When I set out to build Ultrascreen for the NEC, and later to produce full annotated source for SuperROM to support the port to the NEC as well, it might have looked like two independent projects. Surprise! They were really one.
A binary can be patched, but it can't easily be combined with anything. Creating the reassemblable source for Ultrascreen let me carry it to the NEC PC-8201, the Tandy 200 and the Olivetti M10. Doing the same for SuperROM, with every routine properly labelled, turned PCSG's ROM from fixed application images into code that can be relocated, trimmed and, most importantly, extended. So, why go through the effort to do all of that? The real goal was to combine Ultrascreen's 60x10 small-font display with at least a few of the apps from SuperROM (Lucid, Data, & Thought) into one single option ROM. The big payoff is that the apps don't just run under Ultrascreen and render their original UI correctly (which they did NOT even do at the start); they were modified to actually use it properly. For instance the spreadsheet can now render six columns (A–F) and eight rows instead of four by six, doubling the number of cells on screen. Switch back to SCREEN 0 and Lucid still draws the classic 40x8 sheet. A lot of testing still needs to happen. But, I figured I'd give you all a sneak peek. First, the original Lucid you're used to: [image: image.png] -- -- -- Lucid+Ultrascreen: [image: image.png] Thought+Ultrascreen: [image: image.png] It's really in the early stages here. I'm currently working on this for the NEC, but I fully intend to back-port all of it for the Model 100 and Olivetti M-10. (And who knows, maybe also for the T200...) I did have to sacrifice *Write* to bring Ultrascreen into the option ROM. And unfortunately, there was just no room in ROM to add the additional support for Ultrascreen even if it were left as a RAM version of the display driver, so something had to be removed from ROM regardless. Anyway, a new "Lucid / Data / Thought / Ultrascreen" ROM is still in an alpha state. I'll let you know when things progress far enough to release a beta version. And thanks to B9 for all the help testing Lucid-NEC, and to John Hogerhuis for testing Thought-NEC. I'll get as many fixes in place as possible before releasing anything. -- Gary Weber [email protected]
