A C compiler for the CP1600? :)

[tschak909]

I find myself wondering if it would be possible to do C programming on the CP1600?  The register complement is okay for it, memory perhaps a bit tight, but... just maybe?

 

-Thom

[DZ-Jay]

43 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

I find myself wondering if it would be possible to do C programming on the CP1600?  The register complement is okay for it, memory perhaps a bit tight, but... just maybe?

 

-Thom

I guess the biggest problem indeed would be memory.  One reason that IntyBASIC manages to be practical and effective is that it has no concept of local or lexical variables or stack frames, absolving it from static memory allocation.

 

All that said, perhaps a C-ish programming language, would be very useful due to the expressiveness of the C syntax and traditional constructs and approaches; even if it does not adhere fully to the C standard.

 

     -dZ.

[carlsson]

The idea has been brought up before. Here is some discussion that ran between January and June 2019.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/286670-sdcc-pic16-c-compiler/

 

[tschak909]

1 hour ago, DZ-Jay said:

I guess the biggest problem indeed would be memory.  One reason that IntyBASIC manages to be practical and effective is that it has no concept of local or lexical variables or stack frames, absolving it from static memory allocation.

 

All that said, perhaps a C-ish programming language, would be very useful due to the expressiveness of the C syntax and traditional constructs and approaches; even if it does not adhere fully to the C standard.

 

     -dZ.

Probably the best model for this, would be the ACTION! programming language that was popularized on the Atari 8-bit, which does exactly this, with an ALGOL derived syntax (more specifically, it's a variant of micro-SPL)

 

I'm definitely going to try IntyBASIC at some point. I really want to do a version of Namco's Warp Warp

 

-Thom