onbjerg / dcpu16 Goto Github PK

There needs to be some simple firmware on the DCPU16 in order to load programs. Most emulators just dump the contents of a program into memory, but I want it to feel a bit more "realistic".

The firmware would try to find some compatible storage device (for now just the M35FD) and read contents from the device into memory.

There was never any official DCPU16 firmware, so this potentially breaks compatibility with all existing DCPU16 programs, unless we can be smart about how the firmware works (e.g. by putting the firmware in high memory as opposed to low memory).

A possible future enhancement to the firmware could be to implement device selection if multiple compatible storage devices are found.

Some relevant information: https://www.reddit.com/r/0x10c/comments/161p6y/dcpu16_booting_mechanism_also_memory_question/

Enable the assembler to assemble multiple files and link them together. This improves the developer experience by allowing them to split up their project in multiple files and reuse files common subroutines and macros.

I can think of two ways to determine the entrypoint of the program in this scenario: either by requiring a special .entry directive or simply just going by the order of the assembled files, e.g. for dasm a.dasm b.dasm the entrypoint would be the first instruction in a.dasm.

Implement preprocessor directives to aid in making programs:

• .dat: Writes one or more literals directly to memory
• .org: Moves the following bytecode segment up to a specific point in memory
• .macro/.macroend: Defines macros