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[ 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? :)

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Cinderella: KUVO's Sight 4 draw

Here comes a little weekend starter kit. A production by a scener you may not haven't heard of, a release that is possibly widely overseen, for a platform many may not have heard of yet:

Kuvo of Caroline Software Incorporated released a new music disc for the Russian Elektronika BK-0010 computer (see wikipedia entry). And indeed, there is a scene for this one. And for a brief moment, the tiny Atariscene feels overdog! ;-)

Anyway, this music disk is quite a surprise, once you found it. It comes with one and a half hours of music for the twin brother of the YM2149F chip, the AY-3-8912. So Atari chipmusic stricken ears feel home immediately.

Very notably, KUVO did all of it, code, music and graphics. If you check is demozoo page you will stumble across an impressive backlog of fantastic ZX Spectrum graphics, too.

Among the tracks there are very enjoyable compositions in various styles, a good flow, sometimes laid back, sometimes uplifting and foremost nicely dynamic and catchy.

But there is more, actually, sound-wise this is way more advanced then the typical AY/YM bleepery. And a reason is found quickly, looking closely at the included VU-meters. The music disks supports 6 channels, so it is tailored for machines with two soundchips. And this offers some quality upgrade for the traditional AY soundscape, nice echoic detuned square leads, interesting slides plus reverb and delay for the masses!

Highly recommended!

🔗 Sight 4 draw by KUVO on Demozoo

🔗 Sight 4 draw by KUVO on Pouet

The boys from Hack 'n Trade teamed up to bring you "HT's Handle Charts #1" - a take on the most cool, intimidating, hilarious or plainly absurd scene handles of all times. With fancy Amiga ANSI art by Goto80, Dino, and Sixx. View it in its colourful glory at [AsciiArena]!

[Submitted by dipswitch]