Re: Native /// bootstrapping?

[lyricalnanoha@dosius.ath.cx (Steve Nickolas)]

David Empson wrote:
> It still amuses me how much functionality a good assembly language
> programmer can fit into a small amount of space, compared to modern
> behemoths.
> 
> (I have a fair amount of experience in this area, having written or
> patched firmware in I/O cards, written a ProDOS clock driver, heavily
> tweaked Birds Better Bye to add more features while still fitting within
> 768 bytes, and my job used to consist of assembly language programming
> in relatively tight spaces.)

Ouch.  The most I tried to cram in that 768 bytes was a patch to the
ProDOS-8 1.8 Selector to allow it to load and run BIN files as well as SYS
(necessitating, also, a relocation from $1000 to $BC00; there's a quick
relocator and a jump to $BC1A at the beginning of my code).

I think at least one of the EH disks has a PRODOS file with the "Selextra"
hack; you can identify it by typing BYE from EHBASIC.  The first prompt says
ENTER PREFIX (<RETURN> TO ACCEPT) V1.0 instead of the traditional ENTER
PREFIX (PRESS "RETURN" TO ACCEPT).  My hacks expanded the code by 37 bytes,
26 of which was the relocator.  (I reduced the lengths of the messages to
partially compensate for my new code.)

-uso.