Re: [Atari800-users] Altirra OS and Altirra BASIC are now built-in, can we remove EmuOS?

[Tomasz K. <tom...@in...>]

On Mon, 2018-06-04 at 08:52 +0200, Tomasz Krasuski wrote:
> Given that the Altirra ROMs make the old 2KB "EmuOS" redundant, I
> would
> like to suggest complete removal of the EmuOS functionality. Building
> Atari800 without the Altirra ROMs using --disable-altirra_bios (I
> guess
> this might be useful for some embedded purposes) would still be
> possible. In this case, the user would have to provide the necessary
> OS
> ROMs or he would be unable to start emulation.
> 
> Any thoughts?

So, I am in the middle of removing EmuOS. The current state is in the
"remove-emuos" branch, if anyone wishes to look.

The ability to build Atari800 without any built-in OS is possible by
configuring with --disable-altirra_bios. 

When the user builds with --disable-altirra_bios, and does not provide
any OS ROMs in cofiguration or command line, the currently-implemented
behaviour is to fill the OS ROM memory with zeroes and run emulation
anyway. The result will be the emulator displaying blank screen while
it executes BRK (=$00) instructions infinitely. The user may then go F1
to menu as usual, and configure OS ROMs as he wishes. Alternatively,
they can open the monitor and READ an OS ROM from external file.

I'm wondering if the above behaviour is enough. I suppose we could  be
more user-friendly and for example disallow starting emulation when no
OS ROM has been provided, but I don't think it would be necessary.
After all, a user who chooses to --disable-altirra_bios for some
reason, probably understands the consequences and won't be surprised
that the emulator loops infinitely without warning.

Any comments/suggestions?

Regards,
--Tomek
>