pedgarcia

As a fellow english-as-second-language person, I give kudos to @mike.2000 for his effort and kindness to share his hard work. It will be very useful in my journey to learn and write about Action!.

I understand the desire to have Altirra running natively on Linux and macOS since it is an excellent emulator, but I also understand that whoever maintains it is entitled to keep doing it for Windows only. Since it was developed with Windows in mind, it is a pain to port it. We have options for all three major OSes so it is not a big deal. I am a Mac user and I am glad Atari800MacX is being updated again and it meets all my Atari needs. Sometimes I fire up Altirra under wine to double check if I see something weird happening on Atari800MacX.

I'd like one please!

I wouldn't pay more than US$ 150 for a boxed 800XL. At the end is all about supply and demand and how bad you want a certain item. If that's something you are looking to get and it is super important to you, maybe you can pay more just to make sure you got it.

Cool @zbyti. I actually read this book years ago and I remember he mentioned that indeed. I have added this reference to the article. THanks!

Lol @zbyti, you made me laugh now. That's so true and happened before!

Thanks @JAC!. Yes, you have a good point about the MAD Pascal option. My current objective is more finding what is possible with Action just because I want to learn it, more than developing something for the Atari, but for a full cross-compiler environment I agree that MAD Pascal would be a better choice. Cheers

As by-product of my most recent article (https://vintageisthenewold.com/going-into-action-with-atari-xl-xe-part-4-using-vscode-and-action-with-syntax-highlighting/), I have crated a syntax highlighting for VSCode. I haven't found anything similar for this editor, so I hope it will be useful for more people other than myself! If you use vscode already it can be installed from the Extension explorer. Just search for "OSS Action". You can also download from here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pgarcia.ossaction Bug reports and suggestions are welcome. Cheers

The part 4 is up! https://vintageisthenewold.com/going-into-action-with-atari-xl-xe-part-4-using-vscode-and-action-with-syntax-highlighting/ Diverging a bit from the language itself, but I feel I needed to do that before continuing my journey. Cheers

I like the idea of a version with the editor gone, or at least something that could open Action directly in the monitor prompt instead. What I am thinking is a more efficient cross-development environment, where the emulator is called by an external editor and only compiles files from the disk. I know there is the possibility to load it based on a snapshot directly there like @zbyti does, but I imagine removing the editor would free more memory space for the program itself. wouldn't it? I think such a stripped down version would only make sense in the cartridge format. On a side note, is there instruction on how one can build Action! from the source himself? Cheers

Nice @zbyti, looks very easy to get around! After some thought I am going a not so good approach for now, just using the external editor. I will probably finish it tonight and gonna post tomorrow morning. Cheers

Ok, I don't know what I did before. Maybe it was a glitch and I didn't spend enough time debugging. Now MAME works and I almost got to the point where I can do what I wanted to do (I will share later) but now I am thinking if I really need to do that at all. The end goal is to call an emulator, compile the code and run it, all through a external command (Host text editor). I will finish the MAME setup and share here to gather opinions Cheers Paulo

Never mind. I realized you are using H6: which forces the use of \n instead of the ATASCII equivalent to new line.

I am curious. Do you save the file like a regular text file? Doesn't Action! complain about the format?

Hm, that's odd. When I tried I could "hear" that Action was online but I didn't have any image on Display whatsoever 😕 - Gonna try again.... I am not aware how debugging works on Mame which is a huge downside if it is not good, but it is worth trying. Thanks @zbyti!

@8bit-Dude We can talk via email. I sent you a PM with my contact.

Yesterday I spent some time trying MAME and it has everything I needed except that Action! doesn't seem to work there - Only that small detail missing....

This looks fantastic @8bit-Dude! I will take a serious look, and also if you want to use Vintage Is The New Old yourself to write about it, let me know. Cheers

I am ok using Altirra but my plan was to call it with the Action! cartridge on and issue a CTRL+SHIFT+M to enter de monitor and then compile and I don't think Altirra /type parameter supports that. I could follow the idea @zbyti gave me to load using a saved state already in the monitor, but I couldn't find an option for Altirra to load a saved snapshot. I know Atari800 has this option. For a macOS only solution I like the idea of using the Automator (Apple Script) and keep using my favourite Atari800MacX, but again this is a macOS only solution. I like your idea @ivop but I think such program is above my head I will also explore MAME. I've never used it to emulate Atari 8-bit but I remember I managed to do something similar of what I am thinking for the TRS80 CoCo. Thanks for the suggestions, I will post an update when I have something Cheers

Save state!? That's ingenious! I haven't thought of that at all. Thanks!

@zbyti I was looking at the video . When you launch the atari800 emulator, the command "C H:program.act" is injected automatically or you are typing it? If the first, how are you doing that. I couldn't find a way to do that with Atari800... Thanks

That's actually a good point. My objective in this case would be able to compile an Action program that way. After I open the emulator with the Action cartridge, I would want to issue the commands to make it compile a program I added to the hard drive folder, for example. Thanks

I know it is possible in Altirra to call it via command line passing the parameter /type "keys" which will type the "keys" after launching the emulator. I don't see similar option on Atari800 or Atar800MacX. Do you guys know if there is any? If not what are the alternatives? I am running on Mac. Thanks

I will have a long weekend ahead so I will have time to go over the examples you sent. I tried one so far Then hopefully I have a theme for the next articles.. Cheers

Hm, interesting, so the arrays follows the datatype size.... When I first tried to understand the pointers I was also assuming that an increment of 1 would also jump 2 bytes at a time for a CARD type, but that is not the case. I see that using arrays does. Based on that, the loop could also be: FOR I=0 TO 3839 DO SCR(I)=135 OD with the same performance, right? Thanks