Ophis/doc/tutor8.sgm

<chapter>
  <title>Platform-Specific Techniques</title>

  <para>
    Ophis is intended to produce cross-assembled binaries that will
    run in a variety of contexts. The expectation is that most users
    will be writing for emulated versions of hardware from when the
    6502 chip was current, and producing files either for those
    emulators or for devices that will transfer the results to real
    hardware. This chapter describes the support routines and examples
    to make those tasks easier.
  </para>

  <section>
    <title>The Commodore 64 and VIC-20</title>

    <para>
      In a real sense, the Commodore 64 is the &quot;native&quot;
      target platform for Ophis. It was the first platform targeted
      and it's the one that has received the most additional
      support. It's also one where the developer needs to take the
      most care about exactly what kind of program they are
      writing.
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          <literal>c64kernal.oph</literal> actually defines no
          code. It merely sets up the customary names for the KERNAL
          jump table routines so that you may refer to routines
          like <literal>chrout</literal> and <literal>rdtim</literal>
          by name.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          <literal>c64header.oph</literal> is an absolutely minimal
          C64 header program; it contains the one-line BASIC program
          and nothing else. Smaller programs that do not require more
          than four bytes of zero page do not need to do any
          bankswitching or zero page caching and don't need any more
          than this. The aliases provided
          in <literal>c64kernal.oph</literal> may be useful, but are
          not included in this header.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          <literal>c64_0.oph</literal> is suitable for larger and more
          sophisticated programs. It is an enhancement of the header
          file developed in the previous chapter. It stores the saved
          zero page values in the RAM shadowed by the KERNAL ROM, and
          it also uses a different mechanism for returning to BASIC
          when done that is more robust in the face of self-modifying
          programs such as those produced by self-extracting
          compressed executables or onefiled multipart programs. It is
          used like the other header files&mdash;just include it at
          the top of your source file and use <literal>RTS</literal>
          to end your program&mdash;but programs that use this header
          file will have all of the zero page from $02-$8F and a
          contiguous chunk of program RAM from $0800-$CFFF.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          <literal>libbasic64.oph</literal> is an experimental set of
          macros and routines to permit the assembly programmer to
          make use of the software floating point routines provided by
          BASIC. It is, for obvious reasons, not compatible
          with <literal>c64_0.oph</literal>, because it needs to make
          use of BASIC's workspace and the ROM itself. If you wish to
          use this file you should include it near the end of your
          program.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          <literal>vic20.oph</literal> is a header that will work for
          the <emphasis>unexpanded</emphasis> VIC-20. Memory expansion
          slots change where BASIC programs load, and since these
          headers load in the machine language program in as the
          suffix to a BASIC program, that also changes where they are
          themselves loaded. There is no trickery with bankswitching
          ROMs in and out&mdash;the VIC-20 does not have enough RAM to
          gain anything from these techniques.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          <literal>vic20x.oph</literal> does the same, but for a
          VIC-20 with one or more memory expansions.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <section>
      <title>Using LIBBASIC64</title>

      <para>
        The 6502's arithmetic capabilities are rather limited. To
        counteract this, BASICs of the era did floating point in
        software and gave BASIC programmers the full suite of
        arithmetic operations. These operations are largely
        unavailable to machine language programmers.
      </para>

      <para>
        The <literal>libbasic64.oph</literal> library is an attempt to
        address this. It is currently considered highly experimental,
        but initial results are very promising.
      </para>

      <para>
        BASIC stores floating point numbers in a five-byte format, but
        translates them into a seven-byte format to do actual work in
        two Floating Point Accumulators (FAC1 and FAC2). Ophis will
        let you specify 5-byte constants with
        the <literal>.cbmfloat</literal> directive, which takes a
        string and produces the requisite five-byte value.
      </para>

      <para>
        The floating point functions in BASIC all operate on FAC1 and
        are relatively reliable. The
        functions <literal>abs_fac1</literal>, <literal>atn_fac1</literal>, <literal>cos_fac1</literal>, <literal>exp_fac1</literal>, <literal>int_fac1</literal>, <literal>log_fac1</literal>, <literal>rnd_fac1</literal>, <literal>sgn_fac1</literal>, <literal>sin_fac1</literal>,
        and <literal>tan_fac1</literal> are all provided. Routines
        that touch the FACs tend to be extremely finicky. This system
        defines a set of macros and routines to manage that for you:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem><para><literal>`f_move</literal> <emphasis>dest, source</emphasis>: Copy a five-byte floating point value from <emphasis>source</emphasis> to <emphasis>dest</emphasis>.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_load</literal> <emphasis>src</emphasis>: Loads FAC1 with the floating point constant specified by <emphasis>src</emphasis>.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_store</literal> <emphasis>dest</emphasis>: Saves the value of FAC1 to the named memory location.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_print</literal> <emphasis>src</emphasis>: Prints out the value of FAC1 to the screen. You may want to call <literal>int_fac1</literal> first to round it. Unlike BASIC's <literal>PRINT</literal> statement, this routine will not bracket the number with blanks.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_read</literal> <emphasis>ptr</emphasis>: Attempts to convert a string to a floating point value in FAC1, in a manner similar to BASIC's <literal>VAL</literal> function.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_add</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Adds the operand to FAC1.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_subtract</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Subtracts the operand from FAC1.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_multiply</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Multiplies the operand by FAC1.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_divide</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Divides FAC1 by the operand.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_pow</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Raises FAC1 to the operand's power.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_and</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Juggles floating point-to-integer conversions to do a bitwise AND.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>`fp_or</literal> <emphasis>operand</emphasis>: Likewise, but for OR.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>jsr randomize</literal>: Calls RND(-TI) and leaves the (useless) result in FAC1. This seeds BASIC's random number generator with the number of clock ticks since poweron.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>jsr rnd</literal>: Calls RND(1) and leaves the result in FAC1, providing a random number between 0 and 1.</para></listitem>
        <listitem><para><literal>jsr fac1_sign</literal>: Loads the SGN(FAC1) into the accumulator. This will be $01 if the accumulator is positive, $00 if it is zero, and $FF if it is negative. This routine is useful for branching based on the result of a floating point computation.</para></listitem>
      </itemizedlist>

      <para>
        Other functions are available, but their preconditions are
        hazier. The source file is commented with the current state of
        knowledge.
      </para>

      <para>
        To see some of these functions in action,
        the <literal>examples</literal> directory includes a
        program <literal>kinematics.oph</literal>, which reads numbers
        in from input and computes trajectories based on them.
      </para>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>The Nintendo Entertainment System</title>

    <para>
      The NES development community is somewhat more fragmented than
      the others. A skeletal <literal>nes.oph</literal> file is
      provided, but memory locations are not as consistently
      named. Much sample code doesn't provide aliases for control
      registers at all.
    </para>

    <para>
      Conveniently creating runnable NES programs is somewhat
      involved. Any given product was generally burned onto several
      chips that were affixed to one of a large number of circuit
      boards. These are often referred to as &quot;mappers&quot; by
      developers because their effect is to implement various
      bankswitching schemes. The result is a program built out of
      parts, each with its own origin. A &quot;Hello World&quot;
      sample program ships with Ophis. It does not use a bankswitcher,
      but it does split its contents into a program chip and a
      graphics chip, with one of two wrapper files to knit them
      together into a file that other software will recognize. Samples
      are given for the common iNES format and the defunct UNIF
      format.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>The Atari 2600 VCS</title>

    <para>
      Of all the 8-bit development communities, the Atari developers
      seem to be the most cohesive. The development documents
      available are universal, and analysts and developers alike all
      use the register names in the <emphasis>Stella Developer's
      Guide</emphasis>. Ophis follows their lead, providing these
      names in the header <literal>stella.oph</literal>.
    </para>

    <para>
      The <literal>stella.oph</literal> header also replicates two
      macros that appear in the header files distributed to budding
      VCS developers. They are documented in the file.
    </para>
  </section>
</chapter>