#Commodities
26 messages in this thread
Anyone got any info on writing Commodities in assembler ?
Cheers
AD&D Famous last words:
"The DM will never hit us outside the dungeon"
Yeah.
Write 'em in 'C'.
1/2 🙂
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
Thanks Dale, thanks a lot… <g>
Is it really gonna be that hard to knock up an Assembler one ? I was
thinking of doing a screen blanker (yes another one) that displayed a cute
vector cube/pyramid or somthin… 'C' is gonna be well to sloooow unless i
embed assembler which is VERY messy….
Murphys law(s)…
If a project requires n units there will be n-1 in stock
If I may add my suggestions here, if you have access to something like
SAS C you could have the best of both worlds. You can easily link
modules written in SAS C with ones written in assembler. It comes
with its own assembler, or if you don't like that you can use any
assembler that produces code linkable by Blink. You can do the
interface to the commodities system in C because this part of the
program does not need to be fast, and get this to call your assembler
module to do the graphics.
Thanks i'll look into using C, still i'd prefere assembler…
Rob.
It's like an Orange but blue….
It's generally best to do as little assembly as possible. I doubt
your graphics really require it, but if you insist, write the
commodity in 'C' and the graphics in assembly. The SAS manuals
explain how to mix the two…
Ok, I'll try and get a C compiler, do you know if GNU C is any good ?
Alternative uses for floppy disks, Number 1:
Scraping ice of your car windscreen…
I have used GNU very little. I use SAS because it is a
well-supported mature product on the Amiga. GNU has lots of
headaches and niggles on the Amiga.
Thing is that GNU is free and SAS costs money 🙁 and i am REALLY
stretched at the moment so i can't fork out for a compiler i may only
use a few times… Alternative uses for floppy disks, Number 3:
Beer mat
Everything costs money. Time = money.
You can pay for your compiler in the labor you expend installing,
figuring out, working around hastles, etc., or you can pay in cash. I
think GNU costs more in time than SAS costs in cash — the economy of
scale applies.
It's all in your finances and point of view, Dale. Simon Tranmer
wrote SuperScript because he couldn't afford the several-hundred
pounds that WordPro would cost him. It turned into a commercial
product only because of a series of accidents.
That's all ancient Commodore 8-bit history, of course. But there
are users around with budgets so tight that they don't know where
their next floppy disk/beer mat is coming from. And there's always
the lurking thought: what if I pop a few hundred bucks for a
compiler/assembler/language and then discover that I'm not compatible
with it?
Seems to me that a GNU package I looked at some time back called
for the installation of a fair-sized piece of supplementary
libraries. Not sure of this, though .. perhaps a GNU-fangled user
can comment.
DICE is quite usable, and may be close to the "low end" price for a
C compiler, since such compilers really need the "include" files
which must be licensed (at a cost to the distributor) from Commodore.
You're right. I forgot to mention DICE. A much more reasonable
entry-level 'C' compiler for the fellow on a tight budget.
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
How much would one have to pay for the knowledge and experience of setting
up and compiling one's own compiler! Invaluable. Anyone can just buy and
use a commercial product, jeez. If this sort of thing keeps up, there
won't be ay real men left, who write machine language programs with a disk
editor, not a macro assembler. If you don't have time to write your own
language and compiler, I suppose using someone else's implementation of a
hackneyed old computer language (C) is OK for a while.
;=}
The problem is that i am in a situation where at the moment my time is
only worth whatever i make of it, be it education, working part-time or
continuing to learn new languages, therefore the outlay on a C compiler
would be too much when i have to work out how to pay my rent…
(sob story huh? <g>)
Alternative uses for floppy disks, Number 4:
Frisbee
Two things:
1) If you are trying to make any money at programming, you are going to
more than make up for the cost of good tools to have good tools
2) You might try buying an unsupported non-upgradeable copy of SAS 6.3.
Everyone who upgraded to 6.5 has a full new set of manuals and disks and
can sell their 6.3 without support or upgradeablility.
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
2) You might try buying an unsupported non-upgradeable copy of SAS 6.3.
Everyone who upgraded to 6.5 has a full new set of manuals and disks
and can sell their 6.3 without support or upgradeablility.
Is that legal ? I thought that selling your old copy meant that you were
not entitled to upgrades any more. In England, Hisoft required you to
return the master discs go get the upgrade.
Peter Wade
Autopiloting from London, England
I think i'm going to have to wait for a job before anyone will pay me for
programming <g> although if someones got any offers i would appreciate as
much money as possible to pay for University…
As for SAS, i might look into it, but.. well if all i'm going to do is do
one commoditie then i'll probably waste a lot of time setting up GNU…..
Alternative uses for floppy disks, Number 6:
Bookmark
GNU C is fine but is incredibly memory intensive. SAS/C is the
standard for Amiga and is more than worth the price.
Problem is i am really strapped for cash at the moment so i guess
i'll go the GNU path, actually what do you know about DICE(?) C ?
Alternative uses for floppy disks, Number 3: Beer mat
Does your 100 series number mean you are calling from Great Britain ?
If so, you might like to have a look at Amiga Shopper magazine. They
are offering fully registered DICE with Amiga Includes and a
beginners book on C for 25 pounds.
Thanks i will go an have a look…
Alternative uses for floppy disks, Number 6:
Bookmark
Out of the kindness of my heart, I am going to mail you, free of
charge, a working screen blanker, written entirely in assembler,
compatible with AmigaDOS 1.3, source code only ('cos I can't be
bothered to find the object code).
I only wrote it 'cos my secretary at work got given a PC to do her
typing on, and it had a screen blanker that was more impressive than
a plain blank screen, newer than Pyro… … and I just had to
compete…
Thanks for the screen blanker – took a while to get it working but it did
in the end and has not crashed the machine much <g> actually i was
intending to write a rotating vector cube as a screen blanker i'll send
you a binary so you can get the idea…
Hmm i heard there was a screen blanker for the PeeCee that took the mick
out of old Bill Gates and had a Lemming(hmm not sure about that) shooting
flying toasters out of the sky… apparently they had to stop distributing
it because of infringements <g>
"hey God, i really don't know what you mean"
"seems like salvation comes only in our dreams" – NIN
> Thanks for the screen blanker – took a while to get it working…
I just checked whether the source code called in any non-standard files.
It doesn't, but I did notice a bit of hardware bashing in the routine that
blanks the mouse pointer:
BlankPointer
lea $00DFF000.l,a0
move.w #$0020,150(a0)
move.l #x32000,$00DFF140.l
; x32000 is a zero long word in chip memory
rts
Do you have any idea of a better way to blank out the pointer, and restore
it again when the screen unblanks? It's the restoring of the pointer that
had me stumped.
> I'll send you a binary
Yes please. I could do with a new blanker for the Amiga at work. It
doesn't have a hard disk, so short and simple code is an asset.
Regards,
Shraddhan (via AP from Hertfordshire, England)
As far as I know, the (I hesitate to say) "right" way to blank the mouse is to
install a VBLANK interrupt, toggle one of the custom bits (if memory serves,
it's DMA_SPRITES or some such…I'll have to look it up and my Amiga isn't up
right now). You'll also need to WaitTOF() inside your vblank to avoid that
nasty sprite band if you happen to have a tall pointer at the bottom of the
screen.
ACG
Re: Screen blankers….
Well i've been pushed for time at the moment so no screen blanker as
yet… although if you can get a copy of ASwarm that's not bad….
it's only a hobby, it's only a hobby, it's only a hob….