
{{ If you'll excuse the impartial sense of this letter, I've written this
	for several people I know }}

I'm just asking if you'd like to help me with a coding project I'm working on
	at the moment. No actual programming is required of you, just your
	ideas and opinions will do (and any cash donations to the cause :)
	so if your not busy at the moment...


So, the project,,, I've been working on a UNIX-ish shell for the standard 64.
	Currently it understands file redirection, piping, flags and several
	other UNIX things (No, forget about NNTP) based around a 40k Ramdrive.
	What about ram expanders you may ask?, well they're not really avalible 
	in Australia (and I couldn't afford one anyway). If I could get my 
	hands on a 16Meg ramcard or a Harddrive...


I've never seen a Ramdrive on a 64 before, so would you have a clue to what 
	transfer rates I should aspire to? I'm not too impressed with the 
	current rates. The result of some "worst case senario" testing I've
	tried are:

	Copy 18397 byte file "CP <file >file1"			40 seconds
	Dump 18397 byte file to '/dev/null' "CP <file >nul"	30 seconds
	Copy a 5846 file					8 secs
	Dump a 5846 file					5 secs
	Load a 11316 byte file from 1541 "disk ?file"		33 seconds


Since the Ramdrive takes up a lot of memory, the area allocated to executing 
	programs (machine code at the moment) is fairly small (4k). There's 
	another 'spare' 8k under $E000-$FFFF. An idea would to swap these two 
	so your program is stored from $E000 onwords, but this has the 
	disadvantage of losing the kernal ROM routines.


The current "ed" program ("rat" - Ratsword V4 {WordStar backwards, get it?})
	Basically it's just a glorifed screen designer that speaks ASC, much
	like the source code editor in "Super C". Should it be 40 or 80
	columns? (or both with the use of a flag). I'm for the later, but the 
	screen is only 40 wide, so things look messy when 'typed' to the screen
	afterwards, the cmd parser buffer is only 40 chars also. Unfortunetly 
	files are limited to a maximum of 200 lines in 40col mode (and 100 in 
	80 cols), any ideas on how to bypass this?, like working directly with 
	the file in the ramdrive instead of copying it to the 'data' memory, 
	gimme a hint. Wouldn't happen to have the source for Speedscript would 
	you? :) The files can also be access in a "REL" mode, if that would be
	of any help.


Besides an assembler (mandatory!) what languages would you like to see?
	"c" (Little C), Pascal, FORTH, BASIC, MINT, TECO(?) any others?


The command parsing is of the "Verb Noun1 Noun2 ..." type. The "Verb" is the 
	name of a routine, that can be 'internal' (a Shell command) or external 
	(a program in the ramdrive). If the external command is not in the  
	current subdirectory, then it checks the "bin" subdir. The internal 
	commands I'm using so far are:
		LS		RM		ECHO
		RMDIR		CP		DISK
		MKDIR		SH
		CD		REN
	Besides a MOVE cmd, any others you'd like to suggest?


Finally, I'm calling his project "ASTERIX". This almost stands for 
	"ASpring To bE unIX", but the "R" is missing.

---
Chris "Polar" Baird,
Physics/Maths Undergrad @ Newcastle Uni @ Australia
Temp address:	LNCJB@cc.newcastle.edu.au
