conklin@eecae.UUCP (Terry Conklin) (02/27/88)
Hi group. Trying to cut down on News, so this sez assorted things. On C compilers, DONT post Ace-C. It's not the best. However, I'm not sure you'd want to rush off and claim CC8 as best either. There is a generation of C compiler for the 8 bit BEYOND Ace-C. In fact, it is drastically superior to Ace-C. It is called DVC/65 (Development Compiler for the 6502, not Deep Violet) and was written by Ralph Walden. You may know this product today, as, after making it a "shareware" type product that was free for all and $35 for the docs and a couple more files, (a great deal,) the author decided to remarket it and you now see it in magazines as "Lightning C" I am not aware of any upgrade to the product but they are likely to be some. Mr. Walden pissed me off though when, after mentioning this program to the net, he told a netter that called him that some "pirates" had gotten ahold of his software and it was never released. This was an outright, stinking blatant lie. In fact, both myself and a couple friends had independently been conversing by letter to Mr. Walden in which, many times, he of course refers to the shareware nature of his product. I don't know what he thought he would get away with by lying to someone, but I _kept_ all those letters and will gladly show written proof, FROM THE AUTHOR, that DVC/65 is in fact shareware. Meanwhile, if you are interested in a slick C compiler for the 8 bit that even includes an optimization pass, I will see what I can do about posting the shareware package that was originally released. ................ For 256K Mods. The original 256K upgrade was designed by Claus Bucholz, and written up in the 10th anniversary Byte magazine. Atari released the 130XE _after_ that upgrade, so he did a quick change and made his mod XE compatible. Several manufacturers later came out with upgrade boards that followed this mod. Unlike John, however, I do not reccommend the Newell. In fact, I reccommend anything BUT the Newell 256K board. From what I have seen running my own extended memory software, the Newell people somehow did something slightly different from all other upgrade boards. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to find out what. All known software and documentation related to extended memory Ataris is religiously hunted and kept on the Club II BBS in Detroit. I have recently made a second copy of ALL the information related to upgrades in a single ARC file. This file is rather large though and cannot be downloaded and de-arced on a single density drive. All the information needed to build your own upgrade is included, complete with the information on how to build not only 256K XLs, but 320K XEs, 576K XEs, and even 1 MEG XEs! (No one said it was rational.) The MTOS multitasking kernel requires Claus compatible 256(or more) of memory. Another (massive) package is THE WORKS, a Page-setter style typesetting program that uses all 256K of memory. Available on the II as well. I would reccommend getting all the info on the upgrade and examples of the software at minimum before you purchase an upgrade board. I do, however, heartily reccommend and upgrade BOARD as opposed to a direct wired mod. Blast, can't remember the third thing. Keep on hacking those 8 bits! Whoever has a set of FAST, WORKING joystick port serial routines, yes, please look them up and post. Many people have tried. High speed, however, is a new claim. If you have routines like that, we want em! Terry Conklin ihnp4!msudoc!conklin conklin@cps.msu.edu The Club (517) 372-3131 The Club II (313) 334-8877 w/Xmem files. Please help us stay complete.
jdd@db.toronto.edu ("John D. DiMarco") (03/01/88)
Lightspeed C (not Lightning C) is not the last word in C compilers - in
fact, it is Ralph Walden's rewrite of the ACE C compiler. It's functionality
is limited, and the compiler is not as complete as the CC8 compiler. I think
it has a nicer user interface, though. I don't know this for sure, however,
since I never bought the Lightspeed C compiler - I was considering it, but
as soon as I found out that it was less complete than CC8, I decided not to.
John
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John DiMarco Hard work never killed a man ...
jdd@csri.toronto.edu ... but it sure has scared lots of them!
{uunet!utai,watmath!utai,decvax,decwrl,ihnp4}!utcsri!jdd jdd@utcsri.UUCP
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