Brasstacks

Having hacked on the COMFY code for a while in Emacs Lisp, I got the itch to move it over to my MacIvory, which has been waiting for real work to do. I've crafted some tests in the Emacs Lisp using elk-test (trying to add heirarchical suites-of-suites along the way), and wanted to port them to one of the Common Lisp test frameworks (I'm thinking of checking out Stefil, LIFT, and rt, which I've used briefly). While copying the files, I ran into a few issues. I couldn't figure out an automatic way to handle line-ending issues in the text files. I ended up locating the file on the Mac OS side in the file browser, Mouse-R clicking to Edit the file, then M-%, C-q [LINE key] [Return] C-q [Return] [Return] ! in Zmacs, then saving to a file on the Ivory file system. (I like the offer to create non-existent directories on a save.) There is probably a Copy File(s) command I could have used to move them en masse, and I should have been able to code up a quick conversion routine...

I've been working a bit with Baker's COMFY-6502 code; a few notes of what I have learned so far. First, a couple of tiny bugs in the genbrc ; the code miscounts the size of the branch instructions, meaning that (- l 2) should be a (+ l 2) and so on. I found it handy to enumerate each clause of the cond. Each clause handles a particular case, such as when the "lose" continuation can be reached by a short branch instruction, while the "win" continuation is far enough away to require an absolute jump. Second, genbrc , genbr , and compile all provide the address of the resulting "continuation" as the return value. This is perhaps clear when one traces out all the recursion, but it isn't explicitly mentioned. One interesting case is genbrc when the "win" and "lose" branch destinations are the same: one could simply emit an unconditional branch to that destination, and return the address of that branch but actually returning t...

Working with ResEdit and DeRez, I believe I have traced out the keyboard protocol used by the MacIvory ADB adapter . My adapter is on the blink, probably because of the small screw I found rattling about inside. I hope DKS can bring it back to life, or the PIC-based project I had begun will make its way back to the front burner.

The ADB adapter has not just given me some help uncovering the behavior of the Rev. C Symbolics keyboard protocol, but also works when attached to my MacIvory. Along the way (and with the help of David K. Schmidt) I encountered some glitches, mostly stemming from my original accidental trashing of the System file DKS installed. There are a few software components the ADB adapter box needs to convert the Symbolics keyboard to something the Mac OS 7.6.1 (including the "FEP" window which communicates to the Ivory board on a low level) will accept as a keyboard with the right keymapping, and furthermore to something the Genera application will recognize with all the Symbolics-specific keys. Without these components, you will see one of the following two stages of malfunction. Stage 1: The mouse connected to the ADB adapter works fine. In the Mac OS (including the FEP window), there is total keyboard confusion, with the keys all scrambled. On the Genera side, things are less ...

The ADB adapter has fulfilled its main purpose: providing an example of hardware which can speak to my Rev. C Symbolics keyboard. The apparent trick is that the clock pulses must be narrow, without being too rapid (i.e., a relatively low duty cycle.) A 10 microsecond long low pulse on /CLR, followed 30 microseconds after the beginning of that pulse by the clock going low for roughly 9 microseconds, continuing with a clock period of approximately 50 microseconds does the trick. The ADB adapter pauses somewhat between groups of 11 clock pulses, corresponding to the natural "section breaks" of the keyboard mapping; I don't know if that is strictly necessary. My first crude approximation, using bit-bashing for the PIC with timing loops resulted in Caps Lock and Mode Lock that felt a bit sluggish---needing to be held down relatively long to "lock" or "unlock." The overall cycle time may be important in that regard. In any event, I reconstructed the key...

I encountered Henry G. Baker's COMFY compiler a couple years ago. ( Baker's site contains a text article , a TeX format article, and an Emacs Lisp implementation . The ACM published the two articles COMFY theory and COMFY-65 ) COMFY is not a very high-level language, in the conventional sense, but is an attempt to provide a clean but simple set of control structures on top of conventional machine code. Baker calls it 'medium-level.' The resulting compiler is very small; its main task in life is to automate the generation of branch instructions, which is one of the tedious parts of tightly optimizing assembly programs. Yet it allows as well for arbitrary Lisp-style macros. I found the concept intriguing, but I found the article and the compiler code itself rather obscure. Part of the obscurity is the unconventional names for the 6502 operations, unconventional notation for the addressing modes, and decimal numbers for opcodes (because Emacs Lisp does not accept o...

David K. Schmidt evidently scrounged up another ADB converter box which he just sold to me. Assuming I haven't blown up my Symbolics keyboard, I may finally have what I wanted: a piece of hardware that knows how to talk to my Rev. C keyboard! I hope that will shorten the time to coerce my PIC circuit to do the same.