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[ Atariscne.org - News ] atrfs - Atari ATR disk image filesystem tool

Peter Kaczorowski published a tool for accessing and modifying Atari 8-Bit floppy disk images (ATR). This can be very handy for extracting, adding, updating or removing files from ATR images, directly via command line. The tool supports different kinds of Atari file systems and can be integrated in Midnight commander as well.   The functionality of atrfs reminds a bit to Krystone's extremely practical online disk image extractor for the bigger brother, the Atari ST with its ST/MSA-images. While the preference of a graphical or command line interface may be a matter of taste, the command line approach could turn out more sustainable regarding availability on the long term?   🔗 atrfs on Github

[ Atariscne.org - News ] FLOP #69 available

The latest issue #69 of the long lasting Czech FLOP diskmag for Atari 8 Bit has been published.

Last year a pretaste of the mag art has been made available at Sillyventure and Last party. The mag itself was supposed to be released last year as well, but as life plays, the issue got delayed. As one feature, a Fujiama party report is said to be included. The diskmag comes as two ATR disk images.

🔗 Visit the FLOP website for download

[ Atariscne.org - News ] In the spotlight: Richard Karsmakers blog

Richard Karsmakers aka Cronos of STNICCC party organisation fame has written a nostalgic reminiscence of the first steps of the Atari ST demoscene on his blog. The articled summarizes a brief initial time span 40 years ago and is arguably a bit boldly, entitled "The Rise of the Atari ST Demo Scene".

A closer look at the blog generally indicates that Cronos, who was also one of the former ST News diskmag editors, still has an occasional inclination to write longer articles.

Speaking of STNICCC, the next party edition is about about 6 years away. So get started with your entries! ;-)

🔗 Richard Karsmakers blog

[ Atariscne.org - News ] GCC for asm Experts (and C/C++ Intermediates) - Part 3

How GCC Actually Compiles

GCC originally stood for GNU C Compiler. Today it is the GNU Compiler Collection, with frontends for C, C++, Fortran, Ada, Go and more, a shared middle-end, and many backends. VAX and m68k were the first in 1987; today the list spans everything from modern x86-64 and ARM to legacy PDP-11 and MSP430. Each frontend parses its language and lowers it to a common intermediate representation. From there, the shared transformation passes take over, most of them entirely generic regardless of whether the target is a modern 64-core server or our humble 68000.

What happens between "C text goes in" and "assembly comes out" is roughly 360 of these passes, each rewriting the intermediate representation. Some optimize. Some check for errors. Some transform for consistency. Most do a little of everything. We will focus on the ones where our beloved 68000 needs the most help. I have put together a summary of all GCC passes for reference.

Debugging this pipeline is where the fun and the pain live. When the output is wrong, which of the 360 passes is at fault? Often it is not the obvious one; a bad decision in pass 47 might not surface as wrong, or inefficient, code until pass 180. Understanding the stages, even roughly, is the key to knowing where to look.

[ Wanted! ] Design + UX for video streaming service/archive

Hi! We're renewing our SceneSat video streaming service and archive and would like to find someone who would like to help designing this. We do have a quite substantial and ever-growing collection of recorded video streams from various parties and events and want to bring this to the world in a good-looking, usable manner. Are you the person to help us out? :)