That's my mega-commit you've all been waiting for.
The code for the shell share more routines with userspace apps than with kernel
units, because, well, its behavior is that of a userspace app, not a device
driver.
This created a weird situation with libraries and jump tables. Some routine
belonging to the `kernel/` directory felt weird there.
And then comes `apps/basic`, which will likely share even more code with the
shell. I was seeing myself creating huge jump tables to reuse code from the
shell. It didn't feel right.
Moreover, we'll probably want basic-like apps to optionnally replace the shell.
So here I am with this huge change in the project structure. I didn't test all
recipes on hardware yet, I will do later. I might have broken some...
But now, the structure feels better and the line between what belongs to
`kernel` and what belongs to `apps` feels clearer.
Instead of expecting a `USER_CODE` symbol to be set, we expect `.org` to be
set in all userspace glue code. This gives us more flexibility with regards to
how we manage that.
Moreover, instead of making `USER_RAMSTART` mandatory, we make it default to
the end of the binary, which is adequate in a majority of cases.
Will be useful for my upcoming mega-commit... :)
Most of register fiddling routines (which is now the only thing contained
in care.asm) are used by almost all userspace apps, often in inner loops.
That makes the penalty of using jump tables for those a bit too high.
Moreover, it burdens jump tables needlessly.
Because this unit is very small (now that string routines are out), it makes
sense to always include it in binaries.
There's a lot of looping through that table. At first, I wanted to add some
bisecting, but 16-bit additions and multiplications involved made the idea a
bit less appealing. I went with a very basic, hardcoded index which should
speed things quite a bit at a minimal complexity cost.
There's a couple of bit fiddling instructions that didn't have their
IX/IY variant implemented yet and without this commit, each of them
would have required a special routine. Not anymore.
The goal is to avoid mixing those routines with "character devices"
(acia, vpd, kbd) which aren't block devices and have routines that
have different expectations.
This is a first step to fixing #64.
* addHL and subHL affect flags, and are smaller
Most importantly, addHL and subHL now affect the flags as you would expect from a 16 bit addition/subtraction. This seems like it'd be preferred behaviour, however I realise any code relying on it not affecting flags would break. One byte saved in addHL, and two bytes saved in subHL. Due to the branching nature of the original code, it's difficult to compare speeds, subHL is either 1 or 6 cycles faster depending on branching, and addHL is between -1 and 3 cycles faster. If the chance of a carry is 50%, addHL is expected to be a cycle faster, but for a chance of carry below 25% (so a < 0x40) this will be up to a cycle slower.
* Update core.asm
* Reworked one use of addHL
By essentially inlining both addHL and cpHLDE, 100 cycles are saved, but due to the registers not needing preserving, a byte is saved too.
* Corrected spelling error in comment
* Reworked second use of addHL
43 cycles saved, and no more addHL in critical loops. No bytes saved or used.
* Fixed tabs and spacing, and made a comment clearer.
* Clearer comments
* Adopted push/pop notation
I've tested RAM usage when self-assembling and there weren't as high
as I thought. zasm's defaults now use less than 0x1800 bytes of RAM,
making it possible, theoretically for now, for a Sega Master System
to assemble Collapse OS from within itself.
I'm about to split the global registry in two (labels and consts)
and the previous state of registry selection made things murky.
Now it's much better.
During expression parsing, if a local label was parsed, it would
select the local registry and keep that selection, making
subsequent global labels register in the wrong place.
Virgil Dupras
Clanmaster21
luz.paz