What New Linux Utilities Would Be Useful?

[dmsc]

Hi!

On 3/19/2024 at 1:36 PM, pcrow said:

Interesting.  I don't know how useful extracting those would be.  I suppose it would be the first step to support using MAC/65 source code with a cross-assembler.

Here is my MAC/65 file conversion tool: https://github.com/dmsc/m65-lister

 

Also, the attached ATASCII to ASCII converter could be useful - I use it all the time in the command line to list ATASCII files, with the '-e' option it will even use terminal codes to show inverse video.

 

Have Fun!

conv-atascii-utf8.c

[dmsc]

Hi!

On 3/18/2024 at 2:08 PM, pcrow said:

That's an interesting idea.  My basic analyzer can already generate a full listing from the save file (including several BASIC variants).  If I start with just doing text (GR.0), it might not be too insane.

 

Another related project would be a BASIC compiler, though I don't know how far I would get in that.  What I would find interesting would be to track variable usage to determine the range of values for each variable so that it would be clear what data type to use (uint8, int16, uint16, float, etc.).  I like to imagine a variant of BASIC with execution support for different data types where an external optimizer could convert types appropriately.

 

As @Irgendwer said, I went to that path once - started after adding procedure parameters and other optimizations to my basic parser tool (at https://github.com/dmsc/tbxl-parser ), and ended writing FastBasic instead. There is still a branch in the tbxl-parser repo with some work.

 

FastBasic is designed to be easier to compile (no line numbers) and optimize (having native integer variables), and by having a version that runs in the Atari itself is a great tool for writing ten-liners or other simple games, you can see this years "Chaseme" by Vitoco https://bunsen.itch.io/chase-me-atari-8-bit-by-vitoco , "Tetris" and "Gunner" by Eric Car https://bunsen.itch.io/tetris-atari-8-bit-by-eric-carr https://bunsen.itch.io/gunner-atari-8-bit-by-eric-carr - all are incredible for 10 BASIC lines.

 

Have Fun!

[ivop]

Here's another detokenizer for MAC/65:

 

 

January 2010. Wow, time flies. To convert Atari's EOL to LF I use an age old Unix tool: tr '\233' '\012'

 

[LarsImNetz]

On 3/18/2024 at 4:17 PM, Geister said:

As a beginner Linux user who has just managed to get Altirra to run on wine in Linux Mint, I'd love more information on running Atari on Linux.  I'd like a video on setting up a developer load of tools for Linux and Atari as I intend to never run Windows again after I get that done.

Well that and proving that I can do my taxes on a Linux machine as well.  This is well under way.

Hi,

 

to start Altirra from Linux or Windows I use good old Makefiles, to build my Atari programs and start it with Altirra.

 

Take an ATR Image, here I use my "turbobasic-autostart.atr". A simple `make atari` on console starts Altirra emulator and load the ATR Image.

You need to change the `ALTIRRA=` lines where you installed your Altirra on Linux/Windows it.

 

OS_NAME = $(OSNAME)
ifeq ("${OS_NAME}", "Linux")
  ALTIRRA=wine /home/lars/.wine/drive_c/atarixl.software/AtariXL_400/Altirra-410b5.exe
else
  ALTIRRA=Altirra.exe
endif

all:
	@echo "use make atari instead"

# Start Altirra with debug and stop at start address
# /portable searchs for an Altirra.ini
exec_with_altirra:
	$(ALTIRRA) \
	/portable: \
	/disk: "turbobasic-autostart.atr"

debug_with_altirra:
	$(ALTIRRA) \
	/portable: \
	/debug: \
	/debugcmd: ".sourcemode on" \
	/debugcmd: ".loadsym TEST.lst" \
	/debugcmd: ".loadsym TEST.lab" \
	/debugcmd: "bp 4000" \
	/disk: "turbobasic-autostart.atr"

atari: exec_with_altirra
	@echo "Start Atari with DOS and TurboBasic"

debug: debug_with_altirra
	@echo "Start Atari in Debug mode"

 

To start directly in debug mode, call `make debug` on console. Give your *.lst and *.lab files, which are build by MADS or Atasm with some extra parameters. e.g. `bp 4000` is a breakpoint at address $4000.

 

HTH

This is my simple way to start Altirra from my Linux Desktop and Windows Laptop (MinGW Environment) in the same way.

 

Lars