Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news
From: Toby Hutton <thutton@cybec.com.au>
Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english
Subject: Re: yet another siocons replacement
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 11:20:36 +1100
Organization: Cybec Pty. Ltd.
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Toby Sargeant wrote:
> 
> Hi,

Hey there,

> 
> In order to address one of the many tool deficiencies that we unix users have
> to suffer, I'm working on another siocons.

Being a unix user myself, I'd be really interested in what you can
produce.

> 
> Rather than this just being yet another beefed up terminal emulator, I'm
> intending to provide an API to the functionality that the standard siocons
> provides. This way, it's trivial for anyone to write any form of interface to
> it.
>
> My primary aim is to provide the ability to read symbols from object files
> (using nm), and annotate disassembly, as an aid to learning to program in R3000
> machine code.

A disassembler?  What does this have to do with serial comms with the
Yaroze?  How would it integrate with the standard siocons stuff within
your API?  (gdb disassembles my code already.  nm already dumps my
object files.)
 
> Depending on whether I find documentation on the R3000 opcode format and the
> HSS protocol, I'll also support RDB, so as to provide simple hooks for
> debugging.

I assume you have the source to the siocons that has already been ported
to unix.  There's probably all the HSS info you need in there.

> 
> It's all written in python, so as long as I can find a good serial I/O module
> for each operating system, this will also work on win95/NT/dos/OS2/MAC.  Long
> live cross platform programming. Python also has excellent support for OLE and
> CORBA, so I'm not planning on leaving the C/C++ programmers (completely) out in
> the cold.

Is CORBA well supported under Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD?

> Suggestions as to things that you'd like to see an API provide above and beyond
> straight mappings of the siocons commands are very much welcomed. Given that I
> would like to see this as a possibilty to create a labour saving device for
> many people out there, the more feedback I have, the easier it is to reach my
> goal.

A really nice way of doing transfers during runtime would be great.  Is
this possible at the moment?  So data could be loaded at the beginning
of levels - a client using your API acts as a persistent storage
interface for the PSX app, down the wire.

The way the current siocons for un*x works sucks, because you can't
break out of it unlike the DOS version.  ESC doesn't work.  'kill' from
a different terminal does.  I'd like to see an app. that works as I
believe psxfer is supposed to - a command that can be batched together
in scripts.  Psxfer doesn't work for me, it always goes into rdb mode,
and doesn't load my models properly.

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Toby.

Toby.

(A different Toby, also in Australia)