Christmas Special

Sometime around Christmas rkdavis mentioned something about loading sdlBasic on the stock zipit jffs instead of rockbox.  Since I eventually want gmu on a zipit to be used as a dedicated internet radio, I figured maybe it was a good time to start separating the base jffs goodies from the rockbox stuff.

I also wanted to tinker with the wifi setup scripts.  I really like the easy dialog based EWoC wifi script included in later IZ2S releases, but I don't want to waste 200K of the jffs on the dialog executable.  So I dug deep into the dark old corners of the internet to review what could be done with ANSI escape sequences instead.  I found some really promising stuff and a related book that I'm gonna buy.  

But it proved difficult getting things to work well with the builtin echo command from the stock busybox sh.  And running ANSI escape codes with the external echo or printf commands from the IZ2S replacement busybox was just horribly slow.  So this is all I've got so far:  The previous SSID used shows up in green!  Not pretty, and my horrible photo skills don't help much either, but at least it's a marginal improvement.

Follow the directions from the previous blog post to install the smaller base system.  Then add whatever you want:  sdlBasic, busybox, tinyirc, or anything else that fits... (Hmm, it looks like you'll need to add either the full sed from the original package, or add busybox for its sed, otherwise the wifi scripts won't work.)

iz2jffs-base.tar.bz2

Anyhow, I trimmed down the old sdlBasic to something that I think will fit in the jffs on top of the base system.  I actually had to rebuild the executable because the previous build was pulling in libstdc++ due to my lame makefile.  That would have been 3 megabytes of completely wasted space on the jffs.  With libstdc++ out of the picture, I got all the libs needed for the sdlBasic runtime collected together.  I removed the docs and included only the Beast and Sokoban demos to save space.   Here's a nice blurry pic of me beating up on Sokoban level 1 to convince you that you absolutely must have it.

I personally don't want to mess up the jffs right now on my zipit by replacing rockbox with sdlBasic, so if anyone else tries it be sure to let me know how well (or not) it fits.

sdlbasic-iz2jffs.zip

Meanwhile, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from this tiny stuff, I finally put up a download link for the Emacs I built for IZ2S way back when.  It's so handy, I feel compelled to share it.

A Better Basic?

Remember way back in August, when I patched up an sdlBasic interpreter for the zipit and mentioned that there was more than one sdlBasic.  Well, there's been some lamenting lately on the zipit IRC that I shoulda picked a different one.  A better basic.  SdlBasic.  It's more shinier, and it comes with sound!  Ok, whatever.

Anyhow, I split the difference between the gp2x and linux makefile settings and compiled a version of the runtime for the zipit.  I still need to package it all up with some better zipitized example programs because it wants to run at 640x480, but the zipit is only 320x240.  The gp2x runtime package came with some patched .sdlbas files for 320x240, but they also had the keyboard controls modified to use the joystick instead.  Once again I split the difference and took the keyboard code from the original beast.sdlbas file and the screen size fixes from the gp2x code.  This is what it looks like with me fumbling around, trying to hold a camera and press the zipit alt-number keys to load the various .mod music samples. 

I think it shows a whopping 25 FPS!  35 if I run it without the music.  Shiny!

Files are here for now.

sdlbasic-iz2s.zip
sdlbasic-iz2s-src.tar.bz2