Hi-Soft experience ?

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cborn
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Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by cborn »

Hello
i found this disassembly from Hi-Soft C
https://github.com/oldcompcz/HiSoft-C
its partly asm and partly C???
i did NOT test it at all, i just found it, thats all.
do people perhaps have some experinece with it?
i used Hisoft on MGT but i still was a very big newbie on C and all i did was some type-inns and have some crosbend fingers becouse off the awfull typing.
it would function much better wit a decend text editor like eg Tornado fro RoKo has for z80 asm on zx + opus or disciple.
btw, i dont know if it would be legal to addapt hisoft into z88dk, thats Not why i link it
for having a 'native c-compiler' its very good and perhaps Now very addaptable....but i just speak in small dreams now ...
with demo parties there are those live painting tasks... with a 25 hz flip between screen en compiler PERHAPS such is possible... dream on.....
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jorgegv
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by jorgegv »

I have downloaded the cc.asm file on that page, and it seems pure assembler, no C code inside. The strange chars at the right are formatted as comments, and are the HEX and ASCII dump of the ASM opcodes on the left. I was able to assemble it with z88dk-z80asm, I just needed to make a couple of trivial fixes (single to double quotes in 3 places).

I'm not sure what's the point of a native compiler on the ZX, given its limitations: the editor is pretty limited, and also the optimization capabilities compared to the cross-development chains will probably be almost non-existent. Even at the final days of 8-bit development, games were being already cross-developed on PC because of the limitations of the native platforms, and then so much more for today.

May I ask why do you think "having a native c-compiler is very good"?
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jorgegv
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by jorgegv »

Hi again,

I got it to compile to a TAP file with the following commands. The first command gives 3 errors, just edit the CC.ASM file and replace the single quotes for double quotes in the error lines:

Code: Select all

zcc +zx cc.asm -o cc.bin --no-crt
z88dk-appmake +zx --org 25200 -b cc.bin -o cc.tap
Then started it on FUSE with:

Code: Select all

fuse --machine 48 cc.tap
cborn
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by cborn »

Hi, thanks for testing and mentioning the " and ' difference. I later saw that its indeed almost pure asm, sorry.
I used my zx as pc in the nineties and i had my first C experience with hisoft on my MGT Disciple discdrive.
I think its good to have that native c compiler becouse C is a very common language etc.
Further there is that "live painting" with complier text and a moving picture on 1 screen. Since i wrote a gigascreen simulator i have a simplstic idear it would be possible and funny to create that app used on PC back to an 8bit environment. ZX 128 has actualy 2 screens so thats a bit easier. And for a practicle use it would need that native complier with all restiction comming. My C is despite my attempts still very terrible and if i start with this idear i probably end up putting asm in C. Reading the hisoft file hopefully will help me a bit.
Hisoft seems to have an stdio.h only and the rest still has to be build.
perhaps some one build a library already in the old times. I did severall type-inn myself, thats all actually.
cheers
stefano
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by stefano »

Regarding the opportunity to have a native compiler HiSoft C is the historical option for the zx Spectrum.
There's probably little useful to gather for z88dk, anyway, but for sure many ideas, or even code portions (where legal) came from old tools and were used in z88dk.
A very interesting hack I saw time ago was a cp/m 2 port for the Spectrum, with base address shifted to be run on non-plus3 machines. It included a port of BDS C and worked perfectly.
cborn
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by cborn »

From Hisoft its mentioned aswell that its based on BDS C. There are some treads here about.
And i would like to try cp/m on zx 128. I have some 8-inch didkettes with it but i doubt there is any zx hardware to support those.
Hopefully some one still has some old hisoft diskettes and is able to put them on internet to share.
I should have a look for my own type-inn disc aswell.
Jorge showed thats its possible to build hisoft with z88, thats a good messegas for me, being half a nono... ;-)
stefano
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by stefano »

I never knew that Hisoft C came from BDS C !
By the way, I think the cp/m port I was referring to is the qorum's spectrum clone one:

https://sudonull.com/post/157918-CP-M-8 ... m-Spectrum
https://github.com/atsidaev/quorum-cpm
cborn
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Re: Hi-Soft experience ?

Post by cborn »

stefano wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 9:12 am I never knew that Hisoft C came from BDS C !
pavel-krivanek mentions it in the introduction
By the way, I think the cp/m port I was referring to is the qorum's spectrum clone one:
https://sudonull.com/post/157918-CP-M-8 ... m-Spectrum
https://github.com/atsidaev/quorum-cpm
if its all z80 based i probably can read off it.

I found the booklet with the type-inn i did
https://archive.org/details/manualzilla ... 7/mode/2up
there is a txt based version so that makes it easy to copie it.
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