AppleWorks Classic on Mac
A few more changes made with this release:
Download: Deja IIx (Version 2.0a12)
Several changes have been made to Deja IIx (2.0a11).
Download: Deja IIx (Version 2.0a11)
The changes should make Deja IIx much more usable. There are plenty of features still not there (printing support, clipboard support, snapshots), but most of the main AppleWorks features should now be working. If you encounter bugs, please let me know so that they can be tracked.
Somehow the versions have zipped by: a7, a8, and a9. The good news is that this release (a9) seems to address many weird behaviors (read crashes) previously reported. The issue was tied to the Apple II’s bank switching and UltraMacros (which was using bank-switching). Once the bank-switching issue was found and fixed, things worked more better.
In addition to that, I changed Trace History to avoid a continual degradation of performance as the program runs. While the program runs slower, the performance .
For fun, I’ve added a couple more preset colors (in preferences) as well:
See, we’re not done yet. We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
I’ve just uploaded a new version:
Version 2.0a6
I found a case where the CPU could still get ramped up, even when nothing was happening (around 20% of the CPU being used). That’s fixed now. Anyone using Monitor (in your Utilities folder) will find that Deja IIx quickly spins down when not in use or when waiting for you.
Screen Scrolling is improved. In a5, any part of the screen that needed to be scrolled was essentially redrawn. It now actually scrolls the screen and only draws the new content.
Prodos calls can now be logged. Not all parameters are shown yet, but that’ll be next. It does show the command and whether an error was returned.
The emulator should now stop everything if it encounters a BRK or unknown opcode.
While the visual progress seems tremendous, this is in a very, very alpha state. Sometimes the visual progress can be deceptive. Folks that are joining on need to realize this fact.
Lots of things are bound not to work. I’m using someone else’s 65c02 emulator, which seems to be doing a good job, there are are definitely bugs in it. I found a major one already that caused AW to crash. One of the tasks it to set up a way to log and track the issues that do come up to insure they aren’t dropped.
Also a reminder. This is a (non-commercial) side project for me — the time spent from this point forward will be just a few hours a week, maximum. As fun as it might be to focus all my time on it, it won’t pay the bills. So progress will definitely slow from what you’ve seen recently, as my focus returns to “my day job”, as it were.
Still, I do appreciate all the encouragement and I hope that progress will continue at a more slow, but steady pace.
This project allows me to experiment in coding areas as well as development techniques and ideas that I don’t get a chance to explore with my existing projects — which is one of the reasons I’m drawn to it.
Again, I do appreciate the support.
And if you want to tell more of your friends about TextSoap, I won’t stop you.
I’ve made a few more changes. See if you can spot the difference.
Deja IIx (Version 2.0a5)
Here’s a hint:
I’ve posted an update that should address a bad display problem under Panther (the text was all garbled). This should no longer happen. I also added Debug preference to determine if Prodos OPEN is tracked. This can be useful when debugging the initial load sequence.
Deja IIx (Version 2.0a4)
Well, here is your first chance to see Deja IIx for yourself. You can download the Alpha version at this link:
Deja IIx (version 2.0a1)
Be sure the read the notes that come with it. There are definitely issues that aren’t addressed, but it does generally run and is completely OS X native.
My goal was to spend this week giving Deja IIx enough attention so that folks could start playing with it and most things worked.
While it won’t get as much attention after this week, the issues left can be addressed in smaller chunks of time. So progress will slow down from the pace of this week, but it will continue.
After an attack of the most subtle bugs in the JMP (Addr,x) command, which AppleWorks happens to use, we have success. The emulator was calculating the address incorrectly and so the program kept crashing. This is more than just launching. It is running.
But it’s not quite ready for prime time. There are a couple outstanding issues that I want to address before I let it out into the wild (even as an alpha).
Keyboard handling is one of the last main pieces of code that I would like to get working this week. Unfortunately, it is not a straightforward process.
I’m hoping that some of the bits I’ve learned on that series of tubes known as the internet (thank goodness it didn’t get clogged up) will help in most of cases. I definitely don’t want to have to write m own USB keyboard driver! Regardless, the keyboard handling will have to be all new code.
I would also like to be able to put some throttling on the emulator so that it doesn’t run at full speed (cpu cycles) while it waits for you to type something. Deja ][ could suck up 95% of the CPU cycles waiting for you to press a key. Even though the non-debug emulation will eventually be in a thread, it will still need to hang out in a less intense way when waiting for user input.
Some other key items of note:
Finally, work on Deja IIx will slow down after this week. My focus returns to several ongoing projects that are designed to pay the bills. That’s not to say it won’t get attention. I’m hoping that it won’t necessarily need as much attention.