A89: SDK

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A89: SDK


Hi!

I want to give some info to all programmers which wants to use TI SDK,
or to use info given with it for TIGCC programming:

First, be aware of the fact that SDK generates code which WORKS ONLY ON
AMS 2.04 OR 2.05!!! It calls TIOS routines using a Line 1111 Emulator 
exception (which is redirected to a calling routine in AMS 2.05). On this
way ROM calling is really very short (two bytes only), but much slower 
than usually, and it works only on AMS 2.04/5. Even "Hello world" program
will crash on any other AMS release. In other words, code generated with
the SDK depends strongls on AMS 2.04/5.

Second, I browsed a bit through a SDK documentation. It is much better 
than in alpha release (what is natural), but anyway, I need to warn 
anybody: 

DON'T BELIEVE TOO MUCH IN THIS DOCUMENTATION IF YOU WANT TO USE THESE 
INFORMATION FOR PROGRAMMING WITH TIGCC! 

There are several reasons for this: 

1) Generally, the most information in this doc is true only on AMS 2.xx, 
   but a lot of programmers still use AMS 1.xx. 
2) Very often, TI says that the routine is "Available on all versions of 
   the TI-89/TI-92 Plus", but actually, it is available only on AMS 2.03 
   or greater. I informed TI about this, but no reply. As SDK works only
   with AMS 2.04 or greater, they obviously don't care about this. 
3) Even when the routine exists on AMS 1.xx (like SymFindFirst, DialogAdd,
   etc.) many optional flags mentioned in the documentation works only 
   with recent versions of the AMS. 

To conclude: if you program with TIGCC, use only what is described in 
TIGCC doc. I will update this doc in the near future, now I need not to
be silent any more. 

Third: have anybody noticed that it is very hard to use SDK for making 
programs which do not look like TI built-in applications (i.e. the toolbar
on the top of the screen, etc.)? There is not anything like clrscr(), nor
any function from graph.h there. So, I will give one challenge to 
programmers who use SDK: make a program which will clear the whole screen,
display a "Hello world" at the top of the screen, and draw the diagonal 
line accross the whole screen. Note that this is not impossible with tools
given in SDK, but anyway, try to do it...

If anybody need more info, you are now free to ask... The silence period
is over...

Cheers,

Zeljko Juric
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