There's no target with more than one serial driver (and I don't see that change anytime soon) so it's a no-brainer to apply the standard driver concept to serial drivers.
* Docs say that CLK_TCK is an obsolete alias of CLOCKS_PER_SEC so there's no point in individual definitions.
* All targets determining the clock rate at runtime can use a common handling.
* The sprite-types for black and transparent backgrounds were swapped.
* A filler-byte for text output isn't printed. (A hardware bug might not need that work-around in most cases.)
All but one TGI drivers didn't use IRQs. Especially when the TGI driver kernel was the only .interruptor this meant quite some unnecessary overhead because it pulled in the whole IRQ infrastructure.
The one driver using IRQs (the graphics driver for the 160x102x16 mode on the Lynx) now uses a library reference to set up a JMP to its IRQ handler.
All but one joystick drivers didn't use IRQs. Espsecially when the joystick driver kernel was the only .interruptor this meant quite some unnecessary overhead because it pulled in the whole IRQ infrastructure.
I was told that the one driver using IRQs (the DXS/HIT-4 Player joystick driver for the C64) can be reworked to not do it. Until this is done that driver is defunct.
So far the joy_masks array allowed several joystick drivers for a single target to each have different joy_read return values. However this meant that every call to joy_read implied an additional joy_masks lookup to post-process the return value.
Given that almost all targets only come with a single joystick driver this seems an inappropriate overhead. Therefore now the target header files contain constants matching the return value of the joy_read of the joystick driver(s) on that target.
If there indeed are several joystick drivers for a single target they must agree on a common return value for joy_read. In some cases this was alredy the case as there's a "natural" return value for joy_read. However a few joystick drivers need to be adjusted. This may cause some overhead inside the driver. But that is for sure smaller than the overhead introduced by the joy_masks lookup before.
!!! ToDo !!!
The following three joystick drivers become broken with this commit and need to be adjusted:
- atrmj8.s
- c64-numpad.s
- vic20-stdjoy.s
The name RAM doesn't make much sense in general for a memeory area because i.e. the zero page is for sure RAM but is not part of the memory area named RAM.
For disk based targets it makes sense to put the disk file more into focus and here MAIN means the main part of the file - in contrast to some header.
Only for ROM based targets the name RAM is kept as it makes sense to focus on the difference between RAM and ROM.
The way we want to use the INITBSS segment - and especially the fact that it won't have the type bss on all ROM based targets - means that the name INITBSS is misleading. After all INIT is the best name from my perspective as it serves several purposes and therefore needs a rather generic name.
Unfortunately this means that the current INIT segment needs to be renamed too. Looking for a short (ideally 4 letter) name I came up with ONCE as it contains all code (and data) accessed only once during initialization.
Up to now static drivers were created via co65 from dynamic drivers. However there was an issue with that approach:
The dynamic drivers are "o65 simple files" which obligates that they start with the 'code' segment. However dynamic drivers need to start with the module header - which is written to. For dynamic drivers this isn't more than a conceptual issue because they are always contain a 'data' segment and may therefore only be loaded into writable memory.
However when dynamic drivers are converted to static drivers using co65 then that issue becomes a real problem as then the 'code' segment may end up in non-writable memory - and thus writing to the module header fails.
Instead of changing the way dynamic drivers work I opted to rather make static driver creation totally independent from dynamic drivers. This allows to place the module header in the 'data' segment (see 'module.mac').
