Oct 172019
 

You still love to write programs with the awesome Locomotive BASIC that was delivered directly with the Amstrad CPC? Maybe you still have a BASIC program that you want to run on a modern computer without using an emulator? Great! Then Marco Vieth, well-known for his CPC emulator CPC-Emu, has a solution for you: CPCBasic. It can run you BASIC program in a webbrowser (serverless) and sends its output to the HTML canvas.
To learn more about CPCBasic, head over to the CPCBasic GitHub page and test it by yourself.

Features:

  • Run old an new BASIC programs in a browser
  • “Wrap factor” Speed: Frame Fly and other events in real-time, calculations as fast as possible
  • CPC Basic Unchained: Less restrictions, extended by new features, breaking out of the CPC box
  • BASIC compiler and not just interpreter
  • Lots of memory, no memory full
  • Runs locally without a server (even on mobile devices, but without input)
  • HTML5 / JavaScript without external libraries
Jan 252017
 

A new version of the Z88dk development environment for Z80 based computer (e.g. Amstrad CPC, Cambridge Z88, MSX, Sinclair ZX 81, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, etc.) was released. The release is a transition release on the way to v2.0 which aims on using both, the SDCC compiler and the Small-C compiler, to combine their advantages, which leads to much faster and smaller output binaries. You can choose between using the Small-C compiler with the old and the new C library or use the SDCC compiler with the new C library. The new C library also introduces full C standard compliance to Z88dk.
The newest version can be downloaded from the Z88dk homepage. The source code is available on GitHub.

Changelog:

Package:

  • The win32 and osx packages are complete and now include the zsdcc & zsdcpp binaries. zsdcc is z88dk’s customization of the sdcc compiler. Other users can compile zsdcc from source.
  • A VS2015 solution file is now available in z88dk/win32 for building all z88dk binaries except zsdcc & zsdcpp. Instructions for building zsdcc & zsdcpp can be found in the install instructions link above.

ZCC – Compiler Front End:

  • M4 has been added as an optional macro pre-processor. Any filename ending with extension “.m4” will automatically be passed through M4 and its output written to the original source directory with the “.m4” extension stripped prior to further processing. The intention is to allow source files like “foo.c.m4”, “foo.asm.m4”, “foo.h.m4” and so on to be processed by M4 and then that result to be processed further according to the remaining file extension.
  • In conjunction with the above, a collection of useful M4 macros has been started in “z88dk.m4” that can be included in any “.m4” file processed by zcc. Currently macros implementing for-loops and foreach-loops are defined.
  • List files ending with extension “.lst” can be used to specify a list of source files for the current compile, one filename per line. The list file is specified on the compile line with prefix @ as in “@foo.lst”. List files can contain any source files of any type understood by zcc and individual lines can be commented out with a leading semicolon. Paths of files listed in list files can be made relative to the list file itself (default) or relative to the directory where zcc was invoked (–listcwd). List files can list other list files, identified with leading ‘@’.
  • zcc now processes all files it is given to the final output file type specified. For example, with “-E” specified, all listed .c files will be run through the C pre-processor individually and all output copied to the output directory. Previous to this, only the first file listed was processed unless a binary was being built.
  • -v gives more information on what steps zcc takes to process each source file.
  • -x now builds a library out of the source files listed.
  • -c by itself will generate individual object files for each input source file. However, if -c is coupled with an output filename as in “-o name”, a single consolidated object file will now be built instead of individual ones. The intention is to provide a means to generate identical code in separate compiles by allowing this single object file to be specified on different compile lines.
  • Better error reporting for source files with unrecognized types.
  • Better parsing for compile line pragmas; pragma integer parameters can now be in decimal, hexadecimal or octal.
  • -pragma-include added to allow a list of compile time pragmas to be read from a file as in “-pragma-include:zpragma.inc”. This way projects can consolidate pragmas in one location; this is especially important for the new c library which uses pragmas extensively to customize the crt.
  • -pragma-export added, is similar to -pragma-define but the assembly label defined as a constant on the compile line is made public so that its value is visible across all source files.
  • –list will generate “.lis” files for each source file in a compile to a binary. The “.lis” file is an assembly listing of source prior to input to the linker.
  • –c-code-in-asm causes C code to be interspersed as comments in any generated assembly listing associated with C source files.
  • “.s” files are now understood by zcc to be asz80-syntax assembly language source files. This allows sdcc project files written in assembly language to be assembled by z88dk. asz80 mnemonics are non-standard so zcc attempts to translate to standard zilog mnemonics before assembling. You can see the translation to standard zilog form by using “-a” on a compile line. This is still a work-in-progress feature.
  • –no-crt allows compiles to proceed without using the library’s supplied crt for a target. The first file listed on a compile line will stand in as the crt and will be responsible for initialization and setting up the memory map.
  • Temporary files are always created in the temp directory. The option “-notemp” has been removed.
  • Library and include search paths have been fixed to honour the order specified on the compile line. This allows the user to override library functions when desired.
  • Source files are now processed from their original location so that includes can be properly resolved. Previously this was only done for .c files but this now applies to other file types.
  • clang/llvm compilation is in an experimental state.

Continue reading »

Dec 242015
 

A new version of the Z88dk development environment for Z80 based computer (e.g. Amstrad CPC, Cambridge Z88, MSX, Sinclair ZX 81, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, etc.) was just released. The release is a transition release on the way to v2.0 which aims on using the SDCC compiler instead of the Small-C compiler, which was used before. This leads to much faster and smaller output binaries. You can choose between using the Small-C compiler with the old and the new C library or use the SDCC compiler with the new C library. The new C library also introduces full C standard compliance to Z88dk.
The newest version can be downloaded from the Z88dk homepage.

(Brief) Changelog:

  • [z80asm] Sections have been introduced for generating memory maps and compiling to bankswitched memory.
  • [z80asm] Modern logical operators have been adopted.
  • [z80asm] New scoping keywords PUBLIC, EXTERN and GLOBAL introduced.
  • [z80asm] Relocate files are generated for output binaries for patching assembled code to a new address at load time.
  • [sccz80] Numerous bugfixes.
  • [sdcc] SDCC is now fully supported as alternate C compiler for the new C library.
  • [sdcc] SDCC’s generated code is improved by a large set of aggressive peephole rules (use -SO3 to enable).
  • [sdcc] SDCC’s calls to its primitive functions are modified to use callee linkage.
  • [new c lib] New C library written in assembly language from scratch aiming for a subset of C11 compliance.  Contains more than 700 functions currently.
  • [new c lib] Stdio made object-oriented so that drivers can inherit library code to implement features with a minimal amount of additional code.
  • [new c lib] Stdio base classes currently include serial character i/o and terminal i/o implementing windows and proportional fonts.  Disk i/o is missing in this release.
  • [new c lib] Unique stdio implementation allows removal of high level buffers without affecting performance.
  • [new c lib] Many functions from GNU and POSIX are present beyond the C11 standard.
  • [new c lib] Many unique libraries including some C++ STL containers, data compression, obstacks, game libraries, sound, fzx proportional fonts, etc.  The new C lib contains libraries not present in the classic C lib and vice versa.  Over time the two libraries will homogenize.
  • [new c lib] CRTs are supplied for three initial targets:  embedded (generic z80), cpm, zx (zx spectrum).  Specialized crts allow immediate compilation without customization by the user.
  • [new c lib] The library and crts are highly configurable at library build time and at compile time.  Options allow easy generation of binaries for ROM or RAM targets.
  • [tools] New tool ticks is a command line z80 emulator able to exactly measure execution time of a code block.
  • [tools] New tool dzx7 is a decompressor counterpart to zx7.
  • [tools] New tool zx7 is an optimal lz77/lzss data compressor with companion decompression subroutines in the z80 library.
  • [appmake] +rom added to manipulate raw binaries; options include code injection, extraction and conversion to intel hex format.

 

Mar 152012
 

Dinoneno released his new Amstrad CPC Basic cross-compiler. With this compiler you can write Locomotive Basic programs (with some smaller differences to optimise speed) on your PC and compile them into Z80 assembler, CCZ80 C code or directly to a CPC Basic program. The compiler is also able to directly create cassette images (CDT), disk images (DSK) or snapshot files (SNA) to use the program directly in an emulator. It uses the .NET framework, so it will run under Windows, but you can also use the compiler unter Linux with Mono or Mac OS with wine.
To help you programming Basic programs, the compiler also comes with a small IDE, which look like… Well, you should discover it by yourself :D.

You can find more information (e.g. about the differences) and the download on the CPC Basic 3 homepage.

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Jan 132011
 

Emilio Guerrero released a new version of his CCZ80 compiler which understands C style code and is aimed for Z80 CPUs.

Here are the new features / bugfixes of the new version:

  • Use Microsoft .NET 4 Client Profile to reduce the requirements for the computer.
  • Add some optimizations for generated code.
  • ccz80 IDE and sprUtilCPC sprites editor for Amstrad CPC is also compiled to Microsoft .NET 4 Client Profile.
  • Syntax files for editors adapted to ccz80 version 3.
  • Fixed and improved the application and documentation for ImgEditSprUtilCPC to design sprites to use with sprUtilCPC.
  • Included setup utility to download and install the compiler, documentation, tools, etc.
  • New IDE version 2.
  • ccz80 IDE minor improvements and documentation.

You can download it from the CCZ80 homepage.

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