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TOS 1.62 (STE) - what to put in free space there ?


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TOS 1.62 is basically same as 1.04, with added code for handling STE extra HW. And because that, it did not fit in 192 KB space (how much it is in STs), but needed to expand it to 256 KB. And last 64 KB is barely used. There is 58 KB free space. Question is: what is worth to put there (if we deal with some TOS patching, improving and like) ?

And actually, free space can be more if optimizing code, packing RSC data. More about it lower.  I already put some games in that space. For instance Terry's Big Adventure fits there well (packed) .

I came to idea to put Desktop and GEM RSCs for diverse languages in free space, and by boot select which will be active.

So, here is 1.62 with 4 languages: 162_4LNG.ZIP

Default is UK English, if press 1 when message appears De (German) will be active, 2 for French, and 3 for Swedish. 

And there is still 55 KB free space ?  Well, not because those parts are so short, but because optimizations, packing.  One lang. takes about 7 KB (not packed 16 KB) . I wanted to add Spanish too, but don't see 1.62 with it. And some by users done other language would be interesting, Eastern European ones, although it may need some new characters in font sets.

I see only Czech v. of 1.62 .  If someone knows more language versions of TOS 1.62, pls. gimme a link.

Note that this is based on fact that TOS 1.62 copies complete RSC data in RAM from ROM, and therefore packing is well usable. 2.06 for instance copies from ROM to RAM only parts which may change, to save some RAM, so there it would be much harder. But anyway, in 2.06 is no free space for this.

And as title says: if have some idea what is worth to put there - please write. Of course, taking care of space usage, and best if it is single file SW/PRG  .

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I thought my TOS 1.62 ROMs (US) were only 192K?   I remember they didn't use all the pins in the socket when I replaced them with TOS 2.06, which used them all.

 

Anyway, I would put faster draw routines like Turbo ST/Quick ST or something similar, and any other optimized code replacements that could fit.   These make the ST feel like a faster system.

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21 hours ago, zzip said:

I thought my TOS 1.62 ROMs (US) were only 192K?   I remember they didn't use all the pins in the socket when I replaced them with TOS 2.06, which used them all.

 

Anyway, I would put faster draw routines like Turbo ST/Quick ST or something similar, and any other optimized code replacements that could fit.   These make the ST feel like a faster system.

There were 28 pin 1 Mbit ROMs in some STE machines, and same stays for ST (2 ROM variant) . Capacity of ROMs is always power of 2 (at least I did not see different in single chip) so, no 192 KBytes in 2 chips. It is 256 KB even in STs, only that 1/4 is unused.  With EPROMs there are no 28 pin, 1 Mbit chips, because they need more pins (programming voltage, control), so it is 32 pins, and during read some pins are not used.

 

I was on idea to add, or replace existing drawing code (VDI) in TOS, and looked in code of Warp. It uses plenty of RAM, I guess so works faster. And btw. TOS VDI works in RAM too, at least some parts. So, that would decrease free RAM + raise membot, what some SW don't like. So, surely only as option.

 

I think that most important part of it is to select 'screen accelerator' best for this. Really not familiar with mentioned 2, so will look about.

NVDI is out of interest - too long, and still copyrighted ?

What else is made ?

Ah, and since STEs have blitter, how big is speed gain in compare to speed of TOS VDI with blitter on ?

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21 hours ago, anzac said:

A native HDD driver 

That's already done in iTOS, together with making FAT16 filesystem better - instead max 14, max 512 MB size partitions  possible max 30, 1 GB partitions, and with even less RAM usage. + other things, which work best via integrated driver (as I call it). http://atari.8bitchip.info/tosimav.html

 

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18 hours ago, calimero said:

Some vdi speed up and harlequine acc ;)

 

or maybe some descent file viewer/editor :)

I looked about Harlek* at atarimana. There are some, all called Harlekin. Maybe all variants of same utility. It will hardly fit, since is on double sided floppy.

File viewer/editor is good idea. And that should be not something large. I know rather some disk editors - they are rather binary/hex editors. Anything recommended ?

But take care of size. Something with 500 KB size surely can not pack in 60 KB .

Also, what VDI speeder you can suggest ?

 

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I can not remember the name of that small vdi accelerator... :( it was quite smaller then nvdi.

But on second though, maybe it is not good idea to include vdi accelerator since it can maybe bring somo incompability?

 

Same thing is with Harlequine. Maybe it can cause incompability and it will take some RAM for sure!

 

On other hand, text/editor viewer will not cause any incompatibility, right!

 

For text editor, I use Everest or QED but anything else will be welcomed :) I need to check and see what text editors we have... http://milan.kovac.cc/atari/software/?folder=/TEXT ...Tempus was also popular...

 

btw

now I remember Chameleon - it is not text editor but rather small ACC utility that enable to load and unload accessories at any time from desktop. Maybe this ability to "double click" on .acc and load it would be more useful then any other acc like Harlequine?

 

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5 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I think that most important part of it is to select 'screen accelerator' best for this. Really not familiar with mentioned 2, so will look about.

NVDI is out of interest - too long, and still copyrighted ?

What else is made ?

Ah, and since STEs have blitter, how big is speed gain in compare to speed of TOS VDI with blitter on ?

The one I use is called Quick ST or QuickSTE.   I think it was written by Darek Mihocka,  who also wrote Gembench, and the early "Gemulator" emulator for PC.

 

With regards to blitter-   Quick ST provides a noticeable screen acceleration without blitter,  but even more screen acceleration with blitter enabled.   Quick ST + blitter feels like a whole new machine :)    I have no idea how much memory it uses or what its copyright status currently is though.

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5 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I looked about Harlek* at atarimana. There are some, all called Harlekin. Maybe all variants of same utility. It will hardly fit, since is on double sided floppy.

File viewer/editor is good idea. And that should be not something large. I know rather some disk editors - they are rather binary/hex editors. Anything recommended ?

But take care of size. Something with 500 KB size surely can not pack in 60 KB .

I would think a GEM-based text viewer with just scroll bars and no editing features should be very tiny in size.  Or if not GEM, something like the Linux "less" command, that lets you scroll up/down/left/right with arrow keys.

 

Or another nice thing might be a simple CLI.   The interface for TTP programs has always been awkward

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Added 3 more languages - found 1.06 ES and IT, + 1.04 NL. RSC blocks are same in 1.06 and 1.62, and even from 1.04 is almost same, only some color palette data is little different (because bigger STE palette) . So, I corrected palette data, and all it works fine in 1.62 . 162_7LNG.ZIP

So, now can use 7 languages: UK (default), DE, ES FR, IT, NL & SE .  Still 35 KB free space.

 

I found Quick ST 1.31 at atarimania. It is short, so maybe will be usable. 

About compatibility:  accelerated VDI should go as default, and work as much possible from ROM - then it will be active always, and not decreasing free RAM significantly.

Programs like editor, some utility should not run by default, but easily startable from menu, so will not cause incompatibility.

 

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I made 1.62 with built in Quick ST. 7 languages are still there, and still some free space. 162M7LQ3.ZIP

This can work on Mega STE too - added some code for that.

About Quick ST:  it uses lot of self modding code, + some tables are built at start, according to active resolution, so no way that it work from ROM.

I shrunk it's size by removing ACC part - no need for it, and all accelerations are on, of course. It takes 26 KB RAM now. It needed proper disassembling, what took plenty of time.  And sadly, needed lot of time to make it using really only +26 KB RAM. The problem is TOS memory management, what has some flaws - needed lot of tracing to solve not wasting additional 13 KB of RAM (something similar to wasted RAM by AUTO run). Now it works fine, and I tested it couple hours, in emulators and with Mega STE with ACSI-CD (PeraSAN) CF card adapter.  Did not see some crashes, bad working SW. Only 2 minor flaws:  not possible to change resolution in Options menu - will crash, as original Quick ST crashes then. So, if need med instead low, or versus, need to reboot, press N to make Quick ST inactive (and that might be needed for some SW, of course), then set wanted res. and Save Desktop .  Noticed minor errors in high res. with my program FIRDC (file and RAMdisk compressor), what uses little trick with border of dialog for growing effect - then some lines remain undeleted - in color modes it is OK .

Speed gain is really good.

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Hello,

If there's still room, please consider adding a terminal emulator.

This is what I use the Atari for quite often.

It should offer the possibility to upload and download a file in such a manor that it mimics keyboard entry.

This makes it possible to use the Atari as a terminal for other Single Board Computers and load/save programs for those.

 

BR/

Guus

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22 hours ago, guus.assmann said:

Hello,

If there's still room, please consider adding a terminal emulator.

This is what I use the Atari for quite often.

It should offer the possibility to upload and download a file in such a manor that it mimics keyboard entry.

This makes it possible to use the Atari as a terminal for other Single Board Computers and load/save programs for those.

 

BR/

Guus

Not sure that it is something of wider interest. Anyway, I can look it if you give me where can get it.

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18 hours ago, Cyprian said:

QuickST was later renamed into Warp 9 v3.80

 

Would be possible to insert TOS2.06 desktop in that free space

Yes, I examined Warp 9 couple years ago, when started to deal with iTOS. It takes much more RAM - some 70 KB, and would take too much space in ROM too, with all it's options. Plus, I don't see that's faster than Quick ST. Maybe more compatible, free of some errors. Please folks, consider file sizes - this is for shorter things.

 

TOS 2.06 Desktop with 1.62 is already done, I call it TOS 2.16 . http://atari.8bitchip.info/tosimav.html

 

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3 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Yes, I examined Warp 9 couple years ago, when started to deal with iTOS. It takes much more RAM - some 70 KB, and would take too much space in ROM too, with all it's options. Plus, I don't see that's faster than Quick ST. Maybe more compatible, free of some errors. Please folks, consider file sizes - this is for shorter things.

good to know, what about QuickST RAM usage?

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Interesting thread..   I'm not necessarily recommending PLM spend time doing any of these, but some useful things with early OSes that came around the late 80s / early 90s were:

 

- Built in Calculator (i.e. something the iPad still doesn't have :) )

- Disk or other device drivers

- Basic network stack

- a Basic terminal or comms program

- A text editor or notepad type app

- In the ST's case there's sort of a "necessary" set of ACCs - forgetting but on/off for MegaSTE cache and speed, blitter on/off, etc.

- A basic game or two 

- Disk compression software

- Something in the ROM that allows you to Shadow the ROM into RAM to make functions quicker

- Improved diagnostic software for system health/etc

 

Look forward to seeing what people come up with and what happens.  And of course - you're awesome ParanoidLittleMan - really great work on making the ST even more fun to use! :)

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10 hours ago, Xebec said:

Interesting thread..   I'm not necessarily recommending PLM spend time doing any of these, but some useful things with early OSes that came around the late 80s / early 90s were:

 

- Built in Calculator (i.e. something the iPad still doesn't have :) )

- Disk or other device drivers

- Basic network stack

- a Basic terminal or comms program

- A text editor or notepad type app

- In the ST's case there's sort of a "necessary" set of ACCs - forgetting but on/off for MegaSTE cache and speed, blitter on/off, etc.

- A basic game or two 

- Disk compression software

- Something in the ROM that allows you to Shadow the ROM into RAM to make functions quicker

- Improved diagnostic software for system health/etc

 

Look forward to seeing what people come up with and what happens.  And of course - you're awesome ParanoidLittleMan - really great work on making the ST even more fun to use! :)

Well, there are OSes placed in ROM, and there are OSes which load from disk. ROM space is limited. What you listed contains some shorter and some longer SW. Diagnostic will not fit for sure, and that's not of frequent usage.

What can fit is text editor, disk driver (already present in some versions), calculator ...

Disk compression SW is now totally obsolete with current prices of storage. Not even from disk.

Blitter on/off is present at TOS 1.02 . Mega STE cache, speed setting can be solved with really short code. And I just worked today about adding some new items in Desktop Menu, Options - can do it with RSC editors  (after extracting them from TOS), but that's not enough that it appear - there is some data in code too, and it needs more work, tracing ...

Ah, and in case of ST, STE ROM and RAM work with same speed, so shadow to RAM will not make it faster.  Instead it packing is what is really useful.

So, you have PRG, code in ROM packed, and depack it in RAM,  then execute there. And additional benefit is that SW written for working from RAM (self modding code) will work without changes that way. I used this already a lot. For instance Quick ST packs from 26 KB to 7-8 KB.

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Hmmm, this is for STE, not for ST.  ST TOS has no free space for adding diverse SW.  

Otherwise, text editor would be really useful - if someone knows something of small size, pls. name it.  I think that Unzip with those supports will be too long for this.

 

Btw. just solved something what annoyed hmm ... maybe millions of Atari users ? : after boot with hard disk/Flash card, Desktop will show not only partition C , but further ones E to L . Of course, if they exist. Max letter is P (as there are max 14 partitions what TOS can handle) , but there is no space for all it in low res. And I think that 10 partitions are enough for regular usage. Price: 256 bytes more RAM used, about 100 bytes more ROM used.

 

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