Evaluation questions

[asrael]

Hi.

I'm working on a house project in the near future and would like to utilize my Amigas for that.
The software project will likely have a GUI. It needs serial and socket communication.
So instead of using C I'm looking for alternatives and AmiBlitz seems a perfect fit. As far as I have seen it supports the requirements.

The development platform will likely be a fs-uae hosted AmigaOS 3.9 as well as on a real Amiga 1200 hardware. Most probably with an accelerator card and some more RAM.
I didn't see if the ACA 1221 has an FPU but I think not since it's only an overclocked 68020.
I've read in another thread that AmiBlitz 3 requires an FPU to run?
Also, depending on my mood I could also use MorphOS for development.
What would be the best version and AmiBlitz target version to use? I've seen there is bb2, ab2 and ab3?
Is it possible to use AmiBlitz 3 on MorphOS and uae for development and still keep target compatibility with 68020?


Regards,
Manfred

[Daedalus]

Hi Manfred,
I think Blitz would be a good choice for you too. I used Blitz Basic to develop a set of programs for automation many, many years ago and it ran quite well on a 68000 A600 with 2MB RAM, including serial and custom bus communication, I/O via floppy and joystick ports and various timing and scripting functions including ARexx support. It worked pretty well for many years!

I don't know exactly where the FPU dependency came in, but it was not there under Blitz Basic 2 so I would suggest you get that. It might be possible to us AmiBlitz 2 as well but I'm not sure... Perhaps check out the documentation and see what it says.

I use AmiBlitz 3 these days on OS3, OS4 and MorphOS and it runs fine on all of them (though the OS3 machines both have an FPU. The development machine doesn't make a difference to the executables created, so using AmiBlitz on MorphOS will still produce binaries that will run just fine on a 68020.

I have managed to create binaries that don't require an FPU by avoiding certain commands or keywords, but there can be a lot of trial and error involved in that. Using UAE is a good way of easily testing that. You're right, the ACA1221 doesn't have an FPU, so you'll need to be careful or only use Blitz Basic 2.1 if that's your target machine.

[Der Wanderer]

Amiblitz3 IDE (PED or AIDE) makes only sense on 3.9 or higher (MOS/OS4 ok) with high end machine > 128MB, 60MHz, 1200x800x256, 68020/FPU.
Amiblitz3 executables *technically* use FPU only if you use "optimize 2" to switch from softfloats to hardware floats, or a BlitzLib that uses FPU like FPULib (obviously).
99% of the BLitzLibs don't use FPU. However, Bernd managed to sneak in some FPU instructions in various very central places, so right now all AB3 exectuables will require FPU.
If we can track it down of Bernd would help us, it would be good to remove this dependency, but it is not high-pri since AB3 targets mainly high end machines.

[asrael]

OK, thanks for the explanation.

[asrael]

Hi Manfred,
I think Blitz would be a good choice for you too. I used Blitz Basic to develop a set of programs for automation many, many years ago and it ran quite well on a 68000 A600 with 2MB RAM, including serial and custom bus communication, I/O via floppy and joystick ports and various timing and scripting functions including ARexx support. It worked pretty well for many years!

The main system I'm running here is openHAB (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.openhab.org">http://www.openhab.org</a><!-- m -->).
The Amiga only is supposed to do a small but important part in gathering data and automate. Right now this is done by a Java program on an iBook. But I'm looking forward to replacing that with an A600.


Manfred

[Daedalus]

The main system I'm running here is openHAB (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.openhab.org">http://www.openhab.org</a><!-- m -->).
The Amiga only is supposed to do a small but important part in gathering data and automate. Right now this is done by a Java program on an iBook. But I'm looking forward to replacing that with an A600.

Sounds like an excellent project! To be safe, for Amiga 600 executables I would still use Blitz Basic 2.1 unless someone can confirm the AmiBlitz 2 compiler also doesn't use FPU codes. You can still do the development using WinUAE or MorphOS, and that will let you use the SuperTED editor and better debugger from the Blitz Support Suite, something you won't be able to do on a basic A600.

Good luck with it, and feel free to ask any questions