[Coco] mess questions

[tim lindner]

John R. Hogerhuis <jhoger at pobox.com> wrote:

> a) how do I get into the debugger? Is this part of xmess by default or
> do I need to recompile? The User Interface menu shows Toggle Debugger on
> F5 but that doesn't seem to do anything

Yes, you need to recompile. See this in the makefile:

# Uncomment the next lines to build xmame with a built-in debugger (only
# supported for X11 and SVGALib). Only enable this if you need it -- if
# you want to develop drivers, that is, since it slows down xmame 
# considerably.
# DEBUG = 1

> b) How do I fix the ridiculous keyboard mapping to PC style (I know *why
> * it is the way it is, I just want to know how to fix it...)

I am not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about how you have to
press Shift-2 for a Quote on the CoCo? Or something else?

> c) Quick easy way to load cross compiled machine language programs into
> mess? I'm trying to create a ROM-based Forth interpreter which takes
> full advantage of the Coco 3... starting with a port of CamelForth 6809
> (that part should be easy, I've already done it for the Tandy WP-2 Z80
> CamelForth).

Here are some options:

1. Use imgtool to copy the DECB executable to a disk image.

2. Assemble to a ROM and replace the coco3.bin ROM in your coco3.zip
BIOS file. You'll get a CRC mismatch warning every time you start up.
But you'll have complete control of the CoCo.

3. Create a cartridge ROM and use the -cart command line option. The
CoCo 3 supports 32K ROMs. It will be mapped into the top half of the
address space. But after BASIC starts and jumps to $C000 only 8K will be
avaiable. You have to adjust the GIME to map in the whole 32K.

-- 
tim lindner
tlindner at ix.netcom.com                                            Bright