Posted By
BSZ
on 2023-09-23
17:00:02
|  Re: SD2IEC drives + VCPU extension
@gerliczer: Thanks for your discovery! I watch this kind of thing too, I found a version that has support for two extra games. But I've never seen this before, it's quite interesting! It's not offtopic at all, the license allows you to take over functions from each other.
Now I had a quick look, because I was curious about some of the details. The question is, how to fit into the program memory? For me, this is a major problem. This included support for plus four  loaders. But I downloaded the compiled binaries and I think I have the solution: binary is only available for 128K program memory drives.  The 128K version has a lot of free space, I might as well include this modification in my version.
This FW really does look promising! However...
This is a perfect "veterinary horse" (is there such an english term?), or a perfect example of why I didn't want to code the BF support in this way. It says in the documentation: "Added support for Bitfire, BoozeLoader, Sparkle and Spindle." Okay. These loaders are not "finished" things, they are constantly evolving. Since there is no need for compatibility, they may work completely differently from version to version.
My question: the firmware support these loaders, but which version?! My question is of course answered by the documentation:
Bitfire: 0.1 .. 1.2 (10 versions),
BoozeLoader: 1.0 (1 version)
Sparkle: 1.0 .. 2.x (maybe 11 versions)
Spindle: 1.0 .. 3.1 (7 versions)
It may not be necessary to build support for the different versions in a completely separate way, but differences must be managed. And... If a new version of any of the loaders is made, need to adapt the firmware. However, support for older versions cannot be removed, because programs made with the old version will not run afterwards. Because of this, they just "accumulate" in the firmware, and you end up running out of space. (Although that may come later.)
It must have been an amazing job to do this, congratulations! But this promises to be a "never ending" adventure.
@Murphy: As I know the firmware, it will probably not recognize the plus/4 version. But of course it is worth a try.
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