I have an really old computer with a Comms Link card that I use for Saturn programming. However being quite slow, it takes for ever to compile programs using the KPIT stuff.
Plus all the sound and art tools are on different computer so I end up copying lots of stuff over to the old machine as I can't use it to work on data when needed.
Here's the solution I came up with:
- Network the two computers together and enable file sharing so you can map a directory on the old computer as a network drive on the one you want to use.
- Write a small program that waits in a loop for a text file to be created and passes all the lines of text to command.com (or use DJGPP's system() to get around the command line limit)) for execution. It deletes the command file and waits for a new one afterwards. This runs on the old computer.
From the computer you want to use, do all the normal tasks (edit and compile software, generate data, etc.) then copy the binary output and any necessary files to the networked drive.
Finally copy a textfile with some commands to run your program, and the old computer will load it to the Saturn.
Something like this:
n:\saturn is the networked drive pointing to d:\work\saturn on the other computer
run.bat:
copy myprog.bin n:\saturn
echo "sat -l myprog.bin 26004000" > n:\saturn\cmd.txt
On the other computer, the application-running program is waiting for cmd.txt to appear, then it will invoke the Saturn transfer utility and return. If you have a single monitor setup (KVM switch) this works fine as you don't need to know what the other computer is doing.
In practice it works very smoothly, just 'make' and 'run' like normal.
The advantage of this method is that it takes all of 10 seconds to whip up the code and requires no network programming. Ignore the fact that real programmers can come up with 1000 ways to do this better -- I'm not one of them.
Hope this is useful for somebody, I know I'm enjoying it.
Plus all the sound and art tools are on different computer so I end up copying lots of stuff over to the old machine as I can't use it to work on data when needed.
Here's the solution I came up with:
- Network the two computers together and enable file sharing so you can map a directory on the old computer as a network drive on the one you want to use.
- Write a small program that waits in a loop for a text file to be created and passes all the lines of text to command.com (or use DJGPP's system() to get around the command line limit)) for execution. It deletes the command file and waits for a new one afterwards. This runs on the old computer.
From the computer you want to use, do all the normal tasks (edit and compile software, generate data, etc.) then copy the binary output and any necessary files to the networked drive.
Finally copy a textfile with some commands to run your program, and the old computer will load it to the Saturn.
Something like this:
n:\saturn is the networked drive pointing to d:\work\saturn on the other computer
run.bat:
copy myprog.bin n:\saturn
echo "sat -l myprog.bin 26004000" > n:\saturn\cmd.txt
On the other computer, the application-running program is waiting for cmd.txt to appear, then it will invoke the Saturn transfer utility and return. If you have a single monitor setup (KVM switch) this works fine as you don't need to know what the other computer is doing.
In practice it works very smoothly, just 'make' and 'run' like normal.
The advantage of this method is that it takes all of 10 seconds to whip up the code and requires no network programming. Ignore the fact that real programmers can come up with 1000 ways to do this better -- I'm not one of them.
Hope this is useful for somebody, I know I'm enjoying it.
