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From: jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Desdinova)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Questions,questions,questions.
Message-ID: <1990Nov4.214233.4187@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 4 Nov 90 21:42:33 GMT
References: <0C89ED2990BF80A479@snybufva.bitnet>
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In article <0C89ED2990BF80A479@snybufva.bitnet> NOWAKO09@SNYBUFVA.BITNET (APPLE //GS - THE POWER TO BE YOUR BEST) writes:
>to come out with an upgrade? The 68xxx series seems to come out like popcorn.
>I wonder if economic pressure will prevent a new 65816.
   Indeed. With the whole world having screaming orgasms over the MacClassic
(totally beyond me how gullible people are- a machine which was "dropped"
from the product line, given a catchy, marketable name, a new case, and
is now selling at incredible rates) and MS-DOS firmly entrenched, there's
not much market share for the '816 (at least in PC applications- the '02
and '816 are extensively used in dedicated applications).

>        How about those rumors of a Mac emulation card from Cir-Tech? Anything
>to em? I read about it in Nibble AND A+ so I took it seriously (well sorta...)

   A Mac card would be cake (I know, I keep saying it's easy to build computer
clones), except of course for the ROM issues.   Suffice it to say that it
is possible to emulate the Mac toolbox thru the GS's toolbox.  
   Anyway, I hope they do make it. That way there will be a bigger market for
my video card :-)

>        Finally, In reading my Orca/M assembler manual it states that the
>Orca assembler is powerful enough to develop a cross assembler using macros and
>that got me thinking....is there anything technically impossible about developin
>   g a cross-interpreter? i.e. You get a program for another computer (say Mac),
>and load it into your GS. The GS reads the forign disk (having been taught how)
>and using a comparative list of machine language commands proceeds to write a
>GS specific program by changing the machine level commands from mac to gs, if
>the gs is lacking a command then it will be instructed to insert a small
>routine to patch the discrepency in command tables. Then it puts this copy on
>another disk and you can now use it on the GS. Legally there should be no
>problems, once you buy a program you can alter it any way you like as long as
>it is for personal use only. Is this science fiction or can it be done?

   Now, this is an interesting idea.  Instead of interpreting the machine
code, simply COMPILE it.  Other processor's machine code could be viewed
as a "high level" language that could be compiled onto other machines.
   There are several difficulties I see with this, however.
1) You would have to have the source code for the program in question
   (otherwise you wouldn't know what was code and what was data)
2) Operating system calls would either have to be vectored, or the OS
   from the offending machine be cross-interpreted also.

It seems like a very possible task. I'd recommend anyone actually trying this
to start with the 80x86 series, since it's architecture is more in line
with the 65816's (banked memory, limited registers, etc.), and there
are more people who'd want MS-DOS programs than Mac programs.
Also, some optimizations could be performed after the '816 code was 
generated to help speed things up.

>        Oh, (I know I said finally above.....), is there any GS programs that
>allow one to manipulate the actual wave of a sound file? Can SynthLab do that?
>If not I guess I'll have to whip one up for all you shareware users......
>                                                 - Joe Nowakowski
  I wrote a program like that for the Mac in MSBasic.  

>Without Apple life beyond IBM itself would be impossible....
  Well, not entirely true, but something to think about nonetheless.

--
Jawaid Bazyar               | Blondes in big black cars look better wearing
Senior/Computer Engineering | their dark sunglasses at night. (unk. wierdo)
jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu    |      The gin, the gin, glows in the Dark!
   Apple II Forever!        |                             (B O'Cult)
Comp.Sys.Apple2- Home of the Unofficial Apple II Developer Support Team (DST)