MWC XYBASIC disk image

[udo....@freenet.de]

I have added a disk image with Mark Williams Company XYBASIC

with CP/M versions for binary, BCD, and am9511 accelerated floating point arithmetic.

The disk image is available here:

https://github.com/udo-munk/z80pack/tree/master/imsaisim/disks/library

We need more BASIC example programs, but not more Startrek and the like please ;-)

So if you implement something interesting and want it to get included on the disk

just let me know.

[udo....@freenet.de]

To the MWC BASIC disk I added a program that computes the Mandelbrot set.

Then I added a disk image with Fred Weigel's APU support functions to accelerate FORTRAN-80 programs.

This has been build and tested with F-80 3.44. The z80pack repositories also have older versions of the compiler

for historical reasons, not suggests to use for something like this.

[Fred Weigel]

Udo

On a lark (because it occurred to me) I wrote halfg.bas

https://github.com/ratboy666/halfg

I was thinking about the "old days" with graphics. Back in the day (pre-history, 77/78), putting Microchess on the

TRS-80 (after taking apart cassette hardware and making a "saver saver" tape -- on another piece of hardware;

there was no approved way to introduce "stand-alone" machine language cassettes for the TRS-80. And, I

recall hand-duping hundreds of them), and PET. Used character graphics back then (2x3 for the TRS-80 as I recall).

Now, years later, you took Peter Jennings Microchess and put it into dazzler graphics. But, I was thinking standard

CP/M machines -- with terminals. The thought came that terminal emulators typically support UTF-8, and there

you go! UTF-8 does support 2x2 graphics (2x3 as well, but my fonts don't have that!). So, got the old

Scopewriter font from Poptronics, keyed in an MBASIC program that would display "HELLO" in the Scopewriter

font, using 2x2 UTF-8 graphics characters - satisfying combination of old-school/modern.

The halfg.bas program actually reads the font from DATA statements, and builds the binary->UTF-8 map the

same way. This means it is quite slow on MBASIC on my 2Mhz equiv Altair-Duino.

But... could be converted to XYBASIC fairly easily. And, the way it is written, is an excellent test of BASIC interpreter

performance (very heavy on interpretation and line lookup -- the nastiest is at line 6790 which is a GOTO 6770.

If the interpreter does a linear search for lines, it needs to plow through all DATA lines to fine 6790).

I imagine this would  be a "fun" BASIC program for a new programmer to port, and improve (it is easy to make it

an order of magnitude more efficient and much faster).

I don't assign BASIC to my interns/students anymore -- these days it is all JavaScript/HTML/CSS. But, as

an intro to retro -- things like mandelbrot rule! This may qualify... I'll leave that decision to you.

And -- as a PS. The binary notation used in XYBASIC would make the font DATA much more compact, and

would improve font loading around 7 times. Sometimes notation does count!

Fred Weigel

[udo....@freenet.de]

fridtjof.ma...@gmail.com schrieb am Donnerstag, 12. August 2021 um 19:34:27 UTC+2:

Udo

On a lark (because it occurred to me) I wrote halfg.bas

https://github.com/ratboy666/halfg

Interesting program, I was going to try it, but the upload in github seems to be corrupt starting at line 606. 

I was thinking about the "old days" with graphics. Back in the day (pre-history, 77/78), putting Microchess on the

TRS-80 (after taking apart cassette hardware and making a "saver saver" tape -- on another piece of hardware;

there was no approved way to introduce "stand-alone" machine language cassettes for the TRS-80. And, I

recall hand-duping hundreds of them), and PET. Used character graphics back then (2x3 for the TRS-80 as I recall).

Yep, I have messed with these pseudo graphics as we used to call it on the PET, Apple and such machines also.

The calculations for addressing the dots in a cell in BASIC was slow, so this part was converted into

assembler and the assembler program poked from DATA statements somewhere into unused memory.

Besides Microchess also Sargon was implemented with pseudo graphics on all kind of machines. One

should implement it again for the Dazzler, and also the IMSAI VIO has such a character set which even

allows a higher resolution than the Dazzler can do.

 

Now, years later, you took Peter Jennings Microchess and put it into dazzler graphics. But, I was thinking standard

This originally was done by Cromemco guys, one of their demos for what can be done with the Dazzler.

While Microchess was written for the 8080 Cromemco of course used Z80 instructions, so I took

this apart and rewrote this part in 8080, so that the program can be used on any 8080/8085/Z80 system

with a Dazzler.

 

CP/M machines -- with terminals. The thought came that terminal emulators typically support UTF-8, and there

you go! UTF-8 does support 2x2 graphics (2x3 as well, but my fonts don't have that!). So, got the old

Scopewriter font from Poptronics, keyed in an MBASIC program that would display "HELLO" in the Scopewriter

font, using 2x2 UTF-8 graphics characters - satisfying combination of old-school/modern.

The halfg.bas program actually reads the font from DATA statements, and builds the binary->UTF-8 map the

same way. This means it is quite slow on MBASIC on my 2Mhz equiv Altair-Duino.

That will be quite slow on the 2-4 MHz machines, but good demonstration what can be done. And it could

be fastened with assembler subroutines.

 

But... could be converted to XYBASIC fairly easily. And, the way it is written, is an excellent test of BASIC interpreter

performance (very heavy on interpretation and line lookup -- the nastiest is at line 6790 which is a GOTO 6770.

If the interpreter does a linear search for lines, it needs to plow through all DATA lines to fine 6790).

I imagine this would  be a "fun" BASIC program for a new programmer to port, and improve (it is easy to make it

an order of magnitude more efficient and much faster).

Sure is, if you can provide a fixed source I can include it on the BASIC disks for the machines.

I don't assign BASIC to my interns/students anymore -- these days it is all JavaScript/HTML/CSS. But, as

an intro to retro -- things like mandelbrot rule! This may qualify... I'll leave that decision to you.

Guess that is so everywhere, no one seems to teach BASIC anymore. 

[Fred Weigel]

Udo

At line 606 (BASIC line number 7040) there is a control-z (CP/M eof, followed  by some junk

The actual last line is 7040 WHILE INKEY$ = "" : WEND

I saved it with SAVE "HALFG.BAS",A -- just checked, it is ok!

FredW

[udo....@freenet.de]

Ah ok, thanks, I missed that, though it would be plain text. 

[udo....@freenet.de]

If anyone is trying the program on the IMSAI 8080, some hints.

The program needs a lot of memory and will abort on the default 54KB system,

you need to sysgen the OS for 60KB at least.

Then for the UTF-8 output an 8bit clean console is required, so in system.conf you need:

# SIO 1 Channel A, Ports 2/3 connected to terminal

sio1a_upper_case        0

sio1a_strip_parity      0

sio1a_drop_nulls        1

sio1a_baud_rate         9600 

On my OSX system it won't work with xterm, that version seems to be missing the UTF-8 support, on the terminal

application it works.

[TheHighNibble]

Also, if you use the XYBASIC built with AM9511 support for floating point (xycpm95.com) you will get 2.4K of extra RAM for your BASIC program, because the XYBASIC interpreter is smaller without all the floating point routines linked in.

I haven't looked at the code above, but if it only uses integer and doesn't need floating point, then an integer version of XYBASIC could be linked and give even more RAM.

[Fred Weigel]

Been having more fun -- ported halfg.bas to xybasic. Did it in small steps: xy1.bas, xy2.bas and xy3.bas

Each runs, and is progressively better! xy3.bas is close to being usable in other projects (and now takes

up lots less memory).

: fred@tara halfg $; cpm xycpmfp

XYBASIC CP/M DISK EDIT REV 2.14

COPYRIGHT 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 BY MARK WILLIAMS COMPANY, CHICAGO

WIDTH? 255

END OF MEMORY? 

48105 BYTES FREE

OK

LOADING XY3     

OK

 
▌ ▌▛▀▘▌ ▌ ▞▀▖
▙▄▌▙▄ ▌ ▌ ▌ ▌
▌ ▌▌ ▌ ▌ ▌ ▌
▘ ▘▀▀▘▀▀▘▀▀▘▝▀

(needs to be monospace)

xterm wil need the "-u8" option to support utf-8

Fred