as@castle.ed.ac.uk (A Stevens) (12/18/90)
I cannot imagine that ROM images would be a big problem for people wanting to build a superior BBC-B emulation. Surely you could just release the emulator as a ``patch'' sitting on top of the existing one distributed by Acorn which - they claim at least - contains pretty much unchanged MOS1.2 along with ARFS and the Utils ``ROMS''. What would be legally tricky would be handing out the necessary software for Cracking the copy protection on the Elite floppy. Even for Elite I doubt I would get a 5.25" disk drive. Does anyone (called Graham :-)) know if said emulator does ``Planetoid'' too? My Defender reflexes are getting distinctly dull ever since I gave my B away in a fit of lunacy... ** As a reply to a previous poster asking what binaries might have been ** posted ... (1) The latest version of sml that tries to disable the crash-o-matic FPE signal by turning off its handler. I say tries because in some programs it seems an FPE will crash even if SIG_IGN is set as the handler. Seems to work on SML on my Arch though - does anyone know where I can obtain / buy a decent Clib with working signals. I recall someone mentioning a very nice sounding UNIX compat lib they wanted to sell... (2) The latest version of HUProlog that allows you to set memory allocation at run time, runs a bit faster, fixes the odd bug or niggle, and is a touch better documented. This time full source code is also available. Both may be found on the newcastle info-server: info-server@uk.ac.newcastle in the U.K. I am happy to mail folk disk copies if they promise to post back the disks. Andrew PS Mails to as@uk.ac.ed.aipna not uk.ac.ed.castle as I rarely read mail on this machine. Aipna alas hasn't spotted comp.sys.acorn exists. PPS Come on you sluggards... there must surely be people out there with experience of some of the Pd/Shareware available, and/or which model B stuff runs under the emulator. Mail or Post the results so others don't have to make the same mistakes... its what the net is for.
kvj@rhi.hi.is (Kristjan Valur Jonsson) (12/27/90)
In <7619@castle.ed.ac.uk> as@castle.ed.ac.uk (A Stevens) writes: >I cannot imagine that ROM images would be a big problem for people >wanting to build a superior BBC-B emulation. Surely you could just >release the emulator as a ``patch'' sitting on top of the existing one >distributed by Acorn which - they claim at least - contains pretty much >unchanged MOS1.2 along with ARFS and the Utils ``ROMS''. Perhaps the problem is that the emulator guys want to reprogram the BBC OS ROMS in ARM code, and they surely would need Acorn's permission to do that. That would mean a rather nice speed increase. (Imagine calling the 6502 routines every time a char is written on the screen) I understand that when buying emulators for other computers (eg. Mac emulators for the Commodore Amiga) , that often are hardware based, one has to obtain the necessary roms himself. That wouldn't be too hard with a Spectrum emulator, would it? Kristjan Valur Jonsson.