/tos1x

Primary LanguageAssembly

What is this?

These are the sources used to build orginal ROM versions of TOS 1.04/1.06/1.62, the OS used by Atari ST (not TT).

The goal of this project was to actually be able to regenerate the original ROM images. Some of the sources used herein were already done as part of the TOS 2.x project, except for the desktop which is completely different (but somewhat similar to the PC & DRI versions). They are not meant to be a base for serious further development, the Alcyon compiler tools that were originally used are just too outdated and buggy.

It is therefor mainly intended to be used as reference.

Directory Structure

  • bin/tos:
    Prebuild binaries of tools used in the build process. These are essentially identical to the ones from the developer kit, with a few modifications. Sources of almost all of these tools are found in the alcyon archive of the TOS 2.06/3.06 project.

    It also contains a few tools that are not part of the developer-kit, but are now used in the build process (sed, rm, mv and bc). Those are taken from GNU packages.

    Note that the code generator and assembler have been hacked to automatically support the line-f dispatcher that is used in 1.04 to save some ROM space. Without these, you won't get a binary exact image, nor a working ROM, since it will be too large to fit in 192k.

  • bin/linux:
    Same tools as above, but compiled for linux-64bit. The cc68 executable in this directory is just a shell script that recognizes a few of the usual unix cc switches, and translates them to call the various alcyon executables.

  • bin/win32:
    Same tools as above, but compiled for windows (32bit). Can be used from an MSYS2 or cygwin environment.

  • include:
    Include files for the C compiler. Only a few of them are actually needed for TOS itself, most of them are only needed to build the tools.

  • lib:
    Prebuild libraries and startup files for the C runtime library. None of these is linked into a ROM image, they are only used for the tools.

  • bios:
    Source of the BIOS part of TOS.

  • vdi:
    Source of the VDI part of TOS.

  • bdos:
    Source of the GEMDOS part of TOS.

  • aes:
    Source of the AES part of TOS.

  • desk:
    Source of the desktop application.

  • common:
    Shared include files for the above components.

  • tools:
    Source of some small tools used in the build process, namely the one that glues the builtin resources and newdesk/desktop.inf files together. If you are cross-compiling, these must be compiled by your native host compiler.

  • listings:
    Disassembler listings of various TOS versions that were used while working on some parts of the system.

  • glue:
    The final ROM images will be build here. It also contains link maps for some ROM versions, for reference. The identifiers in those maps are truncated to 8 characters, though (a limitation of the DRI object file format).

Assembler sources

  • Assembler sources are written in a format that is accepted both by as68 and by the GNU assembler with the --mri option. If you have to use a different assembler, they might need conversion.

  • All comments in assembly files are in C-style. The makefile preprocesses them before passing them to the assembler. This avoids problems with different types of comment delimiters in different assemblers, and also works around some bugs of the conditional assembly directives of as68. It also allows using the same files defining some key constants to be used for both assembler and C.

  • Don't put comments after constants that are used in assembler expressions. Since it is a K&R preprocessor, the spaces between the constant and the comment will make it to the source, and the assembler does not like spaces in operands.

  • Assembling the assembler sources in the bios directory with the original as68 from the developer kit will not work, mostly because it does not support abs.w addressing mode, but also due to numerous bugs. Either use the fixed version from the bin directory or try some other assembler.

Supported versions

BIOS, VDI, GEMDOS, AES, DESKTOP: 1.04, 1.06 & 1.62

Supported language versions

  • us - USA
  • de - Germany
  • fr - France
  • uk - United Kingdom (uses US resources)
  • es - Spain
  • it - Italy (no ROM yet found to verify)
  • se - Sweden (the ROM has some patches applied)
  • fi - Finland (uses swedish keyboard and resources)
  • sf - Switzerland (French) (uses french keyboard and resources)
  • sg - Switzerland (German) (uses german keyboard and resources)
  • nl - Netherlands
  • cz - Czech (originally was a patched german version)

The images in the roms/ directory for the swedish & czech version use consistent resources & keyboard tables, and may be slightly different than others versions found on the net.

How to compile

If you are feeling adventurous and want to try to compile it yourself:

  • unpack the archive in some directory of your choice. All pathnames used in the makefiles are relative, so its name does not matter. Sources, object files and any built files will need ~13MB of disk space.

  • install some shell. In my case i used GEMINI (unfortunately german only). bash might work, but some of the tools will have problems with MiNT which bash requires. Using command.tos from the bin directory should also work.

  • cd to the toplevel directory

  • make sure the bin directory from the archive is on your PATH:
    PATH=$PWD\bin,$PATH
    (for gemini/mupfel; other shells might use ';' as path separator)

  • type "make" This should build the default configuration (german TOS 1.04). If the build succeeds, the final image will be found in the "glue" directory.

  • for building other configurations, you can say e.g.
    make COUNTRY=us
    Alternatively, you can edit config.mak in the toplevel directory. See there also for a list of valid configurations. Also, when switching configurations, always make sure to run
    make clean
    first. If you pass the configuration via commandline, be sure to always use the same command when having to restart make.

  • Be patient. Using some emulator should take less than a minute to compile the sources, but on real hardware it may take several hours.

You can also cross-compile the sources on linux, using the tools in the bin64 directory. In that case, it is assumed that GNU make is used, and will pick up the GNUmakefile in each directory instead of the Makefile. With parallel makes that will give you compilation times of less than a second for the whole source tree.

Customizing TOS

There are basically two methods to create a customized TOS, ie. one that contains some patches for known bugs, or small enhancements.

  • Use TOSPATCH. This is a command line tool that is able to apply lots of patches to an existing TOS, using a configuration file. Please read the included documentation on how to use it. The TOSPATCH directory in this repository contains an updated version of the configuration file that should work for all languages in most cases.

  • Activate some patches while compiling TOS. To do this, you have to edit the file localcnf.mak in the top level directory, and add the following lines:

    BINEXACT:=0
COUNTRY:=de
RAMVERSION:=0
TOSVERSION:=104

    (adjust the language code to your needs).

    Edit the file common/localcnf.h, and add eg. the following line:

    #define TP_13 1

    to activate the fix for the boot-device bug. See the file common/patchdef.h for available options.

    Then compile TOS as usual, and you will get a patched TOS ROM image.

Differences between TOS versions

User visible differences between 1.06 and 1.04 that have been identified:

BIOS

  • At places where the hardware video base is set/read, also the low byte is read/written.
  • During boot, the microwire interface is initialized. Other than that, there is no support for that hardware.
  • The ramtop/ramvalid system variables are set, but no attempt is made to probe for TT-RAM
  • A small cookiejar is installed (with 8 entries), containing values for _CPU, _MCH, _SND and _SWI. Strangely, no _VDO cookie is set.
  • the system variables kcl_hook and bell_hook are supported, to allow for custom sounds.
  • The bios/xbios entry points are aware of the longframe variable, just like TOS 2.06
  • A simple priviledge violation handler is installed, to catch "move SR," in user mode. This is an allowed instruction on 68000, but gives an exception on 68010+.
  • The floppy routines use the hz_200 variable for timeouts instead of a fixed counter (again, that is also done in 2.06)
  • The default palette includes the additional bit for all white values. Similarly, Setcolor() does not mask that out.
  • The Rsconf() bug that prevents you from activating RTS/CTS control was fixed.

GEMDOS

  • just like BIOS, the GEMDOS entry point checks for the _longframe variable. There is however a serious bug in the internal function that starts a new gemdos process, where that check is missing.
  • A small fix in the function that checks for Ctrl-C. Same fix is also present in later GEMDOS versions (although it still reports version 0.15)
  • When a process terminates, GEMDOS internalls updates the system time from BIOS. That is now done with a proper XBIOS call instead of calling the internal BIOS function directly.

VDI

  • vs_color/vq_color handle the STE colors.

AES

  • The linef trap is no longer used for internal functions.
  • The internal AES entry has been slightly reorganized. Same version already as in TOS 2.x
  • The rarely encounterd bug to look up an application name from a path has been fixed.

Desktop

  • When viewing a text file, the mouse button can be used to scroll a page.
  • A new bug has been introduced that prevents you from booting in medium resolution.

User visible differences between 1.62 and 1.06 that have been identified:

BIOS

  • None. The BIOS is completely identical.

GEMDOS

  • The Pexec function has been reorganized in order to catch I/O errors during program loading.
  • The bug that was corrected by POOLFIX has been fixed.
  • Checks for the _longframe variable were removed from entry point again.
  • There is already a prototype version of Mxalloc(), but it is not used by the dispatcher
  • Version reported is now 0.17

VDI

  • None. The VDI is completely identical.

AES

  • A check has been added to ensure that window elements are at least gl_wchar + 2 pixel wide

Desktop

  • The resolution change bug has been fixed