Re: A86: Personal Intro & Questions (fwd)

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Re: A86: Personal Intro & Questions (fwd)


Dux Gregis wrote:

> In mode 1, if the flag 2,(iy+$23) is set, then there is a call to the
> RAM address $d2fe.  We can put our own code here and it will be run with
> the regular (OS) interrupt.  Also im 2 can be implemented, but this has
> nothing to do with the OS.

It's also important to mention that the 4 user functions in RAM (on, off, int, and
slink) require checksums... :-)

> >   - now are they implemented?
>
> There are 8 of these sqrt programs: PARSE, CMDTOK, KEY, EXPR, EXEC,
> HOME, FORM, GRF.  The calc loads the name into op1 (rst 20h) and looks
> it up in the variable allocation table (rst 10h) to see if it exists and
> to get the program's location if it does.
> Not a whole lot is known about these programs.

So far, we've made a lot of progress with KEY, some with HOME and EXPR, and I'm
still searching for stuff about PARSE (and that feature I mentioned earlier about
the emulator would be really nice for this... does anyone have the email address of
TI86EMU's author?)

> >
> > *** User Defined Functions ***
> >   What areas need to be changed in order to install new functions
> >   like in TI's Applets that can be called from the HomeScreen or
> >   a Basic program? I am specifically thinking of functions that can
> >   take arguments.
>
> Same thing as user tokens  (each function needs to have a token
> associated with it in order to be parsed)

Pat's EOS doc explains this (albeit cryptically).  I believe I have finally figured
out all there is to know about the parameters, but I've yet to test it...  (too
lazy and WAY too much work and studying to do!)

> >
> > *** User Defined Types ***
> >   Has anyone implemented their own variable types?  I would like to create
> >   an arbitrary precision integer type (an integer that grows to sizes only
> >   limited by available memory).  I saw that there were several "internal
> >   use only" type bytes.  Does anyone know if assembly programmers can use
> >   these for their own types?
>
> I don't think so.  If it's possible, no one has found out about it.

You could easily define vars of your own types.  However, you'd have a hard time
accessing them because they don't show up in any menus, etc.  You could, however,
make a program that either hacks a menu and adds a "customtype|names" menu
somewhere (mem|delete, custom menu, etc...)  however, you'd have to overload all
the built-in tokens and that wouldn't be fun at all!

> >
> >   If this has been discussed in this list, I either missed it or didn't
> >   quite catch all the terminology used.
> >
> > *** Abbreviations and Terms ***
> >   - "SLP"    / What does this stand for?
>
> Sleep mode.  Only used on the z180.

I thought that was Silent Linking Protocal

> >   - "FSP"    / What does this stand for?
>
> _FPS = floating point stack  This is just a stack where you can store
> the op registers using calls to push and pop  (rst 18h = push op1).

Is there a rst to pop it?

> >   - "asap"   / Is this an acronym? Something about menus?  Not "As Soon
> >                As Possible". Whether or not it is, what does it mean?
>
> What does it mean?  You'll have to ask TI.  That's what they name the
> three user slots that can fit user tokens.  Each user token (or group of
> tokens) also has a designated slot in the math menu.

I'd bet that it actually does mean "As Soon As Possible" because they programmed
them because they were planning on getting to the stat and finance modules as soon
as possible...

--
Stephen Hicks
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