@tonyw

Keep in mind that what Freddix is trying to do is make a DarkBasic clone for AmigaOS 4.x and, as a spin-off of AmosPro for the PC, the blocks of memory are very much like Amos Bank formats. You access the memory in these blocks using versions of the BASIC Peek and Poke commands.

@thread

That being said, I'd still use a union of Int32 and Float32 in case endian correction becomes an issue because the byte-swapping opcodes in the PowerPC instruction set only apply to integers. That means you can only endian-swap a float by loading it into a general-purpose register.

@freddix

Does DarkBasic have an equivalent of the AmosPro "Set Double Precision" command that affects all floats in a program? If so, you might want to make the same union an Int64 (or long long) and a Float64 (or a double) for such cases. That way you could still guarantee that the endian correction would take place properly in the C++ syntax in the backend.

@freddix

The reason it is not possible is that there is a fair amount of shut-down code that executes as soon as main is done. Likewise the memory used by the function and the stack must be deallocated. For that reason, there must be only one exit point in the program: the end of main().

@pjs

Quote:

I think you would be mistaken there. I've never seen a functional JVM that didn't come with the Java Classes or require them. Running Java without its support classes is like running a computer with no electricity. It just doesn't work.

As for GNU Classpath, there is an attempt at coming out with a cross-architecture (processor-wise) Linux JavaVM called Zero that will be based on LLVM and funded and developed by Red Hat. That might work on an AmigaOne or SAM440 series computer under Debian. That still doesn't help AmigaOS 4.x though.

@magic

Remember that the SAM440ep ran AROS before it ran AmigaOS 4.1.

-edit-

I think getting the hardware up to date with a team like the Natami team is more practical than trying to get software to be compatible between all of the platforms, but hosted AROS can run on anything also.

@ChrisH

Quote:

Perhaps a more practical API wrapper would be a version of hosted AROS for every next-generation Amiga platform. Not that there's a lot of AROS software that lacks on OS 4 however.

@Fernecho

I just downloaded the Slackware Linux version. There is documentation in /opt/sdlBasic/share/doc/sdlBasic/english/QuickHelp.html in the archive at the sdlBasic download site.

@angelheart

For the Amiga it would require AmiCygnix at the minimum for itself and all generated apps.

@McDonald

Storm C version 4.0 only works on AmigaOS 3.9 and earlier on the Motorola 680x0 series processors and only treated PowerPC chips as a coprocessor. AmigaOS 4.x has its own version of GCC for the PowerPC processor which is a free download.

The 680x0 based Amigas had a custom graphics chipset that is not available for the Sam 440 series so you might end up running a cross-compiler and EUAE to emulate the old graphics chips, if that's what interests you about the Amiga.

@terminator4

Hello. I think if you're looking for the marketplace forum for classic Amigas, the site you want is Amiga.org. Amigans.net is a good place to chat about AmigaOS itself and modern hardware that runs it, but if you really like the retro stuff, Amiga.org is it. EAB.abime.net is also a good one for Amiga games and emulation also.

@demusse

One of the best places to find upgrades for Amigas is at AmigaKit.com.

As far as the A1200 is concerned, it will run OS 4.0 for classics with the PowerPC card, but you'll at least want a 3.9 dual-boot to run the old software that isn't compatible with the new version of the operating system. You'll need Kickstart 3.1 to run either of them.

And welcome to Amigans.net!

@Astral

When used by itself, Hollywood is a nice scripting engine with extensive 2d graphics capabilities. When used with Hollywood Designer, it puts PowerPoint to utter bloody shame.

@thread

I was just saying in an earlier IRC conversation that I think that more efforts should have gone into Mesa and EUAE in AmigaOS 4.1 instead of the swap-partioning of virtual memory.

@Antique

I don't know about all of them but Horace Goes Skiing is written in AmosPro and won't make it to OS 4 unless we finish Mattathias Basic first.

Also, I'm not sure if MiniGL is up to the task of emulating Amiga graphics chips in real-time on the Radeons. It will probably be a lot more efficient when Mesa comes out with shader support/emulation for the OS 4.x series.

@freddix

Thanks for the update, Freddix. I'm sorry to hear that you're in financial trouble but glad to hear about AmiDark continuing.

@freddix

If this function is for your Basic compiler, you might want to note that Basic generally uses length-terminated strings while C uses the older-style null-terminated strings. If you're using C++ you can use the standard template library function std::string to get length-terminated functionality.

For an example of how length-terminated strings can be implemented in C, you might want to look at the old code for mb_strings.c and mb_strings.h.

@TSK

Quote:

No. The compiler does this automatically.

@freddix

Under normal circumstances you're supposed to have a list of "extern"-ed functions in a header file and then link with the object file rather than "#include"-ing a C source. Figuring out how to do that shouldn't be difficult however.

It's nice to see you're making progress though.

@freddix

GLUT is optional. SDL can open an OpenGL context without GLUT. It has a special command for page flipping under OpenGL also. See SDL_GL_SwapBuffers and for more information see SDL_GL_SetAttribute.

@freddix

To use multiple .a files together, the one that depends on the routines in the other one should be listed LAST. You don't need to open or close a .a file because it is all processed before the program runs. It is handled by the linker after the compiler but before the executable is run. Only .library files need to be opened at runtime.

@freddix

In a .a file, you can reference .o files listed previously in the linking order. Order is significant when developing linker libraries.

Likewise when linking .o files, any one that references another one must be linked AFTER the one that it references.