PICE (and PEX) Turbo Toolkit fix v2 CPU Toolkit Turbo
Patch Back to QL Support WEB pageThis is another interesting piece of software. PICE (standing for "nICE Pointer environment") is a partial window redraw utility for Minerva/SMSQ systems which update the internal PE window save buffer in background: i.e. you need PIE (written by L.Wareham) or PEX (written by H.P.Recktenwald). So it covers the gap still missing between our multitasking environment (QDOS+PE+PIE/PEX) and other environments with poor multitasking capabilities but complete screen redrawing (such as Windows). This program is public domain. These are the minimum system requirement to run PICE:
Download PICE v2.1 Download PEX v1.9.3
Here is a skeleton boot file to help you installing PICE and PEX
in your QL system: REMark Example boot file for PICE and PEX TK2_EXT
LRESPR 'ptr_gen' :LRESPR 'wman' :LRESPR 'hot_rext' :REMark Not
required for SMSQ/E systems LRESPR 'pice_rext' :LRESPR 'pex_byt'
PEX_INI:REMark After History device to avoid problems... REMark
Here load other extensions, things, jobs and so on ... REMark At
the end your boot file... PICE 10,50 :PEON
A new version of TURBOFIX has been prepared. This
allows to use the following Turbo Toolkit keywords on Minerva
MultiBasic or SMSQ S-BASIC:
BASIC_POINTER / BASIC_B% / BASIC_W% / BASIC_F / BASIC_L /
BASIC_NAME$
The previous version of Turbofix worked on Minerva but not on
SMSQ. This release is OK on both o/s. I tested TURBOFIX2_BIN with
JM SuperBasic, Minerva Multi-Basic and SMSQ/E SBasic and seems
working without problems. As no technical documentation about
SMSQ/E SBasic is available at the moment I can not assure my
modifications are 100% effective. Anyway it works and that's
sufficient for me :-) Any reports is highly welcomed.
The modifications on TURBOFIX2_BIN concern BASIC_POINTER,
BASIC_F, BASIC_L, BASIC_W%, BASIC_B% and BASIC_NAME$ keywords.
They now work from interpreted SBasic too (not only from Turbo/QLiberated
compiled programs).
Update April 2003: The latest version of Turbo Toolkit fix (Turbofix 3.0d) is available together with MasterBasic. This version is now compatible with the latest SMSQ/E versions and Turbo. Click here to download the package
Acknowledgements
This small toolkit consists of two keywords only. CPUTYPE
tells you the CPU you are using on your system. The second one,
GCSPEED, tells you the actual speed of your (Super) Gold Card and
whether it is possible to use your QL at 24 MHz with a Gold Card
hardware Issue 1/2.
CPUTYPE returns the following values:
This routine has the advantage that it does not use Line-F
exceptions to discover the CPU type, thus avoiding the problem of
screen corruption on the Super Gold Card (this is an "hardware"
bug). The drawback is that we cannot know if the CPU is 68020 or
68030 (but from the programmer point of view there is no
difference at least for things concerning the cache handling),
and if the CPU has FPU or MMU. If you are interested in something
super professional you could get 1) Andreas Rudolf detection
routine which I believe recognise all 680xx "flavours"
comprising MMU/FPU except the 68060 2) CPU recognisation routine
used by C68 (sources are available in the PD)
GCSPEED returns:
24 Gold Card or Super Gold Card running
at 24 MHz
This program allows to use Turbo programs with system variables at any place (ie. Minerva 2nd screen, extended resolution screens like in QPC/QXL). Also the problem of Turbo which for strange reasons reads location $0 should be fixed - this gave troubles on the 68030 Atari TT with QVME (system lock-up!).
Compiling this program with QLiberator (strange the life, isn't it?) you get the new SB keyword TURBO_PATCH which can be called with TURBO_PATCH old_turbo_file$,new_turbo_file$.
This program has been tested with Turbo programs compiled with V2 and V3. Requires Toolkit 2 and Turbo Toolkit.
Update April 2003: the latest freeware Turbo (v4) do not need anymore this patch!
Click here to send me an ... 