ANN: SE Basic RC5

OwenBot

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Mar 11, 2010, 6:31:27 PM3/11/10

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Getting very close to the finish line now. This release adds:

* a full 64 colour palette
* octal support (with the \ symbol)
* 8 new printable characters (code 24 to 31)
* a new FORMAT command for setting the permanent attribute
* faster arc drawing
* NEW now restores the default palette

Hopefully microdrives and +D support is now fixed.

The source is now included (showing changes from the original ROM) for
those who are interested.

I have 100 bytes left to fix any issues that anyone finds. I am
particularly interested in feedback on the extra characters (mostly
accents for use with OVER) and the colour palette (the RGB-alt palette
at present).

OwenBot

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Mar 11, 2010, 8:44:25 PM3/11/10

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Annoyingly I've just discovered some bugs in it. Oh well. Will update
when they're fixed. As for now ON ERR is broken.

OwenBot

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Mar 12, 2010, 2:51:00 AM3/12/10

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> As for now ON ERR is broken.

And now fixed. Just a table overflow. It is *so* tricky to avoid this
sort of error. 97 bytes left now. Microdrives do seem to be working
but +D support is broken. Also need to test other storage systems. No
new features now. The spare bytes will be used to fix compatibility
issues with various storage systems, if I can figure out what's going
on. At least I have between now and when ULAplus is released to fix
them.

OwenBot

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Mar 12, 2010, 6:39:51 PM3/12/10

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Forgot to change the octal symbol back after testing something. It's \
in the current download but it's % in the one from earlier today.

BloodBaz

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Mar 13, 2010, 6:59:20 PM3/13/10

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On 12 Mar, 23:39, OwenBot <cheve...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Forgot to change the octal symbol back after testing something. It's \
> in the current download but it's % in the one from earlier today.

I sympathise at what it is like at the late testing phase. Bugs just
keep popping up whenever you think you are there.

OwenBot

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Mar 15, 2010, 6:59:58 AM3/15/10

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It was inevitable that there would be a bug in the last feature I
added, but thanks to obo that is now fixed. All that remains to be
done is find out why various disk systems are not working and patch
accordingly. There are some minor issues with the IF1, but basically
it works. Next up, the +D (which doesn't work at all). I still haven't
heard from the esxDOS guys. Support is partial at this stage. The
fallback option is to go back to a clean ROM and merge stuff in until
something breaks, but that's 100s of man-hours of testing for every
system out there. I'll settle for IF1/+D/esxDOS/ResiDOS/SpectraNet
support. If anyone wants to use something else they can fix the source
themselves. Currah Microsource and Microspeech work though. :)

BloodBaz

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Mar 15, 2010, 2:12:37 PM3/15/10

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On 15 Mar, 10:59, OwenBot <cheve...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 13, 11:59 pm, BloodBaz <chris.wa...@real-sense.com> wrote:
>
> > On 12 Mar, 23:39, OwenBot <cheve...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Forgot to change the octal symbol back after testing something. It's \
> > > in the current download but it's % in the one from earlier today.
>

>.... Currah Microsource and Microspeech work though. :)

Nice to hear that my beloved MicroSource has been tested!

OwenBot

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Mar 15, 2010, 2:41:20 PM3/15/10

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On Mar 15, 6:12 pm, BloodBaz <chris.wa...@real-sense.com> wrote:
> Nice to hear that my beloved MicroSource has been tested!

I'm testing everything that is available in SpecEmu and Fuse (the two
most accurate emulators as far as I can tell). So far the only stuff
that fails are hardware items that use the /ROMCS line. Each one has
to be tested individually as they are all designed to work only with
the original ROM.