets a cross-development of sorts. But the bugs in SAM BASIC's `KEYIN` ruined MBimport (http://programandala.net/en.program.mbimport.html) the final step of the toolchain, i.e. importing the final source into SimCoupe. In 2015 I rewrote the program in Forth with my Solo Forth for ZX Spectrum 128 (http://programandala.net/en.program.solo_forth.html). It's called _Black Flag_ and progresses very well (http://programandala.net/en.program.black_flag.html). By the way, Solo Forth runs on several ZX Spectrum models and clones with G+DOS, +3DOS and TR-DOS, and I've considered supporting also the SAM Coupé with MasterDOS in a future version... but I think ZX Spectrum Next (http://specnext.com) will be the _next_ target... Regards, -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: ZEsarUX emulates the SAM Coupé
En/Je/On 2016-08-03 15:48, Balor Price escribió / skribis / wrote : > Have you had a chance to have a play with yet Marcos? All my disk > images are in a format it doesn't recognise, any shortcuts you know > of? Unfortunately I cannot try it, until I get a better internet connection. I have contacted César, the author. In the past I have helped him with bugs and suggestions for the ZX Spectrum and Z88 emulations. Beside, he kindly solves the doubts of the users. He has told me the SAM emulation is still experimental, and some things are missing. For example, disk drive is not supported (yet)! He has tried some of the few tapes available, and they seem to work fine. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
ZEsarUX emulates the SAM Coupé
ZEsarUX is a multi-emulator written by César Hernández. It's under active development and runs on Linux and Windows. I've used ZEsarUX to emulate several models of the ZX Spectrum (though I use Fuse for my development projects) and especially the Z88. It works great and has interesting features. Now version 4.1 of ZEsarUX emulates also the SAM Coupé. I can not try it at the moment because these months I'm temporarily in a place where my only internet connection is a slow GPRS, and downloading the 22-MiB source archive is beyond my imagination :) But I'll try it ASAP. Here you are: http://sourceforge.net/projects/zesarux/ -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
How to manipulate data files in assembler on G+DOS?
Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I think there are SAM users who have experience with MGT's GDOS and G+DOS for ZX Spectrum. I need to implement (in assembler) two file operations: - Read and overwrite any 1-KiB block of a file. - Read and write text lines sequentally. G+DOS does not provide hooks or routines for these operations, so they have to be implemented ad hoc. I know Andy Wright's Beta DOS included support for serial and random access files, but there's no disassembly available. I've searched the Microhobby magazine, which included many articles on GDOS and G+DOS, but there's nothing about this issue. I still have to finish searching the Format magazine. At the moment I'm studying the G+DOS disassembly, trying to identify the required low-level routines. I wonder if anybody has tinkered with this before and could help with an example code or any information. Thank you. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: OT: Email list about Forth on Sinclair (and Z80) computers
En/Je/On 2015-11-03 02:53, Stuart Brady escribió / skribis / wrote : > OT too, but I've been wanting to emulate the Hobbit (ZX Spectrum clone) > in Fuse for a while, as this has a Forth mode. I never heard of that Spectrum clone. I've just read some links from Wikipedia and it sounds interesting. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with such a project, implementing new hardware on an emulator. Certainly it is a good idea. I use Fuse a lot, and as you know it already emulates other ZX Spectrum russian clones, Pentagon and Scorpion. > I'm just not sure if you're more focussed on Forth itself and perhaps my > attempts to emulate the hardware might be off-topic there. Yes, the group is focussed on Forth itself: learning, using, programming, or implementing it. But if you ever have a Forth-related doubt during the implementation on the emulated Hobbit, you'll find some help there. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
OT: Email list about Forth on Sinclair (and Z80) computers
Sorry if this is a bit off-topic. An email list has just been created to discuss the Forth programming language on Sinclair (and Z80) computers: http://programandala.net/en.forth-sinclair.html Anybody with an interest in Forth and any Sinclair or Z80 based computer is welcome. By the way, there's also a new email list to discuss Forth in Spanish: http://programandala.net/es.forth-es.html Regards. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
command line tools to create MGT disk images for SAM and Spectrum
Three years ago I wrote a wrapper for Andrew Collier's pyz80, in order to make it easier to create MGT disk images with it, because most of the times I needed to create a SAM MGT image with many files, but not assemble something: http://programandala.net/en.program.mgtize.html In April I wrote a new tool that creates MGT disk images for Spectrum (based on the disk algorithms of pyz80), recognizes and extracts TAP files: http://programandala.net/en.program.mkmgt.html I hope they will be useful to someone. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: Hi All Sam Users From Italy!
En/Je/On 2014-08-28 23:10, Simone Voltolini escribió / skribis / wrote : Last year I start to preserve All of My Speccy, Ql and Now Sam material Nice to see you here, Simone! I didn't know you are interested also in the SAM Coupé. For the list: Simone contacted me some months ago, because he was interested in the QL original software and manuals I offered for sale in my website. I sold him all the stuff. You can trust him ;) -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
KEYIN doesn't find procedures and functions?
I sent this message some days ago, but it didn't appear. - Forwarded message Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 02:33:39 +0200 I've found KEYIN fails this way: 10 let p$=myProc 20 keyin p$ 30 stop 40 defproc myProc 50 print myProc! 60 endproc Error: Missing DEF PROC. The goal was to execute a procedure whose name is stored in an array, without ON or IF structures. The solution I've found is to make the code self-modifing: 10 let p$=myProc 20 keyin str$(callProc+10)+p$ 30 label callProc 40 rem *line to be modified by keyin* 50 stop 60 defproc myProc 70 print myProc! 80 endproc Functions have the same problem: 10 deffn myFunc()=100 20 keyin print fn myFunc() Error: FN without DEF FN. No difference between SAM BASIC and MasterBASIC. Is it a known feature? Is there any logic behind that behaviour or is it a bug? The docs (User, Technical, MasterBASIC, TCGTSB) say nothing about that limitation. Thank you. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
how to know the current PRINT position in BASIC?
This message was rejected by the list filters some days ago. I try again. - Forwarded message Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 21:00:28 +0200 I'm writing, in MasterBASIC, a procedure that prints a text left justified, starting at the current printing position and leaving the printing position at the end of the text (there are other similar procedures I've found, but they print the text as a whole paragraph, not what I need). In order to calculate how many columns are left on the current line, I need to know what the current column is. I've searched the system variables, and finally found SPOSNU 5A6CH (2) Upper window position as column/row. It seems what I need, but I've done many tries with the code, showing debug info at every step, and two strange things happen: - Sometimes bits 7, 6 and 5 are set together, I still don't know why. They have to be masked, no problem. - The variable updates as expected after printing something, but not after a simple PRINT, what ruins the algorithm. Does anybody know something about this variable? Is there any other way to know the current PRINT position? Thank you. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: Pro-DOS 8-bit charset?
En/Je/On 2014-06-09 15:22, Chris Pile escribió / skribis / wrote : Hope that info gives you something to experiment with? Indeed. Thank you so much for all the needed details. It's not trivial, as you said. I would rather that poor 7th bit untouched and some X*8 free bytes at the end of the character set! :) -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Pro-DOS 8-bit charset?
[For Chris Pile] I see chars 128-255 are printed like chars 0-127; it seems bit 7 is reset before printing on the screen. AFAIK CP/M used 7-bit ASCII, and only certain versions of CP/M 3 (e.g. the one by Amstrad) used a kind of CP/M standard 8-bit charset. Is there any way to configure or hack Pro-DOS in order to use an 8-bit charset (and define the chars above 127)? This would let to write programs in other languages than English, with a modern encoding. Thank you. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: Pro-DOS v2.0 (CP/M 2.2) released
En/Je/On 2014-05-28 21:29, Chris Pile escribió / skribis / wrote : I've tried to make v2.0 look and feel more professional and polished than its older relative, I have used v1.9 several times in order to try CP/M programs. I've just tried v2.0 with SimCoupe, following the manual step by step (except the hardware interfaces), and it works great. The feeling is it's a different system than v1.9, more powerful and comfortable. I find it very impressive. Congratulations. Apologies if the user manual is a little difficult to read or grammatically awkward. I find the manual clear and detailed. But anyway I'm not a native speaker :) Thank you for all this work. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: SimCoupe running in the Raspberry Pi
En/Je/On 2014-02-02 13:02, Simon Owen escribió / skribis / wrote : I've built an updated Pi version using SDL 2.0, which has vsync enabled. Beta testers welcome! For details see: http://simonowen.com/blog/2014/02/02/simcoupe-raspi-sdl20/ The executable does nothing visible here. No error, no message, no background process: $ time ./simcoupe real0m0.818s user0m0.170s sys 0m0.040s $ My Raspbian is updated. What can be wrong? -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Pro-DOS v2.0 (Re: missing ProDos games)
En/Je/On 2013-11-09 21:42, Chris Pile escribió / skribis / wrote : So, basically v2.0 is a brand new version, sharing pretty much none of v1.9's code base. All the improvements sound great, Chris. I've used Pro-DOS with SimCoupe in order to try CP/M Forth systems and text adventures. I look forward to the new version. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: Sim Coupe - Pi Version
En/Je/On 2013-10-30 23:20, da...@properbastard.co.uk escribió / skribis / wrote : I'm fairly sure I read something about as Rasp-Pi version of Sim Coupe? Is this pretty much straightforward to use? I'm going to be getting one pretty soon - and I'd certainly like to try this :-) I use a Raspberry Pi as my main computer, with Raspbian. No problem compiling and using SimCoupe. But the full screen mode doesn't work yet. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: SimCoupe / Trinity
En/Je/On 2013-05-02 23:09, Stefan Drissen escribió / skribis / wrote : Sorry Stefan, I'm still against my hardware being emulated in SimCoupe. That's a pity, it's your right of course, but I think you are preventing your work from flourishing in a larger (emulated) audience. Allowing emulation may get some odd sods, myself included, wanting to write something for it, resulting in enough momentum for it to become interesting for a real SAM user, resulting in a sale for you. Sounds like egg and chicken basics to me. I agree with you, Stefan. Creating software and hardware for the real SAM is great and desirable, but emulation is the way most people can use, program or even meet a SAM. In my opinion, emulating a good interface is an avail for its seller and for the real machine users, because the interface becomes potentially more useful, and more desirable. Marcos -- http://programandala.set
Re: SimCoupe running in the Raspberry Pi
En/Je/On 2013-02-16 21:07, da...@properbastard.co.uk escribió / skribis / wrote : Is this still working well - as I'm really tempted to get a Pi It works fine. Only the full-screen mode does not work on X Window. Simon explained there's no solution yet. SimCoupe makes the Pi's CPU to work a lot (70%-90%) but the maximum SAM's speed is good enough (200%-250%). (I have overclocked the Pi to 800 MHz). My Pi has 256 MiB; I've ordered a 512 MiB one because 256 is not enough for some working sessions, even if my working environment is very austere and efficient (Ratpoison + GNU Screen + keynav). Anyway I'm considering a Hackberry A10, similar to the Pi but much more powerful: https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer%20Board. I'm not interested on Android, but it can run Debian too. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
doubt about bit 5 of LMPR
Hi, I don't understand what's the actual effect of LMPR's 6th bit, called RAM0. It's explained on page 18 of the technical manual. For example, what' the difference between this: 8-- ld a,023h ; bits 0-4: RAM page 3; bit 5: RAM0 out (0fah),a ; allocate pages 3 4 to section A 8-- and this?: 8-- ld a,003h ; bits 0-4: RAM page 3; out (0fah),a ; allocate pages 3 4 to section A 8-- Is the bit needed in order to make the system know ROM0 is paged out? Does it have to be set always for allocating a RAM page to section A? Thank you Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Retro-X (Re: Convert an Atari Neochrome to SAM with KEdisk)
En/Je/On 2012-12-25 23:49, Sergey Sharov escribió / skribis / wrote : You can easily convert to all four SAM modes with Retro-X: http://members.inode.at/838331/retrox/RetroX(Alpha8).zip I've tried it on a Windows machine. It's really impressive, even unfinished. I'd rather use a tool that lets me automate the work the Unix way, but the Retro-X image conversions are so good and its features so powerful that I will try it in order to prepare some graphics. Thank you. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Forth (Re: disassembling SamForth)
En/Je/On 2012-12-31 13:13, Thomas Harte escribió / skribis / wrote : Would it be fair to describe Forth as the procedural analogue of Smalltalk? I don't know Smalltalk. I think I read a comparation some time ago. AFAIK they internally work quite differently. I'm thinking specifically about strict left-to-right evaluation, Right. Forth has no syntax. That's one of its strongest features. Words are executed in the order they are received (from a keyboard, a file, a serial line or whatever). words having meaning only by definition Right. and runtime components doing the things that are usually specialised syntax like branches and loops. Words that create control structures are ordinary words in Forth. They compile lower-level words and branch information on the word currently compiled. Thus you can write your own special control structures on the fly if you need, anywhere in a Forth program, and use them right on the next word you create. In fact, actually you don't write a Forth program at all -- you write your own dialect of the language suitable for resolving your particular problem. I think the following online/downloadable books by Leo Brodie could be helpful in order to solve your doubts: The Forth way to solve problems (no Forth knowledge required, useful also for programmers of other languages): http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net (The simple Forth compiler is caricatured on Figure 4-7, page 103, and explained on page 102). A good classic tutorial for beginners: http://forth.com/starting-forth/ Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: disassembling SamForth
En/Je/On 2012-12-23 16:46, Marcos Cruz escribió / skribis / wrote : I'll inform again only when the first dissasambled code is available. The first results: http://programandala.net/en.program.samforth http://programandala.net/en.program.samforth2z80dasm Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Convert an Atari Neochrome to SAM with KEdisk
Hi all, I've found KEdisk in Fred 36, a program by Geoff Winkless. Among other things, it converts Atari Neochrome .neo images to SAM screens. This opens a new way to import images: .ppm ppmtoneo (a Netpbm command) .neo KEedit. At the moment I have problems to get a Neochrome image --ppmtoneo fails, I still don't know why. Anyway, has anyone tried KEdisk for this? Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: Convert an Atari Neochrome to SAM with KEdisk
En/Je/On 2012-12-25 15:57, Colin Piggot escribió / skribis / wrote : If you are after an easy way to convert images to the SAM, Yes, I'm seeking and trying different alternatives in order to make the conversion as automate as possible. (http://members.inode.at/838331/index.html) Thank you Colin. I already knew LCD's website, but didn't remember BMP2SCR. It seems it converts only to ZX Spectrum screen, SAM mode 1. It could be useful in some cases, but I need to convert also to mode 4. Anyway, I would need to convert the code from those BASIC dialects (they are commercial or non-Linux or Linux x86) to X11-Basic or other free dialect that can run on Linux ARM. I'll think about it. It would not be difficult. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: Convert an Atari Neochrome to SAM with KEdisk
En/Je/On 2012-12-25 18:23, Colin Piggot escribió / skribis / wrote : is BMP2SCR EXP 2.10d and that does MODE 3 and MODE 4 for SAM, You're right, thank you. My mistake. I've explored the sources of EXP 2.11 and the modes 3 and 4 stuff is there. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: Convert an Atari Neochrome to SAM with KEdisk
En/Je/On 2012-12-25 23:49, Sergey Sharov escribió / skribis / wrote : You can easily convert to all four SAM modes with Retro-X: http://members.inode.at/838331/retrox/RetroX(Alpha8).zip Thank you. The features and screenshots are impressive. I didn't see it the first time because it's not on the downloads page. I will try it on a Windows as soon as possible. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: disassembling SamForth
En/Je/On 2012-12-24 14:48, da...@properbastard.co.uk escribió / skribis / wrote : I don't even remember a SAM version of FORTH! Forth isn't main stream, and SAM Coupé isn't popular neither. Logically their intersection has to be almost invisible [:-)]. http://www.worldofsam.org/node/597 The first time I heard about SamForth was thanks to Steve Parry-Thomas in the Jupiter Ace forum, some time ago. It was a nice surprise, because Forth is by far my favourite programming language. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
RST with arguments, beside RST 28?
Hi all, I've completed the first SamForth disassembling. It includes all Forth word headers, the system variables and the data stack. It's not finished --it can not be reassembled yet, but it's interesting. I'll publish it on my website and return to my MasterBASIC projects for some days. Well, the next step in the disassembling process will be to mark the RST arguments as data zones. I'll try to to automate the task as much as possible. I think the only RST routine that uses data arguments is RST 28, the floating point calculator (Technical Manual, pages 32 and 49). Am I right? Thank you. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: Which colors for a grayscale?
En/Je/On 2012-12-20 05:00, Stefan Drissen escribió / skribis / wrote : I wrote the greyscale ditherer - see [1]http://www.worldofsam.org/node/40 Stefan, do you keep the Z80 source? If so, would you share it? I'd like to adapt your routine to work on any region of the current screen. I'd publish the modified version with the original credits and a link to its page on World of Sam. Probably changing some values will be enough, but I didn't try to disassemble it yet. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: disassembling SamForth
En/Je/On 2012-12-23 00:50, Marcos Cruz escribió / skribis / wrote : Then I wondered where the immediate and smudge bits were stored... I found out the immediate bit: it's the 7th bit of the byte that holds the name length. The task progresses faster than expected. I'll inform again only when the first dissasambled code is available. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: disassembling SamForth
En/Je/On 2012-12-22 00:30, Marcos Cruz escribió / skribis / wrote : For John Avis: Do you remember the meaning of the two bytes before the name length in the word header I found out: It's the address of the previous word's name in the dictionary. Then I wondered where the immediate and smudge bits were stored... There's no space left in the word header. In fact the word 'IMMEDIATE' is not defined. A tool programmed in Gforth is almost finished: It takes the whole SamForth code and almost instantaneously creates the blocks and labels files needed by the disassembler. Much faster (and funnier) than by hand :) Marcos -- http://programandala.net
SamForth documentation published
Hi all, Some time ago I edited and published the original SamForth documentation. I recently updated the intro, added some links and the original disk images: http://programandala.net/en.article.2011.09.04.samforth_documentation Marcos -- http://programandala.net
disassembling SamForth
Hi all, SamForth seems a clever implementation of the language. Forth words are direct Z80 rutines (contrary to many other 8-bit implementations, the Z80 stack is used as Forth return stack and the Forth data stack is handled apart), thus Z80 code can be easily mixed with Forth code. Unfortunately its sources are lost. With some changes (e.g the way handling the Forth sources) and updates (e.g. some missing features already present in most modern Forth systems), SamForth would be very interesting for cross-development: the easy of MasterBASIC combined with machine code speed. I've started to disassemble SamForth, as a background slow project. It will take a lot of time because of course the disassembler needs to know what is Z80 code and what is data. Every Forth word in the dictionary has a header before its code, as usual in most Forth systems. Therefore all those data address ranges must be marked by hand first. For example: drop_header: start 0x921b end 0x9221 type bytedata interpret_header: start 0x9224 end 0x922f type bytedata bracket_find_header: start 0x92e0 end 0x92eb type bytedata number_header: start 0x93cc end 0x93d4 type bytedata Has anyone tried this before and maybe has some information to share? For John Avis: Do you remember the meaning of the two bytes before the name length in the word header, or any other relevant information not included in the docs? Everything can be eventually found out from the Z80 code, but any information would be helpful and will save time. Thank you. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: Which colors for a grayscale?
En/Je/On 2012-12-20 05:00, Stefan Drissen escribió / skribis / wrote : I wrote the greyscale ditherer - see [1]http://www.worldofsam.org/node/40 - it only uses the real greys and dithers the in between a. Thank you Stefan. My first try sprite is 54x28, only few pixels got cyan using the colorscale suggested by Simon, and of course it's an alien spacesship on black background, so it looks nice with some cyanish touches :) But your code does an impresive job. I'll use it to create alternative gray-only sprites. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Which colors for a grayscale?
Hi all, In order to automate and simplify as much as possible the process of importing images into the SAM and avoid the palette conversion problems, I'm tinkering with the Netpbm raster formats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm_format). BMP and others could be used too, but Netpbm files have two encoding variants (ASCII and binary) for every type (PBM, PGM and PPM), what makes them very versatile in this case. The Netpbm images are created with Linux tools and the SAM does the final conversion, PLOTing the image pixels with the desired equivalent colors and GRABbing it. The first tries with a grayscale image look promising, but I need to choose 16 grays from the SAM palette (0, 7, 8, 15, 112, 120, 127...?) I'm afraid there are less than 16 gray tones, and blue must be used to complete the set. Am I right? Does anyboy know which are the best 16 SAM original colors for a grayscale? Thank you. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: Which colors for a grayscale?
En/Je/On 2012-12-19 21:54, Simon Owen escribió / skribis / wrote : bitwise is: xGRBigrb. For pure greys you'd use: = 00 = 0 0111 = 07 = 7 1000 = 08 = 8 = 0f = 15 0111 = 70 = 112 01110111 = 77 = 119 0000 = 78 = 120 0111 = 7f = 127 I already knew the format but didn't have the idea to confirm which colors are actually gray just by looking its code. I see my eyes worked fine anyway :) 0, 0, 8, 5, 7, 13, 15, 82, 112, 90, 120, 117, 119, 125, 127, 127 That's what I needed. It looks great. I'll try a 14-gray variant; the two duplicates can be useful for some color effect. Thank you. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: 'BMP to SAM' by P. Crompton, in Fred 46
En/Je/On 2012-12-12 15:19, Simon Owen escribió / skribis / wrote : It scales the source image to 256x192 and converts to SAM palette, then picks the top 16 colours to use for a final conversion. Script is here: [1]http://obo.homeip.net/img2sam.py Thank you, It will be useful! -- http://programandala.net
SimCoupe running in the Raspberry Pi
Hi, These days I compiled SimCoupe in the little Raspberry Pi on Raspbian (a Debian optimized for the Pi). It works great. Here you are a picture: http://programandala.net/en.picture.2012.11.25.raspberry_pi Marcos -- http://programandala.net
text spooling
En/Je/On 2012-11-16 14:41, Simon Owen escribió / skribis / wrote : I'll add file spooling for non-Windows platforms, and clipboard paste once SDL 2.0 is supported. Great! It will be possible to code in MasterBASIC with a modern editor. Cannot wait to try it :) The Windows version will likely remain clipboard only, since sniffing the encoding from text files is just too unreliable. I don't use Windows, but your comment about file encoding makes me think the text is converted before auto-typing it. Isn't it? I mean non-ASCII characters. When I wrote my MBim toolkit I considered how to write SAM-specific characters in the source (e.g. block graphics and UDG) and non-ASCII charers whose code is different from the current 8-bit standards like ISO-8859-1. I solved the first problem with the simple notation used by BASin (the old ZX Spectrum IDE for Windows). For the second, I simply used ISO-8859-1 in the source. Then my Vim converter translated everything, the BASin notation and the ISO-8859-1 non-ASCII characters, to the actual SAM characters. The text was ready to be KEYIN-ed. So far so good. But I think automatic translation during spooling has some drawbacks: first, it would be useful only for non-ASCII characters (mainly, foreign language letters) provided by the SAM (mainly, by MasterBASIC) --or for all characters, in case the file is encoded in any ASCII-incompatible format, e.g. UTF-16, what is not common; second, it could ruin an ad hoc character translation done by the programmer in the source. Example: The charset provided by MasterBASIC lacks four Spanish letters (uppercase Á, Í, Ó and Ú). If I use them in the source (I mean, in the texts managed by the program; the comments are irrelevant), I'd have to choose what character codes must represent them, how to translate them before spooling and finally how to design those missing chars as UDG. Automatic translation doesn't help because those characters are not part of the SAM charset, and my own characters codes could be misunderstood by the file spooler as part of an UTF-8 multibyte character. Therefore, in my opinion, a simple and versatile option could be: first, assuming the spool file is encoded in an 8-bit ASCII-compatible charset (the actual encoding is irrelevant); and second, feeding it as is to the SAM, without translation (of course beside end of line and maybe other control characters). Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: text spooling
En/Je/On 2012-11-16 18:38, Simon Owen escribió / skribis / wrote : I'll probably add options for no translation, minimal translation, and full transliteration. That would be great. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: New Game: Dave Infuriators
En/Je/On 2012-11-14 16:08, Andrew Gillen escribió / skribis / wrote : Hi, just to let you know I have finally finished writing Dave Infuriators. Simple platform game against the clock. Nice game! It's great to see new projects for the SAM. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: remove
Hi Jukka, In order to remove yourself from the mailing list, send the following command in email to sam-users-requ...@nvg.ntnu.no: unsubscribe Marcos -- http://programandala.net
buggy KEYIN; MasterBASIC's tokenized format; buggy RENUM
Hi all, Some time ago I wrote a toolkit to write MasterBASIC programs with the Vim editor (http://vim.org) and import them into SimCoupe (see http://programandala.net/en.program.mbim). It didn't work because the KEYIN command has bugs (in SAM BASIC, but MasterBASIC didn't fix them). In fact, a similar tool for ZX Spectrum's Beta BASIC (see, in Spanish: http://programandala.net/es.programa.bbim) works like a charm: I can write Beta BASIC code (in an improved format with new features) with Vim, and then, with a keypress, convert it to real Beta BASIC and create a fake disk image ready to be imported into the Beta BASIC interpreter. It would be nice to work the same way with the more powerful MasterBASIC... Is there any patch to fix SAM Coupé's KEYIN? I'm afraid not. I thought an alternative: I could write a program to convert the source code into tokenized MasterBASIC and copy it into a SAM disk image. But the tokenized format is not fully described in the Technical Manual or the MasterBASIC User Manual (though many details can be found there and others are similar to the ZX Spectrum format). In theory this approach is feasible, but much more complex. Any other idea? I'd like to develop some project in MasterBASIC, but its own editor would be a pain compared with the features of a modern editor. Beside, also the RENUM command is buggy, what is a serious limitation. Marcos -- http://programandala.net
Re: buggy KEYIN; MasterBASIC's tokenized format; buggy RENUM
En/Je/On 2012-11-15 20:37, Simon Owen escribió / skribis / wrote : To rule out a problem with KEYIN, I used LLIST to write the program to a text file using the SimCoupe printer option. I then auto-typed the contents back in to a freshly reset SimCoupe, What do you mean auto-typed? Text spooling? AFAIK SimCoupe lacks a file spooling option (in fact it is what I need: SimCoupe to type the content of a text file of the host machine). I noticed your program also uses labels, though not as many. It might be worth trying to remove the labels, to see if that magically fixes it? I think I tried everything I could imagine when I developed the several versions of MBimport one year ago. Nevertheless I've just written a new label-less version of MBimport. It's easy to remove the two or three labels of the importer, but it makes no difference because there are many labels in the imported KEYIN-ed code. I'll remove them too --just to see what happens. Thank you Marcos -- http://programandala.net
