Boriel's zxbasic-compiler fork for NES compatibility

Is someone here skilled enough and interested to fork Boriel's zxbasic-compiler project to aim NES results?

I'm asking this because i got really amazed with the results from there: http://nitrofurano.altervista.org/retrocoding/zxspectrum/ and http://nitrofurano.altervista.org/retrocoding/zxspectrum/misc/bacab...

The webpage of it is at http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php/ZXBasic and the forum is at http://www.boriel.com/forum/zx-basic-compiler/

In my oppinion, i think a very simple tool like this can help a lot appearing good stuff and relativelly fastly for the Playpower project.

This cross-compiler is coded in Python language, and converts similar syntax of zx-spectrum basic into z80-assembly, and compiles this z80-assembly code into binary stuff. I think similar cross-converter can be done by replacing z80-assembly conversion to 6502-assembly, and having some parts of the converter, in the compiler core or as library, caring about display, sound, etc.

Maybe a cross-compiler like this must be coded from scratch, or maybe just adapting it to NES would be enough - anyway, i think this Boriel's cross compiler can be really very helpful to the Playpower project, or to any kind of retro and cross-development like Playpower is about.

What do you all think?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Marcel Cevani on November 18, 2011 at 7:11am

Hi,why not try out the ATALAN compiler?

http://atalan.kutululu.org/

greetings marcel

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Permalink Reply by Paulo Silva on November 18, 2011 at 8:22am

It looks interesting, and seems to provide interesting results on people can be used to it. What i think is, the more cross-development tools we have available, better it is for the Playpower project.

Anyway, in my oppinion, Boriel's cross compiler has the advantage of being all coded in Python (maybe better/easier to debug and implement features than C or C++), and it uses code very similar to ansi-basic for compiling - and would be great seeing a cross-compiler could result in a ready image-rom, for example

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Permalink Reply by Paulo Silva on November 18, 2011 at 8:26am

and also, Boriel's project needs to target more 8bit platforms, and those based on 6502 (like NES) and 6809 (like Coco2 or Thomson) would be awesome - people helping it targeting NES would be really very welcome