Retro Rocket OS - A BASIC powered Operating System (started 2009!)

[willow ginkgo]

i mean its not modern enough to game

but it isnt a crappy computer i run retro rocket on

its old, sure, but its more than good enough to run windows 10, or linux

i even used to do unreal engine dev on it, thats why it has 32gb ram lol

i just have no need for it to run windows or linux rn so os dev test rig it is

[true ridge]

thats some very resource intensive games

[willow ginkgo]

nah just normal games

anything newer than cyberpunk 2077 is too new for it really

[willow ginkgo]

hah, standalone listen() test is horrible

    load_module("e1000");
    unsigned char ip[4];
    dprintf("Waiting for net to be ready\n");
    while (!gethostaddr(ip)) {
        __asm__ volatile("pause");
    };
    dprintf("listening 2000\n");
    int server = tcp_listen(0, 2000, 5);
    int client = -1;
    if (server < 0) {
        dprintf("Listen failure\n");
    } else {
        dprintf("waiting for client connection\n");
        while ((client = tcp_accept(server)) < 0) {
            __asm__ volatile("pause");
        };
        dprintf("Sending reply\n");
        send(client, "HELLORLD", 8);
        uint64_t ticks = get_ticks();
        while (get_ticks() - ticks < 3000) {
            tcp_idle();
            __asm__ volatile("pause");
        }
        dprintf("Closing client\n");
        closesocket(client);
        dprintf("Closing server\n");
        closesocket(server);
    }

[heavy linden]

Silksong:

[willow ginkgo]

going to add BASIC support for LISTEN and ACCEPT today.

then, first connection into it remotely

i might make a telnet server, for shits and giggles.

[true ridge]

indie games dont count they run on microwaves

[willow ginkgo]

yeah

lol

ive changed the font to the BBC Micro 8x8 font

can fit a lot more vertically on screen now but i have another reason for this, VDU 23, x support

it looks very different to IBM 8x16 and might take some getting used to for some people

[true ridge]

that last font looked like ass
congrats on switching

[willow ginkgo]

it was because it was bbc 8x8 stretched double height

this is the same font but at the aspect its supposed to be

[true ridge]

oh

dont stretch fonts again they look like poo afterwards :/

[willow ginkgo]

zoomed in a bit

because discord's scaling of the image makes it unreadable without clicking

but you can see how the shape is right now?

they dont look so ass, obviously retro/oldschool but not ass

[true ridge]

i never said this one was ass

this one's better

[willow ginkgo]

yeah

its exact match of mode 1 font

[true ridge]

this palette hurts my eyes

[true ridge]

cool

can there be licensing issues though

[heavy linden]

Black Myth Wukong

(or howevery you spell that; min system requirement includes a i5 8400, a hexacore cpu)

[willow ginkgo]

no, these fonts are not licensed like ttf fonts are

[true ridge]

ok cool

[willow ginkgo]

they're just part of the os binary itself but not something anyone is asserting rights over

acorn went bust decades ago

[willow ginkgo]

tcp socket server in BASIC!

[true ridge]

the name basic is clickbait atp (it's not basic at all anymore)

tcp server is insane

[willow ginkgo]

it is basic, see how simple a tcp server is?

its like 10 lines lol

admittedly that can only serve one request at a time, but its possible to make it scale simply by splitting the program in two, like a fork() model

server = SOCKLISTEN(NETINFO$("ip"), 2000, 5)
PRINT "Socket server listening on port 2000"
REPEAT
    client = SOCKACCEPT(server)
    IF client >= 0 THEN PROChandleConnection(client)
UNTIL INKEY$ <> ""
SOCKCLOSE server
END

DEF PROChandleConnection(client)
    PRINT "Handling connection, HELLORLD!"
    SOCKWRITE client, "HELLORLD!" + CHR$(10) + CHR$(13)
    SLEEP 1 ' Give the write time to finish
    SOCKCLOSE client
ENDPROC

[true ridge]

@fork is this true

[true ridge]

nice

[willow ginkgo]

i need to fix that need to do SLEEP 1

because SOCKWRITE does not block, it isnt guaranteed the data is sent to the client before you SOCKCLOSE without it

[willow ginkgo]

server = SOCKLISTEN(NETINFO$("ip"), 2000, 5)
PRINT "Socket server listening on port 2000"
REPEAT
    client = SOCKACCEPT(server)
    IF client >= 0 THEN PROChandleConnection(client)
UNTIL INKEY$ <> ""
SOCKCLOSE server
END

DEF PROChandleConnection(client)
    PRINT "Handling connection, HELLORLD!"
    SOCKWRITE client, "HELLORLD!" + CHR$(10) + CHR$(13)
    SOCKFLUSH client ' Ensure data has been sent
    SOCKCLOSE client
ENDPROC

there, new keyword SOCKFLUSH, thats better

https://retrorocket.dev/SOCKFLUSH.html

[true ridge]

do drivers need to add support for the keyword?

keywords

Ebtgernet

[willow ginkgo]

wdym

drivers don't implement the TCP stack if that's what you mean, a network driver only has a function pointer to send an ethernet frame and sends incoming ethernet packets to ethernet_handle_frame()

[true ridge]

a ok cool

[hot hound]

@willow ginkgo can you add some kind of compatibility mode or emulator or something for microsofts ms basic? They've open sourced it under MIT a couple days ago.

Well at least I think that'd be pretty cool

[willow ginkgo]

probably not going to happen, it's more like BBC basic which was a much more advanced dialect, ms basic requires line numbers, doesn't have procedures, functions, while/endwhile etc

and Microsoft basic, the one they released, makes a lot of assumptions that it's in a 6502 environment with a 64k memory map

looks like it doesn't even have a divide operator lol

idk why you'd want to "emulate" it apart from as historical curiosity

[hot hound]

Mostly that

[willow ginkgo]

just optimised BASIC keyword dispatch to make it O(1), eliminate a huge switch statement, and mean theres one point where you have to go when adding a new keyword rather than about 3 different call points

[glad hemlock]

Are you using a jump table or what

[willow ginkgo]

yes

[willow ginkgo]

just done a ton of optimisations to the hot paths in BASIC

[willow ginkgo]

a webserver!

IF EXISTSVARI("client_socket") THEN
    PROCprocessRequest
    END
ENDIF

server = SOCKLISTEN(NETINFO$("ip"), 80, 5)
PRINT "Web server running. Press any key to terminate."
REPEAT
    client = SOCKACCEPT(server)
    IF client >= 0 THEN PROCspawnChild(client)
UNTIL INKEY$ <> ""
SOCKCLOSE server
END

DEF PROCspawnChild(client)
    GLOBAL client_socket = client
    CHAIN PROGRAM$, TRUE ' Spawn an async background instance
ENDPROC

DEF PROCprocessRequest
    SOCKREAD client_socket, REQUEST$
    VERB$ = TOKENIZE$(REQUEST$, " ") ' Get the request details
    FILEPATH$ = TOKENIZE$(REQUEST$, " ")
    IF FILEPATH$ = "/" THEN FILEPATH$ = "/index.html"
    PRINT FILEPATH$
    VERSION$ = REQUEST$
    FILEPATH$ = "/system/webserver" + FILEPATH$
    FH = OPENIN(FILEPATH$)
    IF FH > -1 THEN
        SOCKWRITE client_socket, "HTTP/1.0 200 OK"; CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
        size = FILESIZE(FILEPATH$)
        buffer = MEMALLOC(size)
        SOCKWRITE client_socket, "Content-Length: "; size; CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
        SOCKWRITE client_socket, "Connection: close"; CHR$(13); CHR$(10); CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
        BINREAD FH, buffer, size
        SOCKBINWRITE client_socket, buffer, size
        SOCKFLUSH client_socket
        MEMRELEASE buffer
        SOCKCLOSE client_socket
        CLOSE FH
    ELSE
        SOCKWRITE client_socket, "HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found"; CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
        SOCKWRITE client_socket, "Content-Length: 0"; CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
        SOCKWRITE client_socket, "Connection: close"; CHR$(13); CHR$(10); CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
        SOCKFLUSH client_socket
        SOCKCLOSE client_socket
    ENDIF
ENDPROC

less than 50 lines of BASIC

[true ridge]

hellorld?

[tall wedge]

watch the usagi centurion videos and youll understand

[true ridge]

mk

[willow ginkgo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ6mwbTGXGQ

[true ridge]

thx

[willow ginkgo]

added a ton of new BASIC functions/keywords:

• FILESIZE - get size of a file by name without opening it
• MEMALLOC - allocate memory from the basic program's pool
• MEMRELEASE - release memory
• BINREAD - read raw binary buffer from file
• BINWRITE - write raw binary buffer from file
• SOCKBINREAD - read raw binary buffer from socket
• SOCKBINWRITE - write raw binary buffer to socket

[willow ginkgo]

hmm this is actually quickly becoming "the OS where making network software is easy"

[fierce swallow]

that's hot work!

[true ridge]

you have a 3d implementation

the os where making multiplayer shooters is easy

[willow ginkgo]

rendering a cube is far from rendering an animating models

but its a start!

[willow ginkgo]

working on a way to be able to redefine characters (VDU23,X) and draw text at any arbitrary graphics coordinate bypassing flanterms grid

[true ridge]

everyone in the universe is using flanterm now

[willow ginkgo]

I'm using a heavily modified form, with extra features... flanterm can't do that thing above

nor can it report it's dirty-rect, which I use to improve graphics drawing performance

[willow ginkgo]

it didnt go crazy... i redefined character 32 😄

[wild sedge]

lol

[willow ginkgo]

im adding support for the BBC Micro VDU keyword

its like ANSI, but Acorn's own rules

allows you to do crazy things like redefine character bitmaps

[willow ginkgo]

https://retrorocket.dev/VDU.html#autotoc_md1078

[rich scroll]

that's actually a really good looking font. Good to know when the need for a small bitmap font arises

[willow ginkgo]

todays stuff.... make sure you got sound on 🙂

[timber dawn]

oh thats cool :p

[latent tendon]

lol nice

[true ridge]

finally

audio

[willow ginkgo]

im still working on the BASIC interface and driver interface for it

but it will be done soon

[timber dawn]

chop chop

[willow ginkgo]

https://tenor.com/view/trabalhando-working-typing-productive-gif-14645503

whats the usual thing to do.... something to do with an apple and black and white animation?

[plush estuary]

Bad Apple in Retro Rocket?!?!

in this economy?!

[timber dawn]

no no no, its Black and White Apple Animation, not Bad Apple!

[willow ginkgo]

lol yeah, generic copyright free witch and apple music

[timber dawn]

perfect!

[willow ginkgo]

    load_module("ac97");

    fs_directory_entry_t* entry = fs_get_file_info("/system/webserver/test.raw");
    int16_t* data = kmalloc(entry->size);
    fs_read_file(entry, 0, entry->size, (unsigned char*)data);

    mixer_channel_t *music = mixer_open_channel();
    mixer_set_gain(music, 64);
    mixer_push(music, data, entry->size / sizeof(int16_t) / 2);

    kfree(data);

^ my test code for the mixer

[willow ginkgo]

really getting into the code now 😄

    void* wav_buffer;
    size_t wav_size;
    if (audio_wav_load("/system/webserver/test.wav", &wav_buffer, &wav_size)) {
        mixer_stream_t *music = mixer_create_stream();
        mixer_set_gain(music, 64);
        mixer_push(music, wav_buffer, wav_size_to_samples(wav_size));
        kfree(wav_buffer);
    }

[willow ginkgo]

IT WORKS!!!

[willow ginkgo]

Sound support now done!

• Intro to the audio system
• STREAM
• SOUND
• DECIBELS

Gonna have a lot of fun with this 😄

[tacit slate]

oh nice

and nice documentation btw

[willow ginkgo]

ty 🙂

[willow ginkgo]

this is one deep rabbit hole

[willow ginkgo]

now with codec support for loading MP3 files and FLAC files with SOUND LOAD:

https://retrorocket.dev/audio-basics.html

[true ridge]

add WAV or i will destroy the universe

[willow ginkgo]

wav is built in... 😄

[true ridge]

oop

[manic ridge]

aac, ogg/vorbis, and opus?

[maiden kiln]

awesome

[willow ginkgo]

there would need to be a good header only lib for each

ii tried first to get stb_vorbis working before mp3, but it wouldnt compile, it does stupid shit like #including a c file instead of a header file, not letting me override the allocator properly

[willow ginkgo]

adding ogg/vorbis 🙂

wont be adding AAC for now, it isnt a good fit for a kernel module. huge libs only like libfaac and the format is patent encumbered

[heavy linden]

flac my beloved ❤️

[willow ginkgo]

I'm adding adsr envelopes next with square, sine, sawtooth and triangle waves

for those who like it oldschool

[willow ginkgo]

OGG file loader, ENVELOPE and SOUND TONE.

You can now play basic square waves, sawtooth waves, sine waves, etc, and define ASDR envelopes!

https://retrorocket.dev/audio-basics.html#envelopes
https://retrorocket.dev/ENVELOPE.html

[willow ginkgo]

these tests dont really do the power of it justice; im not a musician

[true ridge]

true

its really cool tho

there should be like a tracker or something

[willow ginkgo]

yeah it's doable

I'm not musically talented enough to make it nice

or demonstrate it

really need a way to pitch bend samples for a proper tracker

[maiden kiln]

you could try to convert never gonna give you up

[willow ginkgo]

hahaha

i just converted the first few bars of bach

you know the famous church organ theme

REM The introduction to Bach's Tocatta and Fuges
REM Demonstration of ENVELOPE and SOUND TONE

ON ERROR PROCcontinue
MODLOAD "ac97"
ON ERROR OFF

REM Streams
STREAM CREATE lead1
STREAM CREATE lead2
STREAM CREATE lead3

REM ADSR envelopes
ENVELOPE CREATE 2, 1, 255, 128, 25,120, 220, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
ENVELOPE CREATE 3, 0, 220, 128, 10, 60, 180, 320, 0, 0, 0, 3,12
ENVELOPE CREATE 63, 0, 0, 128, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

REM tune
PROCchord(880, 20, 3)
PROCchord(784, 20, 3)
PROCchord(880, 100, 3)
PROCchord(100, 40, 63)
PROCchord(100, 40, 63)
PROCchord(784, 20, 2)
PROCchord(698, 20, 2)
PROCchord(659, 20, 2)
PROCchord(587, 20, 2)
PROCchord(554, 90, 2)
PROCchord(587, 90, 2)

REM wait for tune to leave buffer
SLEEP 6000
END

DEF PROCcontinue
ENDPROC

DEF PROCchord(rootHz, durCs, env)
    SOUND TONE lead1, rootHz, durCs, env
    SOUND TONE lead2, rootHz * 1.2599, durCs, env   ' major 3rd
    SOUND TONE lead3, rootHz * 1.4983, durCs, env   ' perfect 5th
ENDPROC

youre welcome to try, im not musically inclined

i found the notes

gonna give it a go

never gonna give it up

never gonna let you down

😄

[willow ginkgo]

hmmm i cant do it 🙁

i suck at music

this can be a job for someone else

[true ridge]

:(

[rich scroll]

MIDI player?

[true ridge]

passport.mid on retro rocket

🔥

[rich scroll]

No, canyon.mid on retro rocket!

[willow ginkgo]

hah

i looked into this, because i did find a midi of never gonna give you up

[rich scroll]

add soundfont support too!

[willow ginkgo]

lol

nah im just going to add .mod support

midi is far too complex

[willow ginkgo]

mods ahoy! anyone for a rickroll?

[willow ginkgo]

i found a rickroll .mod in protracker format 😄

[willow ginkgo]

enjoy!!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/osdev/comments/1nnk3t3/testing_my_audio_stack_software_mixing_mp3_ogg/

i should do bad apple. just because.

[maiden kiln]

love it

[willow ginkgo]

its actually even better at 140ms per image

as thats the speed of the song in bpm

[willow ginkgo]

thats HDA driver support added, should cover most non-usb, non-hdmi audio devices out there

[true ridge]

the video clip is literally windows xp google chrome experience

144p 2fps

[willow ginkgo]

lol

thats intentional

i could run the frames at like 90fps

but it would just give people seizures

its not a video, its just 5 frames taken from the video

and i intentionally pixelated the frames

https://github.com/brainboxdotcc/retro-rocket/blob/master/os/images/rick2.png

[willow ginkgo]

^

[true ridge]

rick2.png

[true ridge]

real

[willow ginkgo]

[willow ginkgo]

fix hda driver bugs, was playing everything at 48000hz not 44100hz

now works perfectly

[true ridge]

til 100hz makes a difference

to be fair if you are listening to music even the slightest change will feel weird

[willow ginkgo]

it makes a huge difference to audio

its 8.84% faster and higher pitch

if you confuse the two

[willow ginkgo]

fixed all my maths primitives, log, pow, etc.

These are way beyond my ability to understand, the concepts are closer to "pure maths" than even comp sci. I used a combination of freebsd sources, libm, and chatgpt to figure out better solutions, because XM playback was skewing pitches of notes high due to assumptions i made in my simple implementation of pow, exp and log. theyre closer to the bsd and libm impl now, lots of floating point bit twiddling, little of it is understand. but, if bsd does it... means its battle hardened.

also, where i can, i used builtins.

[humble bison]

Listen to a 100Hz and a 200Hz tone

[digital leaf]

our hearing is kinda logarithmic

if you know what i mean

meaning a 200hz tone will sound significantly higher than a 100hz tone, but a 10100hz tone will not sound significantly higher than a 10000hz tone

• you have to multiply a frequency by 2 to go up one octave instead of adding to it

[humble bison]

fair

Theres definitely an audible difference between 500Hz and 505Hz tone but tbh i wouldn’t know if I wasn’t presented both variants

[digital leaf]

audible, yes, significant, no

[true ridge]

k

[willow ginkgo]

you thinking of decibels?

[digital leaf]

No

I'm thinking of frequencies

But that too is a logarithmic scale

[willow ginkgo]

44100 to 48000 is hugely noticeable though and then add on top another bug that pegged all the notes up the top of the scale in the xm player

it was like the naff recorder version lol

[digital leaf]

It's about a 4khz difference so probably

[willow ginkgo]

currently integrating mbedtls, so i can make ssl connections

once i have that my proof of concept will be to send a discord webhook!

[willow ginkgo]

well, it's integrated! I "just" need to test it now and debug any oofs

[willow ginkgo]

SSL works!!!

REM Socket test
HOST$ = "yahoo.com"
PRINT "Connecting to "; HOST$; " ";
IP$ = DNS$(HOST$)
PRINT " (IP: "; IP$; ")... ";

SSLCONNECT FD, IP$, 443, HOST$
PRINT "Connected! Socket descriptor="; FD

PRINT "Writing..."
SOCKWRITE FD, "GET / HTTP/1.0"; CHR$(13); CHR$(10); "Host: "; HOST$; CHR$(13); CHR$(10); CHR$(13); CHR$(10);
PRINT "Reading..."
SOCKREAD FD, TEST$
PRINT TEST$
PRINT "CLOSING"
SOCKCLOSE FD

PRINT "CLOSED"

[heavy linden]

bro doxxed yahoo

[willow ginkgo]

OH NOES i gave out yahoo's ip!

it was so secret, too!

[willow ginkgo]

taking a bit of a break from the really mind bending tls stuff, to add something simple

[willow ginkgo]

tree program!

[narrow elbow]

wait do you have unicode support ?

[narrow elbow]

also maybee add some color

[tacit slate]

Those are probably box drawing characters

[narrow elbow]

oh

[tacit slate]

Well that was poorly worded, but cp437 fonts can support then too

https://github.com/viler-int10h/vga-text-mode-fonts have a look at the fonts in this repo, most (if not all) of them have those characters near the end.

[willow ginkgo]

flanterm maps Unicode to cp437

but in this os you can redefine font glyphs too

[willow ginkgo]

now changed the efi.fat image to a gzip compressed one. now the installer takes much less space, cuts the entire iso down to 24mb!

just needed to include zlib to decompress it

or rather, a subset of zlib

[willow ginkgo]

people keep asking, so i just had to

PRINT "Loading... ";
SPRITELOAD bad_apple, "/images/bad-apple.gif"
CLS
AUTOFLIP FALSE

GCOL &888888
RECTANGLE 0, 0, GRAPHICS_WIDTH - 1, GRAPHICS_HEIGHT - 1

REPEAT
    PLOT bad_apple, GRAPHICS_CENTRE_X - 160, GRAPHICS_CENTRE_Y - 100
    FLIP
    SLEEP 66
    ANIMATE NEXT bad_apple
UNTIL INKEY$ <> ""

AUTOFLIP TRUE
CLS
END

[wild sedge]

Hell yeah

[tacit slate]

nice lol

[willow ginkgo]

i was going to do the music too but there are copyright issues of embedding the mp3 for bad apple in retro rocket's iso

[digital leaf]

just record a video and thats it

• including the gif is already just as dicey legally speaking as the music

[willow ginkgo]

the gif is not associated with the original song

that was an art project someone did much later

[digital leaf]

and the gif is licensed freely or what

[willow ginkgo]

not exactly, reuse is tolerated, which is why everyone else uses it. the music is a different matter

it is a grey area

[true ridge]

1994 power macintosh levels of framerate 😭

nice tho

"generic girl with apple video"

[willow ginkgo]

can take the frame rate up much higher but the speed felt wrong

sleep can go as low as 5 or even be removed

[true ridge]

fair

[willow ginkgo]

currently trying to make HDA work on real hardware

seems the firmware leaves it in a weird state

[heavy linden]

FW devs do be doing that

[willow ginkgo]

yup, "lets leave the device in bus mater mode, so it fails if you try it yourself, but leave all the codecs in D0 state"

[willow ginkgo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHi4cfMWEsU

HARVESTING APPLES

[true ridge]

https://tenor.com/view/weird-al-al-yankovic-weird-al-yankovic-gif-2956261254786586745

fire

[willow ginkgo]

lol, innit

[true ridge]

gdt innit

[willow ginkgo]

GDT OK

[willow ginkgo]

it's funny that I added a sound mixer and 3d graphics to retro rocket before paging functions. backwards lol. never needed them

[true ridge]

just use relocatable file headers

[willow ginkgo]

lol, everything in retro rocket is identity mapped, the default mapping provided by limine covered everything I needed, until I started dealing with 64 bit mmio BARs

so I was fine just deep copying limines cr3, until now

[true ridge]

ah

fair™

vmm's are just kinda scary idk

thats probably another problem but yeah idk address spaces look evil

[willow ginkgo]

nvme support works! needs some testing, and has some weird crashes. dont risk it on real devices yet.

[true ridge]

the installer looks like a certain linux tool but i forgot

its some old one idk

or new

[willow ginkgo]

i was inspired by linux text mode installers

[true ridge]

nice

[willow ginkgo]

virtio support is now added!

[true ridge]

yay

[willow ginkgo]

[1829]: xhci.dbg: device VID:PID=0627:0001 class=03/01/01 mps=64 (port=5 speed=3)

nice, thats a usb keyboard!

[willow ginkgo]

I've had enough of USB, it isn't working quite right. it's a job for Ron

[willow ginkgo]

fixed FOR to support double STEP/TO

[willow ginkgo]

currently adding REGEX SUPPORT to BASIC

which required my libc to have wide char stuff

[willow ginkgo]

https://retrorocket.dev/MATCH.html

REGEX ahoy!

[fossil pagoda]

I don't think your website should look like this...

[willow ginkgo]

thanks lol it shouldnt

it used to be github wiki, i guess that didnt convert right to doxygen

omg, thats 10,000 lines

let me make a new one

[willow ginkgo]

fixed! thanks for letting me know. the correct docs page is: https://retrorocket.dev/cpuid.html
not (cpubrand)

[fossil pagoda]

Yay!

[willow ginkgo]

i didnt write that all myself btw, i passed the old page thru chatgpt and told it to sumamrise, convert to markdown, and convert the values to decimals (cpuid command take decimal not hex)

no way i can write that quick lol

this is exactly what LLMs are good at imho, parsing and converting text from one form to another

[willow ginkgo]

added support for captures, so the i can finally write a HTTP lib using REGEX to process URL!

https://retrorocket.dev/MATCH.html

[willow ginkgo]

so ive spent like 4 days spelunking into the old code.

i wanted to make a BASIC library so i can PROCget a URL and then get the HTTP(S) content.

• to do that i needed a HTTP library. wrote it with LEFT$, RIGHT$, etc, it was awful.
• so i decided to integrate a regex lib
• tried 3 different regex libs until i found one that worked
• just to be able to parse urls better and split them!
• to find that my http lib doesnt work because i'd put a blank line in the BASIC and my parser was being a dick
• fixed that, to find that my http lib doesnt work because a REM statement with brackets and : in the text kills the parser (couldnt make this shit up)
• fixed THAT, so now at least i can split urls!

before that, ive had to integrate a TLS lib so i can make https connections

[true ridge]

speaking of "captures"
do you have screenshots?

like make screenshot in the system

[willow ginkgo]

i could do this, but theres no way to save it in the livecd

only on an installed system

[true ridge]

oh

[true ridge]

add it for installed OS's idk

[willow ginkgo]

gonna start development of a package manager very soon!

[willow ginkgo]

https://retrorocket.dev/http.html
http request lib is done 😄

[willow ginkgo]

LIBRARY LIB$ + "/http"

PROChttp_get("http://neuron.brainbox.cc/test.txt")
PRINT "HTTP status code: "; FNhttp_result$("code")
PRINT "Response body:"
PRINT FNhttp_result$("body")

easy to use lib 😄

[tacit slate]

Lol nice

[willow ginkgo]

currently working on a way to initialise and format a ramdisk from BASIC without an existing FS, so that there can be a ramdisk initialised when you start the live cd, giving you a place to save files and experiment properly.

REM Create a 1GB RetroFS ramdisk
RD$ = EMPTYRAMDISK$(1024)
MOUNT "/ramdisk", RD$, "rfs"
PRINT "Created RAM disk"

i mean what use is a live cd of an os designed for programming and tinkering, if you cant change anything

this will also give us somewhere to fetch http requested files to

[willow ginkgo]

decided we need a bootup mascot image 😄

[heavy linden]

what's its name?

[latent tendon]

Gdt initter

[willow ginkgo]

rocky the retro rocket owl

he's an owl because the bbc micro logo was an owl

[willow ginkgo]

GDT, innit!

[willow ginkgo]

should i put retro rocket into #1341905166907215954 ?

[glad hemlock]

Yeah it’s pretty awesome

The fact you can make drivers within your userspace is fucking insane

[rich scroll]

Yes

[latent tendon]

^

[glad hemlock]

It’s one of the most impressive feats I’ve seen here

Like that’s way higher level than almost everyone

Even the seasoned devs don’t have that yet

I mean some have self hosting which I guess could count but still

[willow ginkgo]

this is because the userspace isnt a ring 3 userspace, and the security is handled by the language runtime

it lets me sidestep some stuff and do things that usually are the realm of microkernels

i'll cook up a submission later then 😄

[glad hemlock]

Its how you do your userspace

I wasn’t necessarily talking about ring3

Imo there’s nothing wrong with running things in the kernel

[willow ginkgo]

really glad to see you got a place by the way, was worried for you

[glad hemlock]

Thank you man ❤️❤️ I’ve been working 50 hour weeks along with school so it’s been rough

[latent tendon]

same

[glad hemlock]

❤️

Love u guys

This is the only community I feel welcome and cared for in

Not even people at school or in my family are this supportive

Only you guys, my close friends irl, and my fiancee

Even tho my os is shit 😭😭😭

[rich scroll]

have you considered beefing up security later by using ring 3?

[glad hemlock]

Given the way he made the operating system I’m assuming it would be a simple process

Just another GDT entry

[willow ginkgo]

not sure. it wouldnt be the default thats for sure. if i did, it would be something you enable for your child processes

[rich scroll]

that would be a neat way to do it

[willow ginkgo]

basically, you'd set the option, and it would build a page table for each or something

[glad hemlock]

Ahh

Like an argument

[willow ginkgo]

would be a lot more finicky to code for though

yup

[glad hemlock]

Command line argument I’m assuming?

[willow ginkgo]

like right now you have CHAIN "filename", booleanval and the booleanval is true if you want to background the process, false or missing if you want to basically waitpid on it

[glad hemlock]

Wait are the basic files executable after they’re ran

Like do they become elf’s?

Or are they just done in real time

Do you have an executable format you use?

Or is it just interpreted basic

[willow ginkgo]

BASIC files are BASIC files, theyre interpreted

[glad hemlock]

I see

[willow ginkgo]

compiled basic would be .... challenging

[glad hemlock]

Yeah

Do you plan on supporting soemthing like a C compiler? Potentially self hosting?

[willow ginkgo]

if you want compiled code, the only option rn is kernel modules, dynamically loaded

unlikely i'd do that

self hosting means too close to posix/unix

which isnt really my goal

[glad hemlock]

Yeah

That was my goal initially but

My process subsystem is posix compatible

[willow ginkgo]

still havent decided how or if i'll allow kernel modules to extend basic, would be nice, but also means you have programs that dont run unless you load specific ko's

[glad hemlock]

file descriptors and stuff too

[willow ginkgo]

file descriptors are the only thing thats posix-ish

in retro rocket

under basic is a posix-like libc-like open(), read(), write(), close()

[glad hemlock]

It’s kinda hard to do a lot of things without file descriptors

Yeah my syscalls are posix compat

[rich scroll]

and most kernels have them

even if they aren't always called fds

[glad hemlock]

Yeah it’ll use an equivalent

[rich scroll]

like, NT handles are basically the same thing

[willow ginkgo]

there really isnt any sane way to do files without some kind of handles/descriptors, even the BBC Micro had them

[rich scroll]

ditto on classic Mac OS

[glad hemlock]

My file descriptors are hella basic 😭

[tall wedge]

Is your basic jit

[willow ginkgo]

i have shortcut functions in retro rocket's low level stuff, where i can give a file lookup result, which is a direct ptr to a vfs node, and then call a method to get a piece of a file.

so instead of opening a file, i hold a reference to it and say "give me x kilobytes from offset y"

its the same thing i guess, sorta, except theres no reference count

[glad hemlock]

you should probably have re counting

you will run into many issues at somepoint without it

[willow ginkgo]

not for the low level file read

[glad hemlock]

your fs WILL leak memory at some point if you dont have ref counting

[willow ginkgo]

low level file read is for stuff like early boot

[glad hemlock]

yeah but you can still leak memory which isnt preferable

especially since memory is precious in early boot

[willow ginkgo]

nah you cant leak it

[glad hemlock]

idk maybe im wrong

[willow ginkgo]

its not a hadle you open, its a vfs node, it exists while the file exists

heres an example from my installer

    fs_directory_entry_t* info = fs_get_file_info(source);
    if (info && !(info->flags & FS_DIRECTORY) && info->size > 0) {
        void *file_contents = kmalloc(info->size);
        if (!file_contents) {
            return false;
        }
        bool read_success = fs_read_file(info, 0, info->size, file_contents);
        if (!read_success) {
            error_page("Error reading '%s' (%s)\n", source, fs_strerror(fs_get_error()));
            kfree_null(&file_contents);
            return false;
        }
        int fh = _open(destination, _O_APPEND);
        if (fh < 0) {
            error_page("Error opening '%s' for writing (%s)\n", destination, fs_strerror(fs_get_error()));
            kfree_null(&file_contents);
            return false;
        }
        if (_write(fh, file_contents, info->size) == -1) {
            error_page("Error writing to '%s' (%s)\n", destination, fs_strerror(fs_get_error()));
            kfree_null(&file_contents);
            return false;
        }
        _close(fh);
        kfree_null(&file_contents);

        char message[MAX_STRINGLEN];
        snprintf(message, MAX_STRINGLEN, "Copying '%s' -> '%s' (%lu bytes)\n", source, destination, info->size);
        display_progress(message, progress + ((block_progress++) / 3));

        return true;
    }

the low level fs_get_file_info() and fs_read_file() are used to read the whole file in one slurp from source

and then posix-like handles to write it to destination

[glad hemlock]

ohh then yeah youre fine

[willow ginkgo]

because i never made an fs_write_file()

[glad hemlock]

was there rationale behind that choice tho?

[willow ginkgo]

kinda

fs_read_file() was made when all i had was iso9660

[glad hemlock]

my file data just points to a list of page pointers

lmao

[willow ginkgo]

by the time i got to fat32, retrofs, ram disks, i had the posix style open(... , O_CREAT)

[glad hemlock]

yeah fair enough

[willow ginkgo]

they map to a low level analog of fs_write_file but it made sense to just not make it a public api

[glad hemlock]

yeah thats a decent rationale

given you have the posix-like open()

[willow ginkgo]

open(), read() and write() and close() map to BASIC: OPENIN, OPENOUT, OPENUP, READ$(), BINREAD, BINWRITE etc

[glad hemlock]

clean. 👌

very nice design actually

good stuff

[willow ginkgo]

did you venture into vfs yet

the vfs for me was one of the most fun things

[glad hemlock]

oh. yes.

[glad hemlock]

100% AGREE

THAT SHIT WAS SO FUN

FELT SO GOOD

[willow ginkgo]

especially because im not really following any spec or standard, so i didnt feel like i was just writing out a script

[glad hemlock]

that is probably my fav subsystem

[glad hemlock]

same i made it all myself

the op table, everything

it was lots of dopamine

very very fun

[rich scroll]

I love function pointers

[willow ginkgo]

my entire driver system is a bunch of function ptrs

[glad hemlock]

YES

Top 5 C feature

i mean every lang has it but

[willow ginkgo]

basically:

typedef void* (*get_directory)(void*);
typedef int (*mount_volume)(const char*, const char*);
typedef bool (*read_file)(void*, uint64_t, uint32_t, unsigned char*);
typedef bool (*write_file)(void*, uint64_t, uint32_t, unsigned char*);
typedef uint64_t (*create_file)(void*, const char*, size_t);
typedef bool (*truncate_file)(void*, size_t);
typedef uint64_t (*create_dir)(void*, const char*);
typedef bool (*delete_file)(void*, const char*);
typedef bool (*delete_dir)(void*, const char*);
typedef uint64_t (*get_free_space)(void*);

/* Prototypes for block storage device drivers (see storage_device_t) */
typedef int (*block_read)(void*, uint64_t, uint32_t, unsigned char*);
typedef int (*block_write)(void*, uint64_t, uint32_t, const unsigned char*);
typedef bool (*block_clear)(void*, uint64_t, uint32_t);

typedef struct filesystem_t {
    char name[32];
    mount_volume mount;
    get_directory getdir;
    read_file readfile;
    write_file writefile;
    create_file createfile;
    truncate_file truncatefile;
    create_dir createdir;
    delete_file rm;    
    delete_dir rmdir;
    get_free_space freespace;
    struct filesystem_t* next;
} filesystem_t;

this is what i do

unerneath that, is a set of block device drivers, they just have read blocks, write blocks, trim blocks, get geometry

[glad hemlock]

look how clean this is:

[glad hemlock]

really nicely done, look at mine

what do u think of mine

@willow ginkgo

sorry for ping lol

[willow ginkgo]

it's nice

but I would typedef the functions

just makes it a bit less symbol soup

[glad hemlock]

Kinda like I did the rw thing?

[willow ginkgo]

yup

[willow ginkgo]

https://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=202444&sid=01ca74a050144f63211834d3a4ed56c5#p202444

just found a really really old post, the first time i call the OS "retro rocket"

really old screenshot lol

its interesting that ive started measuring kernel complexity by symbol count now

back then it had 381 symbols, now it has 5596 😮

[glad hemlock]

dang i just hit 1k

[willow ginkgo]

i do have lots of third party stuff in the kernel though

TRE, mbedtls, zlib, etc

[glad hemlock]

That would make sense

Nothing is third party in my OS besides Flanterm

I like suffering

[wild sedge]

bentobox only has 752 on x86-64 and 412 on aarch64

256 symbols on x86-64 are just the idt sooo

[willow ginkgo]

hah, same

i dont know if theyre exported symbols though

likely are

i need the third party stuff - no way im implementing my own compression, and definitely never my own TLS/SSL

then theres stb_image too

[willow ginkgo]

found a 16 year old bug in retro rocket last night

if you run the os for long enough, the keyboard buffer pointer wraps around

when it wraps around producer < consumer, and it thinks the buffer is full

because some things were treating it as a circular buffer when it wasnt quite

fix was simple enough, change some < to != in kgetc and kpeek etc. but, that went unnoticed for longer than some people on this server have been alive lol

[wild sedge]

dang that kernel is old

[digital leaf]

16?

how long ago did you start this thing

[willow ginkgo]

...16 years ago

the bug was in the ps2 keyboard driver

i only noticed it when i started mapping hci usb inputs to ps2 make/break codes

because i was hammering in kilobytes of garbage by keyboard mashing

[digital leaf]

it feels like an eternity ago to me because i was 4 and i barely just touched my first computer

[willow ginkgo]

wow that long ago

[willow ginkgo]

working on usb stick boot right now

been too long that I've had to say "lol use this obsolete metal pizza to boot the os"

[willow ginkgo]

UEFI USB BOOT!

[timber dawn]

does that say toilet extensions

the red square is kind of blocking some text i think

[wild sedge]

joliet

[timber dawn]

ohhh

well it couldve been anything yk

[willow ginkgo]

yes! of course! skibbidi filesystem /j

[timber dawn]

genius :D

[willow ginkgo]

need to actually write docs now on how to burn the os to usb, and boot from usb

the usb image and the iso are now in the artifacts though 😄
https://github.com/brainboxdotcc/retro-rocket/actions/runs/18542273589

[willow ginkgo]

usb boot support noiw fully documented!

[void phoenix]

is it any easier to make an OS in baaic than in C?

[willow ginkgo]

well, you cant make a whole OS in any dialect of BASIC im aware of

ive still had to make the kernel in C and make a BASIC interpreter

[void phoenix]

ahh okay that makes more sense, i thought this whole thing was written in basic i was wondering how you did it 😭

[willow ginkgo]

lol, that would be interesting to attempt

some of the BASICs support compilation to standalone executables (e.g. no separate runtime lib) but, they only compile for linux or windows, not freestanding environments

in retro rocket the entire userland is BASIC, right from the very first 'init' program

and you can even write drivers in BASIC if you want

[void phoenix]

that is cool as hell, im probably gonna do a similar thing with my kernel when i get the motivation to work on it again (maybe not with basic though), impressive as hell well done

[willow ginkgo]

thanks, what language would you use

i almost chose to use javascript because of people saying "you cant write an OS in javascript", was going to integrate libduktape

[void phoenix]

go seems pretty nice, i know it better than C at the very least and it can be freestanding with gcc

[willow ginkgo]

ah nice

[void phoenix]

id probably do this if i knew js 😭

[willow ginkgo]

go is interesting.

haksell has monads. go has gonads

if you ever get the urge to help me out, i welcome PRs and especially userland programs, writing retro rocket BASIC is easy af

[void phoenix]

ill probably learn it, cause this OS is genuinely interesting to me so ill look into it 🙏

[willow ginkgo]

https://retrorocket.dev/basic-ref.html

luckily for everyone i took time to document the language an theres like 60 different examples already in /programs

BASIC was the beginners language before python

[void phoenix]

ill have a read through all this when im at my PC next, ill definitely be giving it a go asap

[willow ginkgo]

nice 😄

[willow ginkgo]

added a page on creating boot media 😄

https://retrorocket.dev/creating-boot-media.html

[willow ginkgo]

symbol file is now gzipped, its 40k instead of 205k

means its faster to load off usb/iso, and means that little less to download from github

[willow ginkgo]

fixed my msi support, so devices can at last enable msi and msi-x!

one bitmask value was wrong

[willow ginkgo]

added pci_setup_multiple_interrupts, have plans for it at a later date

[willow ginkgo]

now have support for S5 sleep/power button shutdown 🙂

[narrow elbow]

this look AI generated so much

[willow ginkgo]

who? rocky the owl?

[narrow elbow]

yes

the mascot

[willow ginkgo]

probably because he is? you offering your amazing art skills?

[narrow elbow]

oh make sense

[willow ginkgo]

I'm a developer not an artist and I refuse to use "programmer art" in anything I present to the world. I commission, or I generate

[narrow elbow]

fair

the only problem

is that using an AI generated mascot people tend more to thing the entire thing is low effort (which obviously your OS isen't)

[willow ginkgo]

meh, I think those people might get left behind as the world changes around them

LLMs and generative models are a tool like any other

and while some are harping on about "they be stealing my data" (but were never concerned when Google were making profiles of their entire lives and selling it to any bidder) others are innovating. I'm not sure the future is in openAI and spending trillions on destroying the world, but long term this research will bring benefits to development

[narrow elbow]

well it's that this people might think you use AI in your code and well AI coded OS don't have a very good reputation rn :kekw:

[willow ginkgo]

ai found a bug in my code nobody here could,
it's oddly good at static analysis and analysing for issues. my IDT was off by one, and my ahci structs were misaligned, I had asked for help so many times and in the end I gave up and put my project away for a while. I was bored one afternoon and asked GPT if it could find the issue in the code stopping it booting on real hardware, pasted in the c files, boom, a couple hours later (it didn't work first time, had to iterate some) I had my os working for the first time on real machines

many people just outright dismiss LLMs as useless, hallucinatory, or plagiarism, but if you feed them your own content they are very powerful

[narrow elbow]

well that cool

[willow ginkgo]

but the code in my os pre dates LLMs by a decade, that gives it some weight too as not just "AI generated"

[narrow elbow]

yes but sadly some people don'r very look inside

they just read the readme or look at bit at thing and if they find something that look AI generated they call the whole thing AI 😔

i mean i can understand that you don't care about that kind of people

that probably what you should do actually

[willow ginkgo]

we create because we enjoy it

not to please someone who's got a stick up their ass and truly believes AI will take our jobs

I mean if you really think it will take your job, you were already replaceable by cheap foreign labour, or, you misunderstand the limits of LLMs and AI, there's always going to be a need for human creativity

and most importantly human review of generated output

because it messes up so often

[humble bison]

Ive successfully used qwen3 to turn my awful hell of a "compile-and-run.sh" into a reasonably functional makefile without having to read too much into makefile syntax, it hasn’t broken yet

like I know exactly what I want and need to do, just not the syntax of the language
idk if that’s considered vibecoding

[willow ginkgo]

nope, vibe coding is where you do "jesus take the wheel" and if it doesn't work you prompt it again and again until it compiles... russian roulette coding

[humble bison]

I was doing that with GitHub copilot before it was cool
before chatgippity even existed that is
over time I found myself less and less reliant on it to build things, I guess that’s how I accidentally learned how to code

also your os looks really cool
might see if I can contribute something :p maybe some random userland thing
(my own project is kinda stuck with a very intermittent and annoying bug)

if my basic skillz from being bored with a calculator in math class aren’t too rusty

[willow ginkgo]

all prs welcome, userland or kernel

I'm sure you're not too rusty

and thanks for the compliment 🙂

[willow ginkgo]

now working on a virtio-net driver... but alongside it I now need a way to select a driver on a per subsystem basis with priority, so I can say like "load me a network driver compatible with my detected hardware" without having to load every single network driver and try them all

[willow ginkgo]

added a load order system, now you can go MODLOAD "net" and it will examine all network modules and load the ones you have

its fed from /system/config/loadorder.conf that looks like this:

[net]
1AF4    1041    *       virtio_net
8086    100E    *       e1000
8086    107C    *       e1000
8086    153A    *       e1000
8086    10EA    *       e1000
10EC    8139    *       rtl8139

[sound]
*       *       0403    hda
*       *       0401    ac97

[codecs]
*       *       *       flac,mod,mp3,ogg,xm

[true ridge]

toilet extensions

[willow ginkgo]

https://tenor.com/view/idk-gross-cute-squatty-potty-unicorn-gif-12966786

[true ridge]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1253828627846397994/1412984426886991892/speechmemified_Screenshot_from_2025-09-03_21-13-02.gif

[willow ginkgo]

[true ridge]

its a stupid powerpoint i made in 8th grade

absolute peak

[willow ginkgo]

have you seen the unicorn poopy potty ad?

[true ridge]

no 😔

[willow ginkgo]

https://youtu.be/YbYWhdLO43Q

[willow ginkgo]

need to return to the roadmap! i got a bunch of stuff added in to make a package manager so people can download/upload their BASIC programs! will be working on this

[true ridge]

when the rocket is retro

[true ridge]

please make it one big useless piece of trash where people can upload anything instead of "user repo" and "actual repo" like arch or whatever other distro does

i mean this might actually be somewhat good but the problem is that there might be a lot of bad software on it

no quality control

[willow ginkgo]

I wasn't going to have strict review of uploads to it yet

basically just user ratings and reviews

more like an app store

there's no point blocking people's contributions, it's not big enough for that to make sense and all contributions are good for the project

the plan isn't a linux distro or anything like apt with it's internal politics

[willow ginkgo]

are you planning to upload anything? 😄

[true ridge]

well yesn't

i wish i could but i still dunno basic

i still have that core 2 duo laptop what if i actually install rr on there

[willow ginkgo]

you could write drivers instead, thats C

[true ridge]

for whar 😔

[willow ginkgo]

idk, network drivers are always useful

i got e1000, rtl8139, and virtio-net-pci

[true ridge]

i think 99% of the stuff in my dell is proprietary and the non proprietary stuff you prolly made already

depression

[willow ginkgo]

network card might be realtek

8169 or such

[true ridge]

lemme check on it

windows 7 taking long on an ssd

or maybe modern tech brainrotted me

"intel 82567LM gigabit network connection"

fancy

[willow ginkgo]

hmmmm its an e1000 similar

my e1000 driver wont work on it, but i bet its not far off

[true ridge]

mayb

i wanna learn basic though im not gonna write drivers for an os idk how to navigate in

i think you made a documentation

absolute Docs

[willow ginkgo]

just added support for a ton of extra e1000 derived cards in the e1000 driver

[net]
1AF4    1041    *       virtio_net
8086    100E    *       e1000
8086    107C    *       e1000
8086    153A    *       e1000
8086    10EA    *       e1000
8086    10F5    *       e1000
8086    10CC    *       e1000
8086    10DE    *       e1000
8086    10D3    *       e1000
8086    1502    *       e1000
8086    150C    *       e1000
8086    15A2    *       e1000
8086    15E3    *       e1000
10EC    8139    *       rtl8139

thats quite significant coverage

i cant test all these, only own one of them and emulate the other via qemu

so YMMV

[glad hemlock]

Straight heat

Bro is a prodigy

[true ridge]

o

i need to check if my core2 laptops card is in the list

[willow ginkgo]

been too mentally exhausted to progress the past few days. just been gaming instead.

[willow ginkgo]

i need to improve my logger tbh

add log levels and categories

right now everything is just dumped to a dprintf ringbuffer

[humble bison]

is there an actual iso download for this or do i have to compile it myself

[willow ginkgo]

there is, or usb image

go to the github actions and grab it from the artifacts

https://github.com/brainboxdotcc/retro-rocket/actions/runs/18896881910

at the bottom @humble bison

the run.sh may need adjustments for your own use e.g. remove -vnc and the harddisk0

[humble bison]

ah neat

[willow ginkgo]

massively improved the speed of pci scanning 😄

[true ridge]

fire

[willow ginkgo]

fiiiire

🔥

[willow ginkgo]

really need to get around to my package management system

[true ridge]

just use apt /j

[willow ginkgo]

that isn't an apt solution

[true ridge]

just use pacman

idk

why is this so difficult

[willow ginkgo]

take a look at the os

nothing userland is compiled, or in C, perl, python, bash

[humble bison]

it in the title

[true ridge]

just add compiled program support

[willow ginkgo]

the package manager has to be written in BASIC like the rest of the OS and download/install BASIC programs, and also allow submissions of new packages

[true ridge]

no but seriously fair enough

[willow ginkgo]

it isn't actually very complicated client side I've just been lazy and a bit exhausted with dev

server side I need to make use of my day job skills, PHP, mysql, laravel

I already have client side support for https

[true ridge]

[true ridge]

nice

[willow ginkgo]

you been working on an os?

[true ridge]

kilovolts ass

[willow ginkgo]

ah yes lol

the kilovolts ass for the win

[true ridge]

i wanna rewrite it in c++ for some reason

[willow ginkgo]

I keep getting the urge to add c++ support to my kernel, things like templates and containers make a lot of things nicer

[true ridge]

and also race conditions i want to mess around with multiprocessing but it didnt like it

terminal emulator had a heart attack

[true ridge]

i honestly wanna do it just because of namespaces

[willow ginkgo]

yeah namespaces are awesome

my bigger more popular projects are c++

[true ridge]

my dad taught me classes but i forgor

[willow ginkgo]

https://dpp.dev

like this one

[true ridge]

fire

[true ridge]

discbrod

[true ridge]

there are already a few os's in cc so it shouldnt be that bad

[willow ginkgo]

yeah it's only when you want stdlibc++ or exceptions things can get hairy

[true ridge]

fair

[serene stirrup]

Wait, did you make D++?

[willow ginkgo]

yup

[serene stirrup]

Crazy

I use it a lot.

[willow ginkgo]

nice! its a small world 😄

[serene stirrup]

yea, I'm surprised I've found the guys who make the libraries I use in here tbh

This is such an niche server but still has so many creators of libraries that I use

[willow ginkgo]

yeah lol we all gravitate to making OSes in he end

i also made this back in the day

https://inspircd.org

idk if thats something youll have used or heard of though

i havent contributed to that in decades though, i stepped back and let others take over

[true ridge]

wait i tried to use that like a crap ton of time ago but then i got a stroke from it 😭

no offense i was a 10 year old or smth

[willow ginkgo]

lol

maybe you also used winbot then, if you were on irc?

https://winbot.co.uk

[hot hound]

Crazy part is, it actually works lol

[willow ginkgo]

lol ikr

but you can just use a stool (pun very much intended) and save money

[true ridge]

or you can move your toilet to be higher to like the point where its close to the ceiling, crap on the floor, and proceed to practice basketball throws

and/or not do the basketball part and not move the toilet and not crap on the floor

[willow ginkgo]

"missed... let's try that again*

when did this channel become discussion of how to poop, is this a subtle hint to do something so there's new technical chat

lol

[willow ginkgo]

I've improved the rendering time of sprites significantly by pre-swizzling the sprite buffer to the backbuffer/framebuffer pixel format, and also using traditional AND/OR with precalculated masks for transparent regions. makes things a LOT faster.

thinking of migrating the entire kernel/basic interpreter to strings with a length on the start (32 bit length) instead of null terminated. but this is a big thing, it will give me significant performance improvements in BASIC, but means a lot of changes. i dont need to really have null terminated strings everywhere as im not dealing with C at the user level

[broken ivy]

idk if it fits the project but what about a compressed BASIC mode, something like a bytecode or similar?

that could be cool

not like true bytecode tho

just the same BASIC code but for example 1 char per function

[willow ginkgo]

pretty soon tokens will need to be 16 bits

that wouldnt fit even just to represent keywords and operators, but I get the idea

[true ridge]

[willow ginkgo]

[willow ginkgo]

thinking of something like this to quickly make constant string types from c strings

#define S(lit) \
({ \
    _Static_assert(!__builtin_types_compatible_p(__typeof__(lit), char *), "S() requires a string literal"); \
    _Static_assert(!__builtin_types_compatible_p(__typeof__(lit), const char *), "S() requires a string literal"); \
    static const struct { \
        uint32_t len; \
        char data[sizeof(lit)]; \
    } s = { (uint32_t)(sizeof(lit) - 1), (lit) }; \
    (const string *)&s; \
})

then I can S("foo") and it will create an anonymous static struct containing the counted string

[digital leaf]

That bottom part will return a bad pointer though wont it?

Because the struct is only in the scope of your macro

[willow ginkgo]

no, the struct is static

if I didnt use static you'd be right

[golden stag]

It might return a bad pointer or cause undefined behavior because of aliasing shenanigans though (struct string and the anonymous type of the hidden variable s may or may not be allowed to alias).

In C, they are probably allowed to alias. In C++ I'm not so sure though.

[willow ginkgo]

it is fine in C

but in C++ would be UB because it's type punning

in practice it's fine on x64 which is my only target now and forever. but, I don't have to worry about it. the kernel is only C

[willow ginkgo]

my plan for the start of 2026 is to release a proper 1.0

i need to get package management working, and perhaps have a 'try now' on the website that launches a qemu instance and webscockify

[true ridge]

owl

wait it's name is rocky?

sticker™

[willow ginkgo]

yup

rocky the retro rocket owl 😄

[true ridge]

it owl

[willow ginkgo]

Support Server for Retro Rocket OS is officially moved to discord.gg/brainbox - i am consolidating my projects into one place to make moderation easier.

https://discord.com/channels/537746810471448576/1473717424388833341
https://discord.com/channels/537746810471448576/1473717476641476649
https://discord.com/channels/537746810471448576/1473717524054016070

[serene stirrup]

2K members, impressive

[willow ginkgo]

absolutely not all there for the os lol, I have many projects

[serene stirrup]

Ik you're famous tbh

You don't get famous by building an OS.

[willow ginkgo]

famous pfff, I'm not famous lol

and I guess you can get famous by writing an os if you're billions to one lucky and right place right time like Linus torvalds

[willow ginkgo]

im making a try it now page where you can just click and get a short lived vm session to try it online

running from a snapshot, so you can change the drive contents etc

im going to make this system a separate foss project, so other hobby OS projects can benefit from it

[true ridge]

26 minutes

is the time 30 minutes?

[willow ginkgo]

yes 30 mins max per session

and boots you after 2 mins idle

[willow ginkgo]

https://github.com/brainboxdotcc/mission-control
https://discord.com/channels/440442961147199490/1478137330089852989

this is the first version

it will likely change a lot

[willow ginkgo]

im thinking of making this the front page blurb of retrorocket.dev

---

Do you remember when a computer was just… a computer?

You turned it on, got a prompt, and typed what you wanted to do. No assistants listening in. No ads popping up. No endless background services sending telemetry somewhere you never agreed to.

Just you and the machine.

Computing used to feel direct. If you wanted something done, you told the computer exactly what to do and it did it. Fast, predictable, and under your control.

Retro Rocket brings that feeling back.

It’s a modern system inspired by the straightforward machines many of us grew up with. Simple, responsive, and focused on the joy of actually using a computer rather than fighting with it.

No AI hype.
No subscriptions.
No nonsense.

Just a computer that does what you tell it.

Welcome back to computing.

[humble bison]

sounds a bit too professional/hypeful, idk. If I saw that in the wild i might assume it to be vibe coded

just something about the writing style/paragraphs

[digital leaf]

the thing with No something. No something else. No whatever.

it makes me think this was written with AI

[tall wedge]

Its not X its Y is a very ai style writing

[willow ginkgo]

those are the things we want NO of lol

[willow ginkgo]

am I not allowed to be professional or have pride in my stuff tho?

seems to be too much "yeah it's my os idgaf if anyone uses it, they won't so why bother"

[humble bison]

That’s probably it

[willow ginkgo]

I want to buck that trend, like I do with my other projects, put effort into SEO and visibility even if nobody cares

[humble bison]

totally subjective but nowadays SEO effort almost feels like a negative to me?

like it feels like it takes away credibility

[willow ginkgo]

like how people said don't bother promoting a discord lib... then got butthurt because I did, and all their users came to my project

[humble bison]

what is the library in question?

[willow ginkgo]

https://dpp.dev

[humble bison]

neat

[willow ginkgo]

there were about 8 C++ libs when I started now there's only one active and popular

I think part of it is that I put effort into making it visible

the other part is, it's just well maintained and kept active

[humble bison]

personally I’m a discord.js user, idk if some string operation heavy thing like a discord bot could be fun in c++
then again I only have c experience and no c++

[willow ginkgo]

discord.js is like the standard

I'm not a big fan of js, it's not my favourite language

[humble bison]

got its fair share of flaws but js is my guilty pleasure lmao

[willow ginkgo]

if I have to I will use it for web frontend

but I don't like react, Vue etc

they all feel over engineered

[hardy plover]

oh my god

it's literally in basic

😭

I'm laughing so hard omg 😭

[willow ginkgo]

I love old computers

and making a good basic interpreter with tons of features from scratch was a fun challenge

[willow ginkgo]

been putting some thought into how to do event driven programs in BASIC.

BASICally (pun intended) you could register an interest in an event by name, the os will implement some names or you could broadcast your own to specific pids or broadcast to all or a group.... so you could do like

ON EVENT "something" PROCfoo

then you can e.g. just stick an infinite loop at the end of your program so it waits and triggers the events when they happen

would be cool to be able to register for socket readiness as EVENT like this.

[humble bison]

async basic, waow

sounds reasonable to me

[willow ginkgo]

sockets is first target of this, gonna be able to do epoll like events

[willow ginkgo]

Added support for RTL8169/8161/8168 and clones based on the driver in https://discord.com/channels/440442961147199490/1061407633745125397

[willow ginkgo]

now with support for e1000e 😄

[willow ginkgo]

Now with a sound driver for ASUS Xonar D1 sound device! i have no way to test it yet though. Got a card on order 🙂

[true ridge]

oof

[willow ginkgo]

for now the driver is guesswork and staring at how linux does it

but i wanted to make a driver for a sound device that isnt hda, and isnt ac97 and still works on modern machines

and isnt usb

[true ridge]

fair

[willow ginkgo]

being as i got a driver for 8168 too, i could get my onboard networking running at last on my test machine so i dont have to rely on a pci e1000 network card

if i can get that working perfect, i have a spare pci slot i can put the sound card in

[willow ginkgo]

added support for DPCs 😄

[willow ginkgo]

so, i have 3 programs for retro rocket that i'd like to make, in no particular order:

• Dragonfly - A side scrolling fast paced shoot-em-up inspired by R-Type
• Voyager - A text mode web browser, with graphical enhancements powered by Retro Rocket's graphical terminal
• Crypt Paint III - A full screen paint program

I'll get to each one when motivation takes me, or perhaps even work on all 3 at once and flit between them. Now getting to the point where what Retro Rockt needs are two things only:
User facing programs, and drivers.

Kernel features can wait!

When i say 'graphical enhancements' for the text mode browser, what i mean is forms that actually behave like forms, instead of showing an input box like:
[_________]
it will actuall show an input box etc. Can do this by the ability to redefine characters on the fly, plus the ability to draw primitives to the screen.

and yes, https will be supported, as TLS is already something Retro Rocket BASIC can do

Dragonly is a modern reimagining of my first attempt many years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI46gN83oos

crypt paint II is a reimagining of this, but with modern 32 bit colour, proper modern file loading etc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrRIlAWKgvg

if anyone else has any ideas for any programs they'd like to make, feel free! i'll happily make them part of the OS, just send a PR 🙂 check what you made works first though!

[willow ginkgo]

started on it 🙂

[willow ginkgo]

progress!

[white shadow]

Open Gl?

[white shadow]

Is this running on tcg or kvm?

[willow ginkgo]

software rendered

[willow ginkgo]

the video is tcg, I had a nightmare of a time trying to get hardware virtualization working on windows, I use KVM when I run it on my Linux server

[white shadow]

Oh

It’s pretty fast

[willow ginkgo]

yeah it is isn't it

I spent a lot of time optimising the graphics stuff

gonna add enemies to it later

but I noticed an interpreter bug I should fix first

FOR X = 0 TO 500
PROCfoo
NEXT
END

DEF PROCfoo()
    FOR Y = 0 TO 500
        ENDPROC
    NEXT
ENDPROC 

this exhausts the FOR stack

when I do ENDPROC or end a function with = while inside a loop it doesn't clear the loop from the stack

[digital leaf]

do you need to use the word PROC at the beginning of procedure names?

[willow ginkgo]

yes. that's the BBC basic syntax

it does make the parser easier and it is much easier to read else you have the question of for example;

foo(j)

"am I looking at a call to foo function with parameter j, or am I looking at a reference to array foo fetching index j"

basically it forces variables and functions and procedures to all have their own individual namespaces

[willow ginkgo]

got a fix in for this, will test it properly when I'm home later

[willow ginkgo]

fixed, this also fixes a bug older than I am

BBC BASIC had this bug:

5 GOSUB 10
10 FOR X = 0 TO 10
20 RETURN
30 NEXT 

BBC BASIC has undefined behaviour. some programs on some MOS versions run out of space (No room) others crash the interpreter

Retro Rocket BASIC programs have defined behaviour. this one is RETURN without GOSUB

that bug is 50 years old, not joking

and yeah I had to think about what it would do

[digital leaf]

that's weird, why wouldn'tRETURN just break out of any loops it's in until it reaches the return gosub

[willow ginkgo]

i guess you'd have to ask the original developers of BBC BASIC, if theyre still alive

[willow ginkgo]

gonna add enemies to dragonfly next, I keep getting the urge to do unrelated stuff like parallax background, but, gotta stay on track!

[willow ginkgo]

now with multi line shell repl!

[willow ginkgo]

multiple entry PATH$

[willow ginkgo]

decided on a solution to california and colorado's bullshit

[digital leaf]

my solution: just ignore it

they can't sue me in romania for laws elsewhere

[willow ginkgo]

basically, show the Apache 2.0 license during installation, because why not? and have a bit at the bottom that says 'i confirm im legally old enough to agree to this license' which makes you over 18, or a liar (and if you lie, that isnt my problem according to the silly regulation, and what they gonna do, im in the uk)

[willow ginkgo]

youre correct there, they cant sue me either

but they could sieze my domain names, hosting, etc

[digital leaf]

but can they really

if they somehow pull that off you can always just get a .uk tld

[willow ginkgo]

yes, if they wanted to, if you were a big enough financial pain in the ass, or they wanted to make an example of you sure

[digital leaf]

they cant seize that one

[willow ginkgo]

unlikely, but possible

i happen to like my .dev tld 😄

besides, its nothing i shouldnt do anyway, as i didnt even place the apache license txt into my iso before

which i really DO need to do

and if im placing it on the iso, may as well show it at install time

(then nobody can say they didnt know what license the project is under)

[willow ginkgo]

added push and pop to rocketsh, to push and pop the current directory 🙂

[limber mica]

unfortunately I live in the US, so I am slightly more worried but I do think the chances they go after a hobby project are slim to none

[willow ginkgo]

I think my approach is reasonable, not ignoring the problem but also not directly asking for age

working on the assumption that the thing you're doing needs you to be over 18 (agreeing to software terms) while also acknowledging how silly the concept is

[willow ginkgo]

adding history to show the command history

[narrow elbow]

that mean i can't use it ?

[willow ginkgo]

sure you can

if you tell the truth or not is not my concern, same as every other piece of software you agreed to the license to 😉

i did make the wording a bit less strict, too

        centre_text("This software is licensed under the %sApache License 2.0%s\n", VGA_FG_YELLOW, VGA_RESET);
        centre_text("You must review the license before continuing\n");
        kprintf("\n");

        size_t next_offset = render_license_page(license, fsi->size, offset, box_x, box_y, box_w, box_h);

        gotoxy(0, box_y + box_h + 2);
        centre_text("By continuing, you confirm that you are able to accept this agreement\n");
        centre_text("and agree to the %sApache 2.0 license%s as shown above\n", VGA_FG_YELLOW, VGA_RESET);

its a lot less legalese 😄

[narrow elbow]

oh okay

[narrow elbow]

that actually a really good idea i might do the same

[willow ginkgo]

nice, would like to see what you come up with 🙂

[willow ginkgo]

redid my site's theme, its now much prettier, less flashbang

https://retrorocket.dev/?

[broken ivy]

does it support binaries?

also does the basic code run in userspace

[willow ginkgo]

no, and no. thats the idea

so you can poke around and do anything you want

[broken ivy]

makes sense

me when i poke the APIC

[willow ginkgo]

technically, you can run a binary if its a kernel module, but thats not really 'a user facing executable'

[broken ivy]

i mean yeah

[willow ginkgo]

and BASIC can load and unload those modules

[broken ivy]

most home computers of the 80s had binary support

still makes sense to not support it

[willow ginkgo]

yeah

i didnt add an assembler though

considered it, but its not something i want to support because x86_64 asm is a nightmare

[broken ivy]

only support flat binaries🔥

[willow ginkgo]

hah

[broken ivy]

true

[willow ginkgo]

kernel modules are ET_REL elf binaries

[broken ivy]

what about some sort of vm tho?

like an intermediary

something like RISC-V for example

[willow ginkgo]

hmm, i mean yeah, i could make a 6502 assembler for the luls

"heres your 64k of vm ram, go go go" 😄

not sure i have the time to make a risc-v emulator lol

[broken ivy]

i am on a quest to make a vm that interacts fully with the whole ram lmao

sort of a side project

[willow ginkgo]

lol sounds fun

[broken ivy]

for some of my projects

[willow ginkgo]

btw you can PEEK/POKE ram from BASIC

[broken ivy]

its really not because im trying to make it JIT

[willow ginkgo]

only one restriction: you cant POKE ram that isnt paged in and writeable, you cant POKE ram that isnt paged in and readable

you can also read and write IO ports

[broken ivy]

tho you can PEEK and POKE the page table?

[willow ginkgo]

i guess, but youd have to find it

[broken ivy]

dayum

[willow ginkgo]

i suppose if someone exported a pointer variable into every basic program.... from a module... lol

have you tried the web version btw

[broken ivy]

couldn't try it since im on phone

but i will try it on qemu

tomorrow

[willow ginkgo]

ah, yeah typing on phone is hard

the web version is a remote qemu

[broken ivy]

doing anything on phone is hard

[willow ginkgo]

lol

phone ftl

[broken ivy]

damn

i want to distribute my doohickey OS some day

tho its totally not finished

heck on the new rewrite i haven't got to the kernel yet

im still finishing the bootloader

[willow ginkgo]

technically im not at 1.0 yet

[broken ivy]

im not even at a version yet😭

[willow ginkgo]

but thats why im making more and more example programs, fun things, making the site nice and stuff

well, been at 0.0.1 for 17 years now

lol

just never bumped the version number

[willow ginkgo]

gotta add explosions next, then collision detection between enemy bullets and player!

[fervent nimbus]

that's so cool

[willow ginkgo]

thanks 🙂

it has music and sfx too but not in that video

[willow ginkgo]

managed to get whpx accel working in windows so now i can play it at a reasonable speed with sound!

[narrow elbow]

is that a virtual gpu acceleration ?

[willow ginkgo]

no all software rendered

with sprite blitting and scaling

[narrow elbow]

oh that cool

[willow ginkgo]

whpx is CPU virtualization like kvm on linux

so without it software rendering sucks balls

[willow ginkgo]

added a pixel perfect SPRITECOLLIDE function 😄

https://retrorocket.dev/SPRITECOLLIDE.html

also SPRITEWIDTH and SPRITEHEIGHT functions so i dont have to have an array of sprite sizes defined by hand

[willow ginkgo]

along with some optimisations to the hot path for sprite rendering, sprite render is now visibly faster (and it wasnt slow to start with)

[willow ginkgo]

added support for DATA, RESTORE, DATASET, DATAREAD, DATAREAD$, and DATAREADR, going to use these to store enemy timings 🙂

[tall wedge]

Reminds me of a bootsector game I wrote a long time ago

It was similar but using text mode

and also lacked like almost all the features

[willow ginkgo]

lol, i think i'd like to see that

been trying to increase the performance a bit

[digital leaf]

do you happen to be using whpx here?

[willow ginkgo]

yup

it was a pain to get it to work

c:\qemu\qemu-system-x86_64 -machine q35,accel=whpx -monitor stdio -smp 4 -cpu Westmere -m 4096  -drive id=disk,file=../../harddisk0,format=raw,if=none  -device ahci,id=ahci  -device ide-hd,drive=disk,bus=ahci.0  -drive file=rr.iso,media=cdrom,if=none,id=sata-cdrom  -device ide-cd,drive=sata-cdrom,bus=ahci.1 -boot d  -debugcon file:CON -netdev user,id=netuser,hostfwd=tcp::2000-:2000,hostfwd=tcp::2080-:80  -object filter-dump,id=dump,netdev=netuser,file=dump.dat  -device e1000,netdev=netuser -audiodev dsound,id=snd0 -device intel-hda -device hda-output,audiodev=snd0  -drive id=nvme1,file=../../harddisk3,format=raw,if=none -device nvme,drive=nvme1,serial=nvme-rr0

the important bits are obviously accel=whpx and not so obviously -cpu Westmere

[digital leaf]

Im sure it was

[willow ginkgo]

if you do -cpu max it just refuses to start

[digital leaf]

I decided not to bother

[willow ginkgo]

i spent hours on it a few months back and gave up, then came back to it recently and got it working in minutes

[digital leaf]

I just run it in TCG and thats usually good enough for me; when I need more performance I boot up a VM

[willow ginkgo]

i usually run it remotely and vnc in, from a linux machine with kvm

but that doesnt let me test sound, and it really cant cope with fast moving graphics well

so for this i boot the iso image over a samba share

[willow ginkgo]

im adding a custom language definition for hljs on the retrorocket.dev website

[heavy linden]

does Retro Rocket OS support multi processing?

[willow ginkgo]

as in multitasking? yes
SMP? not quite, the code is there but its turned off as i havent had chance to test it fully, got other things to do first

it brings up APs and starts schedulers on them but the schedulers dont receive tasks

the IPI to hand them a task isnt implemented yet

[willow ginkgo]

made a new beginner tutorial for BASIC

https://retrorocket.dev/basic-beginner.html

feedback welcome on this ^ its aimed at people whove never programmed before

[latent tendon]

Cool

[narrow elbow]

how

[willow ginkgo]

https://retrorocket.dev/rrbasic.js

hljs's syntax highlight and language definition system is actually quite primitive

its just a bunch of arrays of keywords, and some regexes

so its 99% copy and pasting in the keyword lists from C

[narrow elbow]

that cool

[willow ginkgo]

added MIN, MAX, MINR, MAXR, TICKS to BASIC and used it for precise frame timing in Dragonfly 😄

LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/loading"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/player_bullets"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/enemy_bullets"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/player_ship"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/enemies"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/parallax"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/explosions"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/hud"
LIBRARY LIB$ + "/dragonfly/audio"

CLS
GCOL 0
AUTOFLIP FALSE

game_ticks = 0
frame_len = 0
PROCl1_parallax()
PROCmusic_start()
REPEAT
    game_ticks = FNframe(game_ticks)
UNTIL (INKEY$(CHR$(27)) <> "") OR (INKEY$("") = CHR$(27))
CLS
END

DEF FNframe(game_ticks)
    start = TICKS
    PROCl1_scroll_parallax()
    PROCl1_draw_parallax_rear()
    PROCmove_player_ship()
    PROCmove_bullets()
    PROCmove_enemies()
    PROCmove_enemy_bullets()
    PROCmove_explosions()
    PROCcheck_enemy_bullet_collision_with_player()
    PROCcheck_enemies_collision_with_player()
    PROCdraw_bullets()
    PROCdraw_enemy_bullets()
    PROCdraw_enemies()
    PROCdraw_player_ship()
    PROCdraw_explosions()
    PROCl1_draw_parallax_front()
    PROCdraw_hud()
    frame_len = TICKS - start
    FLIP
    SLEEP MAX(0, 16 - frame_len)
= game_ticks + 1

[willow ginkgo]

added a whole new bunch of keywords to retro rocket BASIC. they have wide reaching use, but i needed them for the shoot-em up:

• https://retrorocket.dev/ROTATE.html - Rotate a sprite's stored data 90 degrees
• https://retrorocket.dev/SPRITEROW.html - Extract a row from a sprite into a BASIC array
• https://retrorocket.dev/ARRAYFIND.html - Search an array for a value, and return the indicies of all matches into a second array of integers

I can use these to represent my level data as PNG files like the one below. doesn't look like much, but zoom in on desktop.

Once loaded, it can be rotated 90 degrees so each row represents a game tick, like those tapes in old automatic pipe organs where it had holes for notes. Using SPRITEROW gets me that row, i then call ARRAYFIND on that row for each colour representing enemy types. currently red, green and blue:

DEF PROCdo_spawns(moment)
    row = moment / 4
    IF row <= last_moment THEN ENDPROC
    IF row >= SPRITEHEIGHT(level_data) THEN ENDPROC
    SPRITEROW level_data, row, rowdata
    last_moment = row
    FOR e_type = 1 TO ENEMY_TYPE_COUNT
        ARRAYFIND rowdata, enemy_colours(e_type), found_spawns, spawn_count
        IF spawn_count > 0 THEN
            FOR I = 0 TO spawn_count - 1
                PROCalloc_enemy(e_type, GRAPHICS_WIDTH, found_spawns(I))
            NEXT
        ENDIF
    NEXT
ENDPROC

[narrow elbow]

what is thr PROC prefix ? to call funtions ?

[willow ginkgo]

PROC is procedure, FN is a function
FN may return a value, PROC cannot

[narrow elbow]

oh okay

[willow ginkgo]

level 2!

[wild sedge]

gaming

[narrow elbow]

damn that peak

[tacit slate]

thats coming along nicely

[willow ginkgo]

thanks, yeah 🙂

its very very hard to play via novnc though lol

the fact that it CAN be played there though?

[willow ginkgo]

todo: fix laziness
https://github.com/brainboxdotcc/retro-rocket/blob/master/src/net/tls.c#L129-L144

should just use memset and rdtsc()

[willow ginkgo]

also to-do: add csprng_random to return uniform distribution in range and fill buffer of arbitrary size

[willow ginkgo]

improved MT PRNG BASIC RND function so that it does not have modulo bias:
https://retrorocket.dev/RND.html
added SECRND, CSPRNG random, like RND just secure
https://retrorocket.dev/SECRND.html
and added SECSTR$ for using CSPRNG to generate secure random strings of characters with a user defined alphabet
https://retrorocket.dev/SECSTR.html

[round sparrow]

didn't realise retro rocket was on here. i think it's awesome! 😄 when i was at school, almost all the computers were bbc micros or masters. they hardly let me code on them though. 🙁 but in 2014 or so, i got bbc basic for sdl on my phone and was blown away by the teletext sim, including the demo/test pages exactly as they were in the 80s, and the BBC COW graphical earth which was so awesome on tv in the 80s, some graphics demos i'd seen in the 80s plus 1 or 2 which needed GLSL shaders all done with BBC BASIC. oh and sky baby which i've actually used a few times. maybe you should import some of its example programs. 😄 i'm not sure how their licenses look these days, especially sky baby's, unfortunately. i much prefer sb to modern glitzy stargazing apps

[willow ginkgo]

hah, nice, a fellow beeb fan

unfortunately many programs wont work right

we do support 90% or so of BBC BASIC's behaviour, but we have different syntax for variable types

[round sparrow]

ohh yeah, % for floats. i did see that

[willow ginkgo]

BBC BASIC:
integer: % e.g. FOO% with special behaviour of A% through Z% stored below PAGE
float: no suffix
string: $ e.g. STRING$

RETRO ROCKET:
integer: no prefix
float: '#' e.g. 'PI#'
string: $

so where BBC BASIC defaults to real/float, we default to integer, as its saner

and suffix reals

[round sparrow]

right

[willow ginkgo]

also retro rocket basic has a more modern view of the way things should work, line numbers are discouraged

modularisation by LIBRARY is strongly encouraged too

[round sparrow]

bb4sdl doesn't even support line numbers iirc. modularization is pretty old-school though

[willow ginkgo]

i didnt go for full on classes and objects

never thought it very BASIC

[round sparrow]

no, me either

[willow ginkgo]

also ? and ! operators are not in retro rocket basic, i went for explicit PEEK/POKE instead

i did like ? and !, but they really complicate expression parsing and make for expressions that might accidentally poke ram, instead PEEK/POKE are explicit

[round sparrow]

ooh... i forgot about those. didn't like them either, i like explicit poke. unless it's forth where all stores go via !, but that's consistent and it doesn't complexify parsing