[Coco] No more dream ports (Was:Wolfenstein 3-D on a 4.77mhz 8088? So, 6809 port, anyone?)

[Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus)]

better text editors, better assemblers, more powerful macros, instant
assembling time, launching the code on emulator, etc.

How much time can you gain with the modern tools ? Not to mention all the
documentation available and indexed.


On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Steve Bjork <6809er at srbsoftware.com>wrote:

> On 4/24/2013 7:33 PM, Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus) wrote:
>
>> Of course I was talking to make from scratch and not port, also C on coco
>> sucks.
>>
>> I do agree with all hardware limitations and I never dreamed about a
>> wolf-3d clone but some sort of 3d game with some texture mapping.
>>
>> But one thing we have now: new tools that allows us to squeeze every cpu
>> cycle on those CPUs and emulators to debug and test it line by line. just
>> look at the C64 demo scene to see how far they went. but of course, as I
>> said demo is not a game. a demo is all controlled and cycle counted.
>>
>>  What do you mean by the new tools that we have now?
>
> When I was coding for the CoCo, I had everything I needed to squeeze every
> CPU cycle of the CoCo.  (Remember, 25% of my coding time was used for
> creating the tools used in my coding.)  I see nothing that came out since I
> work the CoCo to make for faster code.  Yes, we have learned a few new
> technique in writing code or using the hardware.  But still, these
> technique only give us a few percent of game improvement.
>
> I never had the need for emulators or debuggers.  My code had a developer
> OS built in.  This would give me the timing/resource information on very
> code/graphic object in the game.  (I would remove the OS when creating the
> final version for sell.)  As for debugging, I only needed to look at the
> source code or the timing/resource information to know what was going and
> how to fix.
>
> As for squeeze every CPU cycle, I knew the timing cycle and byte count of
> every instruction that I wrote.  Little things like using the LDY was
> really the LDX instruction with a Pre-Byte header before it.  So, I try not
> to use the Y register since loading took an extra clock and extra byte.
>  (It should be noted that LEAX and LEAY was the same speed and size.)
>
> Back in those days, we coded "down to the metal."  We knew just how the
> 6809 and the CoCo's hardware work.  This is something that's lost on modern
> coders.  Once a year, I still give a talk at UCLA to the new programmers
> for one of my old professors. (Well, his replacement since he retired a
> decade ago.) My two hour talk covers how to "know and own your code" and
> cut out the waste.  After all, wasteful code cost money.
>
> Yes, we will learn new ways to do things.  But none of the new technique
> will make CoCo any newer than a 30 year old computer.
>
> Steve
>
>
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>



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Long live the CoCo