4.4 KiB
gint project
gint (pronounce 'guin') is a development system for Casio fx-9860G II and fx-CG 50 calculators. It provides a mostly free-standing runtime and is used to develop add-ins under Linux, along with specialized GCC toolchains and the fxSDK.
gint is a modular kernel that implements its own drivers for the calculator's hardware, overriding the operating system and its syscalls. It is a drop-in replacement from fxlib, with which it is mostly incompatible. gint exposes a new, richer API to manipulate the hardware and take advantage of the full capabilities of the machine.
This is free software: you may use it for any purpose, share it, and modify it as long as you share your changes. Credit is not required, but please let me know!
TODO: Update this file for everything related to project organization
Programming interface
Because of its free-standing design, gint's API provides direct and efficient access to the low-level MPU features, among which:
- 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
The library also offers powerful higher-level features:
- An enhanced versio of the system's GetKey() and GetKeyWait()
- A gray engine that works by rapidly swapping monochrome images on fx-9860G II
- Blazingly fast drawing functions when working with the fxSDK (image rendering is 10 times faster than MonochromeLib)
- Integrated font management with the fxSDK
- Integration with a Newlib port by Memallox (WIP)
Building and installing gint
You can choose to build gint for fx-9860G II (monochrome calculators, aka Graph 85 family), fx-CG 50 (color calculators, aka Prizm or Graph 90 family), or both. There are a few dependencies:
- A suitable GCC toolcahin in the
PATH
. You can absolutely not build gint with your system compiler!- For fx-9860G II,
sh3eb-elf
is strongly advised - For fx-CG 50,
sh4eb-nofpu-elf
is slightly better butsh3eb-elf
is completely fine
- For fx-9860G II,
- The fxSDK installed and available
in the PATH. You will need
fxsdk
andfxconv
to build gint, and if you intend to develop add-ins for fx-9860G II, you probably wantfxg1a
as well.
fx-CG 50 developers probably want a g3a wrapper as well; the reference implementation is tari's mkg3a. This is only necessary when creating g3a files, not to use gint.
The build process is detailed below for both platforms, the principle is the same. You can build both targets at the same time by reading the two sections.
By default gint will be installed in the appropriate compiler folder, which
is $PREFIX/
for libraries and linker scripts, and $PREFIX/include/gint/
for
headers, where PREFIX
is obtained by running
${toolchain}-gcc --print-search-dirs
and reading the line that starts with
install:
. You can change this with the --prefix
configure option.
Building for fx-9860G II
Create a build directory and configure in it:
% mkdir build.fx && cd build.fx
% ../configure --target=fx9860g
Then build the source and install the library files to the selected directory.
You might need root access if you selected a target directory owned by root
with --prefix
, or if you built your compiler as root.
% make
% make install
Building for fx-CG 50
Create a build directory and configure in it. The default toolchain is
sh4eb-nofpu-elf
, if you wish to build with sh3eb-elf
, you need to add a
command-line option --toolchain=sh3eb-elf
.
% mkdir build.cg && cd build.cg
% ../configure --target=fxcg50
Then build the source and install the library files to the selected directory.
% make
% make install
Using gint
To use gint as your runtime environment, the bare minimum is:
- Build with
-ffreestanding
; - Link with
-T fx9860g.ld
and-lgint-fx
on fx-9860G; - Link with
-T fxcg50.ld
and-lgint-cg
on fx-CG 50.
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 -mb
to specify the
platform, but that may not even be necessary.
Typically you might want to do this with the fxSDK, which hides most of the details and makes it easy to roll add-ins.