gint project

gint (pronounce “guin”) is an add-in unikernel for CASIO calculators of the fx-9860G II and fx-CG 50 families. It provides a mostly free-standing runtime and is used to develop add-ins under Linux, along with specialized GCC toolchains and the fxSDK.

When running in an add-in, gint takes control of the calculator's hardware from the operating system, and manages it with its own drivers. It exposes a new, richer API that takes advantage of the full capabilities of the machine.

This is free software: you may use it for any purpose, share it, modify it, and share your changes. Credit is not required, but please let me know!

gint used to include third-party code that has now been moved to the FxLibc. If you stumble upon it in the history, check the README file at that time for license details.

Programming interface

Because of its free-standing design, gint's API provides direct and efficient access to low-level MPU features, which includes:

• Multi-key management with event systems suitable for games
• Hardware timers with sub-millisecond and sub-microsecond resolution
• Fast screen drivers with DMAC on fx-CG 50
• Efficient and user-extendable interrupt management
• Safe access to on-chip and DSP memory areas
• Hardware-driven memory primitives (DMA, DSP)

The library also offers powerful higher-level features:

• An enhanced version of the system's GetKey() and GetKeyWait()
• A gray engine that works by rapidly swapping monochrome images on fx-9860G II
• Blazingly fast rendering functions (image rendering is 10 times faster than MonochromeLib)
• Integrated font management

A couple of libraries extend these features, including:

• libprof: Profiling and performance evaluation
• libimg: Versatile image transformations
• OpenLibm: A port of the standard math library (actually needed by gint)
• fxlibc: A community standard library with dedicated SuperH optimizations (in progress; needed by gint unless you're trying out Newlib)
• Integration with a Newlib port by Memallox (unstable)

Installing with GiteaPC

gint can be installed automatically with GiteaPC.

% giteapc install Lephenixnoir/gint

Normally you don't use gint directly, instead the fxSDK provides project templates that are set up to use gint. Please see the fxSDK README file for details.

Building and installing manually

gint is built using the fxSDK, which provides a suitable CMake environment for the calculator. gint is always installed in the compiler's install path (as given by sh-elf-gcc --print-search-dirs) which is detected automatically, so normally you don't need to set the install prefix.

gint depends on OpenLibm and fxlibc (linked above). Both can be installed easily (essentially copy-paste the command from the respective READMEs). You can technically use another libc but there be dragons.

Building for fx-9860G II

fxsdk build-fx will invoke CMake and make. If you have specific configuration options, run once with -c to configure.

% fxsdk build-fx -c <OPTIONS...>

Run without -c to build. This configures automatically.

% fxsdk build-fx
% fxsdk build-fx install

The available options are:

• -DGINT_STATIC_GRAY=1: Put the gray engine's VRAMs in static RAM instead of using malloc()

Building for fx-CG 50

Same as fx-9860G II, except the command is fxsdk build-cg instead of fxsdk build-fx.

The available options are:

• -DGINT_USER_VRAM=1: Store all VRAMs in the user stack (takes up 350k/512k)

% fxsdk build-cg
% fxsdk build-cg install

"Cross-Building" a fx-9860G II project for fx-CG 50

Programs written for fx-9860G can also be built to run on the fx-CG series, provided no low-level function or hardware-specific behavior (like syscalls) is used by the program.

% fxsdk build-fxg3a
% fxsdk build-fxg3a install

Using in CMake-based add-ins

Find the Gint module and link against Gint::Gint. gint declares the include and library paths needed to link with OpenLibm and the libc, and will automatically link both.

find_module(Gint 2.1 REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(<target_name> Gint::Gint)

Using in Makefile-based add-ins

Projects created with the fxSDK link with gint out-of-the-box. If you're not using the fxSDK, you will need to:

• Build with -ffreestanding -fstrict-volatile-bitfields and either -DFX9860G or -DFXGC50;
• Link with -T fx9860g.ld -lgint-fx -lopenlibm -lc on fx-9860G;
• Link with -T fxcg50.ld -lgint-cg -lopenlibm -lc on fx-CG 50.

To manually build the fx-CG executable for an fx-9860G program, mix as follows:

• Use platform flags -DFXCG50 -DFX9860G_G3A;
• Link with -T fxcg50.ld -lgint-fxg3a -lopenlibm -lc.

If you don't have a standard library such as Memallox's port of newlib, you also need -nostdlib. I typically use -m3 -mb or -m4-nofpu -mb to specify the platform, but that may not even be necessary.