A83: Lots of questions. Please help.

To: <assembly-83@lists.ticalc.org>
Subject: A83: Lots of questions. Please help.
From: "Fam. Engelen" <engelen@hotpop.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 18:23:15 +0100
Reply-To: assembly-83@lists.ticalc.org

I included a program I am working on, and in which I have ran into a 
very strange (well, to me) problem. When you compile it (with tasm 
and devpak83) like this, it works without problems. But when you 
add, say, six 'nop's anywhere in the program, some memory seems
to get corrupted. Try 'walking' the cursorto the lower right of the 
lower-right screen, thus the last element, and pressing 'up'.

I have only tried this program with emu83, since the link cable I made
didn't work (linktest works, I have tried (almost) everything in the faq
and used a 486sx. Still the computer and calculator act as if they are 
not connected). Can anybody check if it really works on a calc? And
performance? Many things still need optimization. 

In emu83, the program seems to 'leak memory', the amount of total
memory decreases when using the program. Why, and how can I
avoid this?

In VTI, the program malfunctions after the calc has 'fallen asleep' and
came back again. This problem persists until after a calculator reset.
Why? Does this also happen on 'real' calcs?

I copyrighted this software only for 'legal purposes'. You can copy it
all you want, as long as you're not tying to make money over my back.

The value of OP1 as shown in the lower bar is sometimes not zero 
(1,01, which is the mass of H) at startup, which is solved when you 
do not just press 'enter' to restart the program but explicitly choose
it from the 'prgm' menu. Why/How-To-Fix?

I will quickly summarize what the program does:
I created an image of a periodic table, divided into 4 parts that all
take up a screen. When you push a button, the element-cursor is 
either increased, decreased or the new location is looked up in a 
table. When 'enter' is pressed, the molecule-mass is added to op1,
which value is shown at the lower bar. In the upper bar is the name
of the element under the cursor (in Dutch).

That's it for now. I'd appreciate it if you could help me out with this.
Note that this is the first program I have ever written in asm (apart
from that useless compression routine), so code is messy. It is 
reasonably documented, though. I have barely optimized anything
yet, since I first want to get it to work.

Please help,

Arnout
arnout.engelen@beer.com

(ps is it OK to send attachments to this list? I have seen it happen
before, so I figured it wouldn't be much of a problem. Sorry if it 
bothers you.)