FPC 4 GBA: Issues with the gnu linker...

[{MSX}]

wow, looks like you guys are getting something working with this project...
I've read the txt included and it seems like you've done a lot of work and research.
I knew that Italians do it better :mrgreen:

[Legolas]

I knew that Italians do it better :mrgreen:

:mrgreen: :mrgreen:
I must prepare a t-shirt with my face and this slogan... maybe my sexual life could be improved

[WILL]

I knew that Italians do it better :mrgreen:

:mrgreen: :mrgreen:
I must prepare a t-shirt with my face and this slogan... maybe my sexual life could be improved

Umm... I'm not goinganywhere near this one at all..


As for FPC 4 GBA though... :roll: I think we have gotten to the first milestone. The next will be to get some working libraries going... video, sound, etc... and we have more than enough materials around to be a guide. Mr. Harbour is my preferance for reading materials. Perhaps if someone were to help with the converting of the C libraries then we can come up with a set of Free Pascal based units for GBA development. Maybe even a small DelphiX-style suite for beginners too!

Interested in helping MSX?

[Legolas]

I'm overworking this night, I know, but I can't sleep for excitation

I've done 4 little demos that you can find here. A couple of them are a conversion from Mr Harbour's book examples. Below some screen caps (I know, I have said 4, but one is a simple black screen :roll

:toocool:





In the zip you can find sources and roms, so you can thest the speed in an emulator. Compared to roms made with C THUMB code, these look like snails, but we are in ARM mode...
In order to make the code working... As I have said in the guide, you must strip by hand the fpc initialization code, then reassemble all. Enjoy!

[WILL]

Very nice my friend. Looks like we finally did it.

I will be posting your package on the FPC 4 GBA site sometime today. I also have been looking at the sound device of the GBA aswell. I will be working at making a directsound.pas library for it in time.

Once I get this working on my system I will be preparing a submission and request to have FPK and the rest of the Free Pascal team include GBA support into the compiler directly. This will include the ARM7 instructions into the GBA target. And automate the proccess of stripping the FPC initialization code.

If I could get onto IRC on freenode it would speed-up the process as FPK isn't very good at replying to emails. I imagine he gets alot...

[Legolas]

Good!
Anyway I think that the problem with initialization code is in the rtl that I have recompiled... Maybe I have included some wrong things. Well, we wait for some good news from fpc team

[WILL]

Indeed. FPK seemed rather helpful from the start of this endevour so prehaps he will be willing to go the extra mile since we have demonstrated our willingness to keep the GBA port active...

[{MSX}]

I'm overworking this night, I know, but I can't sleep for excitation

I've done 4 little demos that you can find

Wow, seeing something on the screen is a real milestone!
Very well done!

Compared to roms made with C THUMB code, these look like snails, but we are in ARM mode...

Umm maybe i missed something... why are your code slow? and what's this arm mode? will we be able to do full speed?

About me helping, well i don't have a gba, and i don't know if there are emulators for linux..
I guess i could have a try anyway.
Any hint for setting up the stuff on linux, Legolas?

[WILL]

I found some errors in your included instructions

FPCMake modification
--------------------
Copy the files you found in "FPCMake" directory of this package in the directory

%FreePascal%\source\utils\fpcm

In msys (or a dos prompt), go to %FreePascal%\source\utils\fpcm and run
"make". Go to %FreePascal%\bin\i386-win32 and copy here the new generated file
fpcmake.exe. This utility is useful when you try to build the rtl, because it
generates all makefiles starting from a smuch more simple makefile.fpc.

Running 'make' does not produce a single exe file. Instead a few directories and a bunch of files; 'fpcmade.i386-win32' and 'fpcmake.inc'.

This kind of cripples your RTL set of instructions aswell. :? You may want to correct this before I go posting it. Everything else seemed to be detailed enough to follow. Only exception is the location of a good GNU make utility to use if you choose to NOT use msys, which I opted for myself to reduce the required amount of install packages and things one has to go look for and update later on.

MSX: The reason that the current ARM code is so slow is because that the GBA's normal ARM instructions are a bit slower than the ARM7 THUMB instructions. Don't ask me why, they just are.

Until FPK adds support for ARM7 the compiler will be a bit crippled in this capacity. Hopefully once we manage to establish a nice package for his team to go over and add GBA support into the current compiler, we can look forward to them adding full GBA support into the current roadmap.

[Legolas]

WILL: simply ignore it. fpcmake.inc is used to build fpcmake.exe, fpcmade.i386-win32 is a flag-file indicating that fpcmake is built. The directory you say contains the object files created in building time.
Regarding MSYS, an alternative could be cygwin, but the package is much more heavy and not so simple to use. Another is to use a dos shell, but you could have some conflicts between gnu make and inprise make, if you have delphi installed.

{MSX}: GBA have 2 asm instruction set, ARM (32 bit) and THUMB (16 bit). The THUMB instructions set is more fast, but at this time fpc can handle ARM only. I don't have a GBA too, but an emulator is enough. Visual Boy Advance is open source and is compiled for several platforms, linux included (of course ).