DBNUT - The ROM builder project

[cgh]

Hello,

For several monthes, I started to write a ROM builder for the HP-41C. What is it ? The context is that we have a lot of ROM available, but in several cases, we just use some of the functions provided by the ROM. Also, some ROM are incompatible with another (PANAME vs HEPAX, ADVANTAGE vs HP-ILDEV, ...) and last several may have same functions and when inserted at the same time, we duplicate the functions: EXT-IO and HPILDEV for the ALPHA manipulation, ...

Last year, I was interested by growing down the PANAME ROM by removing the HP-IL peripherals stuff (PLOTTER, VIDEO, PRINTER), and adding some functions for synthetic programming (RAMEDIT, ...) and finally enhance the ALPHA offer by some functions from the ALPHA BOX. I did the job by hand and I found that hardly.

Because I am a lazy guy, I found that it will be nice to "split" the ROM into functions (or group of-) and I started to develop a ROM builder able to pick-up some functions into a data-base and write a source code as input of an assembler. The aim is to reach as far as possible the granularity of the function, but sometimes, it is not possible, and so a source file contain a group of functions.
The most important job was to "split" the ROM into functions (with their sub-program) in separate NUT asm source files and also to modify and adapt them in a way to build a ROM... automatically. Once the ROM builder developped and functionnal, the remaining was the work on the ROM. At this time, my data-base is filled up to 500 functions taken from the following ROM:
- HPILDEV, EXT-IO, XFUNCS (+CX), CARDREADER,
- ASSEMBLER3, MLROM, PARIO, PPC-MELB, ZENROM,
- SANDBOX, SANDMATH, BUFFERLAND, ALPHABOX, TOOLBOX,
- Some code from myself (XTRABOX),
- and HEPAX (for the HEPAX/HEPAXA multi-functions scheme).
The choice I made when extracting the functions was only because these are I am using.

Now, the ROM builder, with a simple script or a command line, will build the ROM directly as .ROM file - Ready for Clonix. Note the ROM builder handles the packed format .MOD, .r41 (WWRambox) and .sda (Hepax).
I expect to distribute it in the coming days.

For the DBNUT (the data-base of functions), except for the ROM coming from HP stuff and the functions I wrote myself, the copyright is not really clear at this time.

So, now a ROM for Coconut may be released as a set of source code and a script to build it directly. If some user just have interest in a couple of functions, they just need to developp their own script to build their "cutomized" ROM.


And know, the limits are just your imagination !

Christophe