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Crazy Idea of the Week: An IDE for FA. How would we pull it off?


Pab

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Working with FastAssembler lately, I've been writing my source code on a PC using EditPad 8 as my text editor. (It supports ATASCII and I have syntax color schemes for both 6502 source and Action! for it, so it's pretty handy to work with.) I then run a batch file in SDX in Altirra to copy my code through ECP, run FA, and run OBJ2ACT.

 

The other day, a thought occurred to me: what would be involved in creating an IDE for FA on an 8-bit machine? How could something along these lines be pulled off on an actual Atari?

 

My first thought would be a stub program, including routines for accessing and utilizing banked RAM, which would load and jump through the INITAD vector to move MEMLO to protect itself. The next module would be our main IDE program and text editor, which would be loaded into one bank and utilize a second bank for its editor text. Then the RUNAD vector would jump to code in the stub to switch to the proper bank and run our editor.

 

When the time comes to compile, we JSR back into the stub, which restores the main bank, loads an appropriate command line, and uses SDX calls to run FA. When it's done, the stub retakes control, goes back to the bank holding our IDE/editor, and returns control.

 

When we're done and exit the program, it would return to the stub which would close anything open, restore the old MEMLO, and exit through DOSVEC.

 

Fancier stuff like using redirection to pipe the output from FA so we can display it in a window in the IDE might be a bit harder to do, and probably beyond the capabilities of the machine, but the basic functionality of an IDE might not be too hard to pull off.

 

Just a thought experiment here. The feasibiliy of writing a program to "wrap around" and call an existing program. Not the most practical application but there could be other uses for such an approach.

 

Edited by Pab
left a word out.
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I always find that when working with the Atari, you always have the memory overheads of the editing system, therefore affeciting how much RAM you have left for programming with. Yes, banking stuff would help though.

 

Personally I prefer to use the power of a PC for programming, but yes, it'd be nice to just jsr or jump to a memory address on an A8.

 

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