ATALAN - new programming language for 6502

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rudla.kudla
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ATALAN - new programming language for 6502

Post by rudla.kudla »

Hi,

I'm developing new high level programming language for 6502 processors - ATALAN. You can find out more about it at http://atalan.kutululu.org/.

The language is still under development but it can already be used to develop games (even by someone else than me :-). See http://atalan.kutululu.org/projects.html
I would also claim, that it already produces very good code.

ATALAN currently supports 8-bit ATARI line of computers and I would like to expand the support to other platforms and to lure some programmers from other platforms to try the language.

Is there someone willing to try to create (with my extensive help, of course) platform definition files for NES system?
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Dbug
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Post by Dbug »

Asking on an Oric forum for a Nintendo Entertainment System platform definition file seems a bit strange to me.
rudla.kudla
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Post by rudla.kudla »

Oops, sorry. I asked the same question on NES forum and forgot to modify the text.

Of course here I am asking for help with files for Oric.

I apologize for the confusion.
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Hi there.

Been having a look at the ATALAN website and I must say it looks very interesting. Congratulations for such a nice project.

I usually develop things directly in ASM (though sometimes I prototype in C), and I don't think I'll change anytime soon, but still having such a language is very interesting.

I just cannot help in a possible Oric platform target. I am so busy right now that I had to put Oric things aside for the time being, but I hope you find someone interested.
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Dbug
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Post by Dbug »

Guess you could give a brief explanation of what is necessary for making this platform definition file?
rudla.kudla
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Post by rudla.kudla »

Surely I will provide some info.

I decided to make the first version, which will be able to compile some simple application for Atmos (Hello world), as that would be probably too hard for anyone than me to make that step (at least until at least two platforms are supported).

OSDK is very helpful.

I'm using MADS assembler that is used for Atari too to compile the generated code - it's quite powerful and I have already found a way how to tell it to generate Atmos TAP files directly (without need for Header command).

Then it should be just a matter of defining names and locations of input/output registers, location of video ram etc.
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Post by rudla.kudla »

So, Atalan can now compile programs for Oric now.

There's not much, it can currently do, until more hardware registers and some functions are defined, but small demo program already sucesfully writes Hello World to the screen.

I'm using Oricutron to test the compiled executable files.

I believe, it may be best to avoid using ROM (even switch it off, I don't exactly understand if this is possible or some extra hardware is needed for this) as there are not so many usefull routines and it uses almost complete ZP. (Also the extra free memory would be very nice).

Anyways, to define access to hardware register (or video ram), you can define it like this:

[in|out] name@address:type

for example

out DDRB@$0302:byte

As I see it, ORIC will need some support routines to read keyboard, joystick etc. However someone who has experience with developing on ORIC will know this better then me, with some 4 hours ORIC experience :-)

Now the question is, whether someone wants to continue and create something like OSDK with Atalan :-)
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