The null-selector fix in the 2ine fork unblocks gspac/gspopt/gspcg, so
document the full pipeline: build 2ine, extract the tools, the four C
stages, absolute placement, and the firmware round-trip.
Record the two gotchas found while testing: gspcl still stops after
gspac because the children exit 139 at teardown, and GSPA 5.01 rejects
b15, so the 32 KB round-trip differs at one SP access (same physical
register, A15/B15).
The r5.01 tools are a superset of the 1987 DOS set: ANSI C, one driver,
gspopt, a bigger runtime, and 35.8% smaller .text at -o2 on the same
source. Add a practical guide:
* what the package contains and how to extract it
* running it: OS/2 1.3 under 86Box (full toolchain) and 2ine (assembler/
linker/converter, with the patched fork linked)
* the gspcl option table and verified command lines (-o0/-o1/-o2, -pk,
-al, -z/-lrts.lib), plus the manual gspac -> gspopt -> gspcg -> gspa
pipeline and the linker command file
* gotchas: -o semantics, bit-addressed section sizes, CRLF, AUTOEXEC not
running in the guest, emulated-keyboard limits, one-way assembler
compatibility
* measured code-size and throughput numbers for both toolchains
Link it from the docs index and the repository layout.
The harness forced the VR150 monitor switch, so the firmware wrote the OS
screen at 1024 px / 128-byte rows. VT1200_VRAM_REAL then re-read that
framebuffer at the VR319 pitch, which sheared the OS and wrapped the right
quarter of every row.
Model VR319 (switch 0x60) by default -- the real unit's mode -- so the
firmware itself programs 1280x1024 with a 256-byte row pitch (CONVDP=0x14).
The renderer's pitch follows VT1200_MONITOR, and the destination span now
comes from HEBLNK..HSBLNK instead of x=0, placing the active 1280 px at
x=336 in MAME's 1696-wide raster.
Verified: clean Terminal Manager at frame 600, legible faithful diagnostics
menu and level-1 error screens, tile mode PASS with tile_check 1280/1280
tiles, tablet/mouse pixel-identical. VT1200_MONITOR=VR150 reproduces the
old geometry; the regression baseline moves 198 -> 199 (2 PCs) and is
recorded in harness/mame/README.md.
The old README still described the repo as ROM images plus a Ghidra
setup. The project now spans the MAME harness, the real terminal, the
COFF/SDK toolchain and the networking reverse engineering, so rewrite it
as the entry point.
New top-level content:
- a dated status table (ROM, Ghidra, MAME, real unit, our code,
networking, LAT, font path), with the open items named as open;
- what the firmware actually contains (MIT X11 R4, BSD TCP/IP via
386BSD, BIND, telnet, TI RTS, fonts);
- the address model table, corrected against harness/mame/vt1200.cpp
(RAM 0..0x1FFFFFF; DUART bit 0x06200000/0x06400000);
- how the faithful MAME run stops at level 0, why no documented device
can pass it, and what the stub does and does not prove;
- the real-unit debug channel (TCP 771), the challenge, and a table of
what is proven on hardware;
- the three routes for running our own code, and the heap model;
- the LANCE + BSD stack mapping, the RMD1_FRAM blocker and the claim
deferred for real silicon;
- LAT and the idle-crash investigation, and the two font results;
- a curated "odd findings" list and a documentation index.
Factual corrections made while checking sources: the rdebug gate is a
SETF 2 field (the port was never closed), CSR0=0x1BB has ERR clear, the
pcfReadBitmaps overflow is not reachable on the TFTP path, and the
real-unit framebuffer is 1024x2048 line-interleaved (the "line doubled"
look was a partial read). The XCROSS 123k figure is the unmapped log,
not a VT1200_CAL proxy hit. ROM md5 unchanged.
arti
opencode.energia.arti.ee
SDD