aaa@hou5g.UUCP (Aaron Akman) (02/03/84)
The Deep Blue C "Compiler" uses a subset of the C language. Some of C's features are missing (like structures), but pointers & pointer arithmetic are there; enough of the language is there so that a C programmer will be happy. Deep Blue C does not compile down to assembly language. It compiles into something that they call C-code, and when you execute a program it loads it into RAM with an assembly language interpreter of the C-code. Basically, this C-code is a psuedo-assembly language with a small "instruction set"; each instruction tells the interpreter to jump to a small section of real assembly code. So its pretty fast, but not true assembly language. It lets you jump to a real assembly language subroutine to do things real fast. I wonder if it uses the Vertical Blank Interrupt for anything; if it does that means you can't steal that vector unless you find out what it needs and do it yourself. To compile you have to run 2 programs, each of which needs to be loaded first, so it doesn't go real fast. good luck.