GS Hacking & Debugging tools

[nathan@parka.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

[Anyone who associates 'hacker' in this article's subject needs to
have their terminology corrected from that which the media's gotten it
wrong. A 'cracker' is one who breaks in to systems for malicious
purposes. A 'hacker' is one who programs innovatively, for a long
time, and the like. Go see http://www.ccil.org/jargon/ for more info;
here's their full definition of hacker:

hacker /n./ 

[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who
enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to
stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to
learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs program, or one
who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit
them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be
an astronomy hacker, for example. 7.  One who enjoys the intellectual
challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

Sorry, long parenthetical bit]

   Well, GUPP's out, and my Icon file verifier just got working last
night (*#^&# Orca/C 2.0.3 corrupts the stack bigtime when int and
longints are used in calculations (even when typecast correctly); that
was the incentive I needed to install C 2.1, which works an order of
magnitude better. Expect an upload later tonight).

   [Oh, and while I'm at it, no thanks to Orca/C 2.1's insistence on
replacing a 3rd party editor (Edit-16) with its own, even though I
chose to update it. Sorry, but I don't quite always like Orca/Editor]

   However, as some GS types (no need to drop names) wanted copies of
my debugging tools that I used for finding and hunting the bugs that
GUPP 1.0.1 fixes, I decided to upload them. They're only on my
personal ftp area, ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu, pub/nathan, filenames
hh0.3.shk and segf0.13.shk. Basically, these work for me, but they're
not very well documented, and not guaranteed to be stable or bugfree.
I do appreciate comments on them, and am planning to unify most to
all of my tools into a very nice debugging facility.

   These tools are not meant for the casual GS user--in fact,
SegFaulter was designed to (and does a good job of it) break other
programs. Don't install and hope to use them unless you're proficient
in assembly and debugging.

Nathan Mates

Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: IIe GUI
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Cc: towad@aol.com

In article <31E5443F.397C@aol.com>, Tom Owad  <TOwad@aol.com> wrote:
>I got a lot of replies to my last post "IIe accessories"  where I 
>asked about, among other things, whether or not there was a GUI for 
>the IIe, IIGS OS in particular.  I was surprised to be told that no 
>versions of the IIGS OS run on the IIe.  In a previous thread Jonathan 
>Isom wrote:

   What you're doing is mistaking the OS (Operating System, that which
controls disk i/.o, devices, etc) with the GUI (Graphical User
Interface, that which the user plays around with), and System Software
(distributon of some OS, GUI, and anything else they want). The OS and
GUI do _not_ need to be integrated-- you can have multiple GUIs
running on top of one OS, or (rarer) a GUI that runs under multiple
OSs.

   An example of this is MS Windoze- MS-DOS is the OS, and can have
either the command shell of COMMAND.COM or Windoze 3.x as the
GUI. Same OS, different GUIs.

>> Apple wrote an 8-bit finder which came with the very earlest 
>> IIGS system  disks that would also run on an enhanced(?) IIe. 
>> uses dhr screen.

   That would be an 8-bit GUI, not an OS. Further, the earliest GS
"system software" was nothing more than hacked up versions of the
ProDOS 8 that ran on //es. But, it was not called GS/OS at the
time. GS/OS was the name given to the OS written specifically for the
GS, and didn't come out for a few years after the GS came out. GS/OS
requires a GS to run.

   ProDOS also comes in several variants. ProDOS 8 runs on any Apple
][+ or later with 64K. ProDOS 8 2.0 and up require an enhanced //e,
//c, //c+, or GS. ProDOS 16 is the hacked up version that runs on
GSs, but was replaced by GS/OS, which is now at version 4.x in system
Software 6.x. No version of ProDOS 16 or GS/OS will really run on
non-GS Apple IIs. [With processor swaps, you might be able to get
them to start loading, but forget it for a real boot]

   It's a bit confusing, but if you deblur the lines of terminology
that Apple and Microsloth have been doing their best to smudge,
things make more sense.

>Many other people also mentioned a version of the IIGS OS running on 
>the IIe.  Is this information accurate?

   Finder has nothing to do with GS/OS. It refers to a program with
some GUI that happens to resemble a Macintosh program of that
name. What OS it runs on depends on the particular implementation.
There are a few finder-like programs that happen to run under the
ProDOS 8 (for //es and the like), but those are not

   When the GS was first released, neither ProDOS 16 nor GS/OS was
ready yet, so the "System Software" (which is not necessarily the same
as an OS) was essentially //e software. That is why GS System Software
1.0 apparently runs on //es, but no GS Operating System does. 

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the
# Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in
# parables" Mark 4:11, NRSV