How do you use SDX Con64 driver with FastBasic

[gs80065xe]

Does anyone know if there is an option in FastBasic to make it work with the SDX con64 display driver?

[dmsc]

Hi!

12 hours ago, gs80065xe said:

Does anyone know if there is an option in FastBasic to make it work with the SDX con64 display driver?

You just load it before loading FB:

 

     

 

And simply use it:

  

 

Sadly, the CON64.SYS driver is slow, so page up/down will be really slow, and it is not 100% compatible so you can expect some minor problems.

 

Have Fun!

[gs80065xe]

Hmmmm. I did try it before posting. It went crazy for me when I loaded FastBasic. And the editor was all wrong. But I was running it in Altirra. And it was running the integer only version. I'll try again.

[gs80065xe]

Well, it worked fine this time for both FB and FBI. Thought maybe TD Line being on caused the problem the yesterday. But it works as well. At this point, I don't know what I did wrong yesterday. But it works now.

 

Thanks.

 

[drac030]

On 12/29/2020 at 12:40 PM, dmsc said:

and it is not 100% compatible so you can expect some minor problems.

If there are incompatibilities, what about reporting them?

[dmsc]

Hi!

Quote

If there are incompatibilities, what about reporting them?

Sorry, I had very little free time last weeks, so I haven't been able to investigate further.

 

When I tested CON64 last Tuesday, I discovered two problems:

 

1) This is "expected", and simple a little annoying: FastBasic editor writes to OLDCHR to write to the last column of each line, as the standard E: does not have any safe way to write to the last column. Most handlers ignore the contents here, so the last column would be always blank.

 

2) Sometimes the character under the cursor is not correctly redrawn when moving UP a line. To see this, load FB, move the cursor to the bottom of the help text and then type four extra lines, then move the cursor UP a few times:

   

 

I suspect this is related to the above, perhaps the CON64 driver uses OLDCHR location for keeping other information. Note that sometimes just moving the cursor rigth on a line "erases" it. To redraw a line, you can press "CONTROL-Z", it seems that the line is always redrawn correctly.

 

Attached is an ATR with only FB.COM and the CON64.SYS driver, just load "CON64.SYS", then "CON 64"; then "FB".

 

Thanks, and have a great new year!

 

PS: If you want to see the FastBasic editor sources, it is written in FastBasic itself, over here: https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic/blob/master/src/editor.bas

 

test.atr

Edited January 2, 2021 by dmsc

[drac030]

2 hours ago, dmsc said:

Most handlers ignore the contents here, so the last column would be always blank.

Obviously, as what you write to OLDCHR is the screen code of the desired character. There is no point in using screen codes in the software-emulated 64 column E: driver, so it uses ASCII codes all over the place. Therefore taking the OLDCHR input into account would produce garbage on screen.

 

I quickly looked up the source code of con64.sys, it basically does not use OLDCHR, except when saving the old character at the cursor position. This is never used later, so even this reference should probably be removed.

 

The other bug is more interesting as it looks like an inconsistency of internal data buffers. Must try to reproduce that. Thanks!