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AnachronautandClaude Opus 5 66e7b84272 The screen is two banks: an atlas and a screen
Tiles and colours are written when a program loads; the map is written
whenever anything moves. Sharing one 64K bank made them compete for room
neither needed all of, and had a worse consequence than being cramped: a
bitmap covers the whole bank, so entering bitmap mode destroyed the font.
A program could not draw a picture and then say anything about it.

Split, each gets a whole bank. The atlas holds the tiles and the palette,
the screen holds the map or a bitmap, and a picture now costs the map and
nothing else. It also leaves 48K free in the atlas, which is where the
sprite table and a second page of tiles are going.

No new mechanism was needed. A bank is registered by naming the port that
owns it, so a device with two banks needs two ports that own memory: the
base port keeps the atlas, since tiles have been at 0x0000 since there was
a screen at all, and 0x3A owns the screen. The registry now answers
honestly about which ports in the block bring memory, where it used to say
all sixteen did.

CosmOS never addresses video memory except in one place - the screen save,
which walks 196 pages of it. The page number already says which bank a page
is in, so screenBankFor works it out rather than keeping a second list
beside screenPageFor. Grid and picture.asm register both banks; colours.asm
only touches the palette and needed none of it.

Tests/video.sh names the memory every write is for, because an address
cannot: tile 5 and bitmap pixel 5 are both 0x0005, and a helper that
guessed would be right for the tiles and silently wrong for a picture.

And picture.asm gained a check, because this change broke it and nothing
noticed - registering the second bank leaves DestBank pointing at it, so
the palette went into the wrong one and the picture came out black. It was
the only thing here found by looking rather than by a test.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01E2JrLzFvuFX9fgi1LDRjrW
2026-09-02 10:09:53 -04:00

467 lines
13 KiB
NASM

; Grid, the first program to use the screen as a screen.
;
; Everything drawn on this machine so far has been text or a bitmap. The tile engine has
; been there since the screen was built and nothing had touched it: the console uses it,
; but only ever to put a letter in a cell, which is the one thing it can do that a plain
; character display could do too.
;
; This redefines a tile, fills a map bigger than the screen with it, and then scrolls that
; map by writing ONE BYTE A FRAME. No memory moves. The rows above and below the screen are
; already there, so what a scroll costs is not the 2,000 bytes of a screenful but the one
; byte that says which row is on top.
;
; ---- Where its tiles live ----
;
; At 200, and the font is why. The machine wakes with the font in tile memory - glyph n at
; tile n, for 135 of the 256 - so a program that starts writing tiles at zero paints over
; the alphabet and the shell it is going to hand the machine back to. Above 135 is empty and
; nobody else's, so nothing here has to be put back afterwards except the map.
;
; Written by Anachronaut
#Include services.asm
#Program
#Base 0x5000
start:
; ---- Reaching video memory ----
;
; The CPU cannot touch it. It belongs to the device, and the only way in is to give it a
; bank number and go through the memory controller - the same as the disk's buffer.
;
; FOUR, BECAUSE THREE IS THE DISK'S. Bank numbers are one namespace for the whole machine
; and nothing hands them out: 0 is Program Memory, 1 is Data, 2 is the bank table, and
; CosmOS gives 3 to the disk's buffer when it mounts. This asked for 3, which does not
; fail - it succeeds, and the disk's buffer quietly becomes the screen. Every read the
; filesystem made after that came out of video memory, so the shell found an empty disk
; and could not start anything by name. Nothing said a word.
; TWO BANKS, because the screen has two. The atlas holds the tiles and the palette and is
; written when a program starts; the screen holds the map and is written as things move.
; They are separate memories, so a bank number reaches one or the other and never both -
; which is the whole of what this program had to learn when they were split apart.
INIA 0d4
OUTA 0xE3 ; DestBank: the number it will answer to.
INIA 0x30
OUTA 0xE2 ; SourceLow: the port of the device that owns it.
INIA 0x03
OUTA 0xE8 ; RegisterBank. Four is the atlas.
INIA 0d5
OUTA 0xE3
INIA 0x3A
OUTA 0xE2 ; And the port that owns the screen.
INIA 0x03
OUTA 0xE8 ; RegisterBank. Five is the map.
; ---- Asking for the screen back afterwards ----
;
; Everything below overwrites a tile, all sixteen colour schemes and every cell of the map,
; and none of that is this program's to keep. The system puts it somewhere and gives it back
; at exit - and if it says it cannot, this carries on anyway, because it did before there
; was anywhere to put it.
SWI osTakeScreen
MVQA
SETD.0 ScreenKept
STA.0 ; Nought means the system will put it back.
CALL putTile
CALL putPalette
CALL putMap
; Key mode, so that a key arrives when it is pressed rather than when Return is. Put back
; before this returns, and CosmOS puts it back too if a program forgets.
INIA 0x01
OUTA 0x02
; ---- The loop ----
;
; A frame, then one pixel down and one across. This used to move a whole cell every fourth
; frame, because a cell was as fine as the screen could be moved - eight pixels at a time,
; which reads as the picture jumping rather than travelling.
everyFrame:
CALL waitFrame
; Anything typed ends it. Asked for, never waited for: the console holds the key until
; somebody wants it, so nothing pressed between frames is lost.
INA 0x01
INIB 0x01 ; READY
AND
BNQ finished
; ---- A pixel down, and the cell it belongs to ----
;
; Fine is the low three bits of the register and does not carry, so this does: eight steps
; inside the cell and then one step of the origin. The AND is both the wrap and the test -
; Q coming out as nought is exactly the moment the cell boundary was crossed.
SETD.0 FineDown
LDA.0
INCA
INIB 0x07
AND
STQ.0
OUTQ 0x38
BNQ stepAcross
; The map is 128 rows against a screen of 25 or 50, so the origin walks a ring: what leaves
; the top has not gone anywhere and comes back round.
SETD.0 OriginDown
LDA.0
INCA
INIB 0x7F
AND
STQ.0
OUTQ 0x34
stepAcross:
; And the same sideways, which is the axis that did not exist at all until now. There are
; 128 columns against the 80 shown, so this ring is shallower but it is the same ring.
SETD.0 FineAcross
LDA.0
INCA
INIB 0x07
AND
STQ.0
OUTQ 0x37
BNQ everyFrame
SETD.0 OriginAcross
LDA.0
INCA
INIB 0x7F
AND
STQ.0
OUTQ 0x36
BRI everyFrame
finished:
; The key that stopped it, taken so the shell does not find it waiting.
INA 0x00
; ---- Putting the screen back ----
;
; ---- What used to be here ----
;
; Four scroll registers put back, the whole map filled with spaces, the cursor sent home,
; and palette bank 0 written out by hand - and it was STILL wrong, because the other fifteen
; banks kept this program's colours and there was nowhere to have put the real ones.
;
; All of it is osTakeScreen's now, and it gives back what was actually there rather than
; what a clean machine looks like.
;
; ---- Unless it said no ----
;
; A machine with no volatile drive has nowhere to keep a screen, and answers so. Being told
; no is not a fault and not a reason to stop: it means doing what this program did before
; there was anywhere to put one, which is leaving a blank screen rather than a grid with
; somebody's prompt printed into it.
SETD.0 ScreenKept
LDA.0
BRA gridScreenKept
RSTA
OUTA 0x34
OUTA 0x36 ; The origins, or the shell looks at a corner of the map.
INIA 0d5
OUTA 0xE3
INIA 0x40
OUTA 0xE4
RSTA
OUTA 0xE5
OUTA 0xE2 ; Tile nought is the space and attribute nought is plain.
INIA 0x80
OUTA 0xE6
RSTA
OUTA 0xE7
INIA 0x02
OUTA 0xE8 ; Fill the whole map with it.
; And the colours the machine wakes up in, which is as near as this can get to the ones it
; took: grey on black is what plain text has always been here.
INIA 0d4
OUTA 0xE3
INIA 0xFC
OUTA 0xE4
RSTA
OUTA 0xE5
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
INIA 0xD8
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
RSTA
OUTA 0xE9
INIA 0x01
OUTA 0x05 ; Cleared, which also puts the cursor home.
gridScreenKept:
RSTA
OUTA 0x02 ; Line mode, the way it was found.
RSTA ; splitlint[redundant-assignment]: an exit status, not a mode
SWI osExit
; ---- A frame ----
;
; Asked for rather than waited on with an interrupt. Polling costs a program nothing it
; needs here and saves installing a vector, and the status bit is honest: reading it is what
; answers it, so this cannot see the same frame twice.
waitFrame:
INA 0x30
INIB 0x01
AND
BRQ waitFrame
RET
; ---- The tile ----
;
; Blitted rather than written a byte at a time, because it is already sixty four bytes of
; Data Segment and the controller will move it in one command. Tile n starts at n times 64,
; so tile 200 starts at 12,800, which is 0x3200.
putTile:
INIA 0x01
OUTA 0xE0 ; SourceBank: Data Memory.
; The pointer BEFORE storing through it. Written the other way round the first time, which
; assembles perfectly and stores the address into wherever DP1 was last left - so the blit
; read its sixty four bytes from nowhere in particular and tile 200 came out as noise.
SETD.1 TileArtAt
SETD.0 TileArt
STD.0.1
LDA.1
OUTA 0xE1
INCD.1
LDA.1
OUTA 0xE2
INIA 0d4
OUTA 0xE3
INIA 0x32
OUTA 0xE4
RSTA
OUTA 0xE5
OUTA 0xE6
INIA 0d64
OUTA 0xE7
INIA 0x01
OUTA 0xE8 ; Blit.
RET
; ---- The colours ----
;
; The tile is drawn in indices 0 and 1, and the low nibble of a cell's attribute is ADDED to
; every index in it, sixteen at a time. So the same sixty four bytes appear in sixteen colour
; schemes, and what this writes is those schemes: entry 16n is the ground and 16n+1 the line.
; Nothing is duplicated to get them.
;
; ---- Nothing here works out an address ----
;
; The first try computed where entry 16n lives - 0xFC00 plus 64n - and was wrong twice for
; the same reason, which is that this machine cannot multiply and pretending otherwise is
; where the bugs go. 64n reaches 960, so the address spans four pages and the high byte moves
; too; and doubling A by adding B to it needs B to hold A first, which RSTB is the opposite
; of.
;
; So it writes all 256 entries in order and never computes anything. The controller's Data
; port steps the address on after every byte, so the whole palette is one sweep of 1,024
; writes with no arithmetic in it at all. The colours that change do so by adding sixteen to
; a running value, which is the same reason.
putPalette:
INIA 0d4
OUTA 0xE3
INIA 0xFC
OUTA 0xE4
RSTA
OUTA 0xE5
SETD.0 Scheme
STA.0
SETD.0 LineRed
STA.0
INIA 0xFF
SETD.0 LineGreen
STA.0
everyScheme:
; Entry 16n, the ground: the same dark under every scheme.
INIA 0d16
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
INIA 0d24
OUTA 0xE9
RSTA
OUTA 0xE9
; Entry 16n+1, the line: more red and less green the further down the map it is, so that
; scrolling is visibly going somewhere rather than showing the same row again.
SETD.0 LineRed
LDA.0
OUTA 0xE9
SETD.0 LineGreen
LDA.0
OUTA 0xE9
INIA 0d96
OUTA 0xE9
RSTA
OUTA 0xE9
; The fourteen this tile never asks for. Written anyway, because the sweep is what keeps
; the address right and skipping them would mean working one out.
INIA 0d14
SETD.0 Spare
STA.0
everySpare:
RSTA
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
OUTA 0xE9
SETD.0 Spare
LDA.0
DECA
STA.0
BNA everySpare
SETD.0 LineRed
LDA.0
INIB 0d16
CCF
ADD
STQ.0
SETD.0 LineGreen
LDA.0
CCF
SUB ; B is still sixteen, from the red just above.
STQ.0
SETD.0 Scheme
LDA.0
INCA
STA.0
CCF
SUB ; And still sixteen here, which is also how many schemes there are.
BNQ everyScheme
RET
; ---- The map ----
;
; All 128 rows, not the 25 the screen shows. That is the whole point of a map bigger than
; the screen: the rows above and below are already drawn, so scrolling is a change of origin
; rather than a change of anything.
;
; A ROW IS A PAGE, which is why the row number is written straight into DestHigh and the
; column arithmetic disappears. The controller's Data port steps the address on after every
; byte, so a row is a loop over two writes with no address handling in it at all.
putMap:
RSTA
SETD.0 MapRow
STA.0
everyRow:
INIA 0d5
OUTA 0xE3
SETD.0 MapRow
LDA.0
INIB 0x40
CCF
ADD
OUTQ 0xE4 ; The map starts at 0x4000 and a row is a page.
RSTA
OUTA 0xE5
; The attribute is the row number's low nibble, so the schemes band down the map and
; repeat every sixteen rows. DP0 is still MapRow, from the row's address above.
LDA.0
INIB 0x0F
AND
SETD.0 RowAttribute
STQ.0
; ---- The map's width, which is not the screen's ----
;
; A hundred and twenty-eight, because that is how many cells a map row holds: 256 bytes at
; two bytes a cell, whatever mode the screen is in. It is a property of video memory rather
; than of the display, so there is no register to ask and nothing to ask it of.
;
; This said forty first, and filled half of an eighty column screen. Then it asked the
; screen how wide it was, which fixed what could be seen and was still wrong: scrolling
; sideways walked off the 80 filled columns into the 48 that were not, and the grid went
; blank for six seconds before coming round again.
;
; ASKING THE SCREEN IS RIGHT FOR FILLING A SCREEN AND WRONG FOR FILLING A MAP. A program
; that writes one screenful wants the window; a program that scrolls wants everything the
; window can be moved over.
INIA 0d128
SETD.0 RowCells
STA.0
everyCell:
INIA 0d200
OUTA 0xE9
SETD.0 RowAttribute
LDA.0
OUTA 0xE9
SETD.0 RowCells
LDA.0
DECA
STA.0
BNA everyCell
SETD.0 MapRow
LDA.0
INCA
STA.0
INIB 0x80
CCF
SUB
BNQ everyRow
RET
#Data
#Base 0x3000
ScreenKept:
0x00
FineDown:
0x00
FineAcross:
0x00
OriginDown:
0x00
OriginAcross:
0x00
Scheme:
0x00
Spare:
0x00
LineRed:
0x00
LineGreen:
0x00
MapRow:
0x00
RowAttribute:
0x00
RowCells:
0x00
TileArtAt:
0x00 0x00
; ---- Eight by eight, a byte a pixel ----
;
; A line along the top and one down the left. Tiled edge to edge they meet, so a screenful
; of this one tile is a continuous grid rather than 1,000 separate boxes.
TileArt:
0x01 0x01 0x01 0x01 0x01 0x01 0x01 0x01
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00