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Anyone using the RED editor for BSDC?

PostPosted: July 29th, 2022, 9:18 am
by KenF
BSDC works well on the Altair, but not so the available editors. I have always written code on my Mac or Linux box, then transferred it to the 8085 to compile, but I want to be able to write/compile/run natively. CP/M ED is/was the most unintuitive program ever written IMO, although it has the advantage of working. Nevada edit and Wordmaster also work 'out of the box' but the keybindings passing through Mac/Linux to Minicom to Emulated VT102 are obtuse, to say the least. Shift/Ctl/^[ plus hold your coffee with only two fingers is not all that productive just to move up a page.

I noticed that an editor called RED comes with BSDC and is now supposedly tailored for the compiler suite. The documentation for configuration is straight forward and builds a config file that compiles. But, when linking RED6.C it fails with the message MAIN() not found, and yep, it is missing. I would think that something got dropped when setting up the download at BDSOFT.COM, except that the page has been up for years. I can't be the only person who has hit this problem.

Anybody using the RED editor on the 8080? Or, got a favorite editor that you like?

Ken

Re: Anyone using the RED editor for BDSC?

PostPosted: July 29th, 2022, 10:58 am
by Wayne Parham
I do the same thing that you do - I edit on the PC and then transfer to the Altair.

But a million years ago, I used WordStar. It could save text files without formatting, so I used it in that mode.

I haven't taken the time yet to configure WordStar for my Altair, but I plan to do that. I run a VT-100 clone for a terminal, so I just have to setup for that.

One last thing - I've used BDS C to build a few things, but I've also been looking around at some other C compilers that build directly on the Altair. One is Aztec and the other is HiTech. I haven't started playing with HiTech yet but I've built a few things with Aztec and I like it so far.

Re: Anyone using the RED editor for BSDC?

PostPosted: July 29th, 2022, 3:48 pm
by BillO
I too edit on a PC.

Wayne, o either Aztec or HiTech support floating point?

Re: Anyone using the RED editor for BSDC?

PostPosted: July 30th, 2022, 11:02 am
by Wayne Parham
Aztec has floating point. It even has double.

And it has long too, which would have made my Mandelbrot program much easier to backport.

Kinda wondering about speed too. The same Mandelbrot algorithm, using fixed-point integer math and compiled with cc65 runs significantly faster.

I don't think it's the 6502 processor that's faster than the 8080, I think it's the compiled binary program making the difference. My guess is the BDS-compiled version does a lot more stack operations. Or maybe it's just the Shostak long library - which is mostly written in assembly - but all those weird char[4] conversions might make it slower than having a defined 4-byte type. I dunno.

I haven't tried HiTech yet. I'll give it a go as time permits.

Re: Anyone using the RED editor for BSDC?

PostPosted: August 2nd, 2022, 10:50 am
by Wayne Parham
Sorry we kinda turned this editor thread into a compiler thread.

But since that cat's already outta the bag, I wanted to mention that I don't see any 8080 support in HiTech C. I think it can only produce code for the Z80. The Aztec compiler provides support for both Intel and Zilog chips.