Easy programming for the DSO Quad

[DK8HI]

Hello jpa!

The programs are on the 2MB flash memory. There can be as many as can fit, probably about 20-40 because each app is about 50-100kB.



The programs are in the pawn bytecode. Pawn has a p-code interpreter for ARM that is written in assembler (written by someone else, not me). It is quite fast, only about 5-10 instructions per one emulated instruction.



The programs are loaded to RAM at runtime. However, Pawn has an ‘overlay’ mechanism that is kind of swap. It allows to load programs larger than 32kB. The interpreter will then reload functions from flash as needed, always keeping the most recent functions in RAM.



The program size is kind-of limited by the data size - because data memory is never swapped, you can only have about 20kB of data in order to leave enough space for functions. Of the programs I have done so far, only frequency response app requires the overlays. So I guess programs larger than frequency response have to be a bit careful about memory use.

Could you please tell me where exactly the PAWN programs will be loaded?

I would not like to corrupt the Wildcat firmware on the device.

The load addresses for the Wildcat and yours are different:

Yours (PAWN 11B):

08024000 - 0802B4D5

08044000 - 08045D43

and Wildcat 5.1:

0800C000 - 08023C9B

08048000 - 08057807

So I see no overlap in the load addresses for these two applications

and Wildcat would start at power-on and yours with power-on and button 4 pressed.

Would loading the PAWN apps overwrite the Wildcat application starting at 08048000?

Could you please verify that there will be no collisions?

Would your application run on a DSO203 hardware version 2.81?

Thanks in advance

DK8HI