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Development Tools for the Neo Geo Pocket
#1
So, Flavor pointed me to one website and, along with my own snooping, I've found a few others regarding Neo Geo Pocket game development. However, I'm finding it difficult to get a working assembler or compiler for the Neo Geo Pocket. Particularly, one that works on a Unix system.

Flavor's NGPC Website:
http://www.personal.triticom.com/~erm/NGPC/

  1. Contains the PocketSend program
  2. Contains a multi-boot ROM for homebrew games?
  3. Contains the Neo Geo Pocket assembly instruction set (useful)

Yahoo Group:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/ngpcdev/

  1. Discussion of current homebrew in the Neo Geo Pocket scene?

Neo Geo Pocket Developers:
http://www.devrs.com/ngp/

  1. Contains homebrew source code (assembly and C)
  2. Contains links to assemblers and C compilers for the Neo Geo Pocket
However, most of these links are broken and, even though I can see the websites using archive.org, none of the files are available.

So, the source code available is adequate, but I can't find an actual toolchain to use for the Neo Geo Pocket. Is it blindly obvious and I can't see it? Or, was it on a website that is unavailable?

I was hoping to gather together a decent collection of information and compile it on my own website as a tribute to the Neo Geo Pocket. Maybe add some videos about getting things set up (like this one, but with commentary), creating a small game in assembly or C, and providing a mirror for the toolchain available (if allowed).

[EDIT]
Wow, how did I miss this topic? http://forum.freeplaytech.com/Thread-All...-and-scene

I'm checking out http://www.darkfader.net/ngpc/ right now for the C compiler.
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#2
Sebastion Mihai's site has a NGPC Kit. I believe it's the most current one.

http://sebastianmihai.com/main.php?t=63

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#3
(09-04-2012, 08:25 AM)Biogon Wrote: Sebastion Mihai's site has a NGPC Kit. I believe it's the most current one.

http://sebastianmihai.com/main.php?t=63

Thanks for the link, Biogon! I had noticed that earlier when browsing for information, but didn't realize it came with a T900 assembler. I'm hoping to find something UNIX-compatible so I don't have to stick with a VM of Windows XP; however, I suppose I'm fortunate that virtual machines have come along so far that I have that option. Thanks again for pointing it out! Smile
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#4
Well, I think you could probably use this under Linux.
http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/as/

It supports the TLCS-900 series of CPUs. I just don't know how you'll fare if you're trying to use the NGPC libraries. If you write your own, then it would probably be fine. I'd like to hear your experience with it if you try.

I have been pretty out of touch with Thor, but at one point I think he was working on setting up LLVM to compile C sources into a format usable by The Macroassembler AS.
http://llvm.org/

I have also tried for a while to get a Toshiba compiler. From what I understand, there is a compiler for this that's rather expensive. I also think there is a free/trial version that's limited by code size or something, but it would probably be good for homebrew. Mr. Spiv had a contact at Toshiba, but we were unable to make any real headway on this angle. I also tried contacting vendors, but nobody was able to tell me how to actually get my hands on this compiler.

Another (seemingly failed) attempt was to use SDCC. This would be a great option if the support was actually there. I think someone with compiler experience may be able to make this work. As it is now, the only way is to maybe talk to the right people to see if anyone could look into fixing the TLCS-900h support.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sdcc/for...ic/4554530
http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/

As it stands right now, I think Sebastion Mihai's package is the best one. I would love to find a "modern" alternative, but it definitely works once you set the environment up.
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#5
Also, maybe I should have talked a bit more about the SDCC option. I actually think it would probably be the best way to develop for NGPC if it worked. If the SDCC developers thought that there was enough interest, they may put more effort into supporting the TLCS-900h. This would, in turn, bring more interest to SDCC and NGPC development.

They already support the GameBoy. You can see some of that here.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sdcc/wi...d%20design

I would recommend that people ask the SDCC community about TLCS-900h support. The CPU is well documented. It's just a matter of adding the support. If they think it's going to be used, then they'd probably prioritize it.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sdcc/forums
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#6
Quote:I have also tried for a while to get a Toshiba compiler. ... As it stands right now, I think Sebastion Mihai's package is the best one.

Isn't that one (NGPC) based around a version of Toshiba's compiler? Maybe Toshiba released later revisions with bug corrections / better code generation(?).
Having run into some pretty serious bugs with the z80 version of SDCC as late as 2011, I'm not entirely sure that a '900H version of SDCC would be an improvement over the currently available compilers. I guess the advantage would be that it's open source and in active development, so any problems with it would in theory be possible to fix.
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#7
(09-06-2012, 07:03 PM)mic_ Wrote:
Quote:I have also tried for a while to get a Toshiba compiler. ... As it stands right now, I think Sebastion Mihai's package is the best one.

Isn't that one (NGPC) based around a version of Toshiba's compiler? Maybe Toshiba released later revisions with bug corrections / better code generation(?).
Having run into some pretty serious bugs with the z80 version of SDCC as late as 2011, I'm not entirely sure that a '900H version of SDCC would be an improvement over the currently available compilers. I guess the advantage would be that it's open source and in active development, so any problems with it would in theory be possible to fix.

Well, SDCC would be portable, so it would run on any modern OS. On top of that, yeah, I'd think it'd be possible to fix bugs.

Yeah, I think the NGPC devkit was based on a Toshiba compiler. However, the one I'm talking is more of an IDE than just a command-line compiler, I think. Unfortunately, I never got any further than just theory with this.
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#8
hi,

I've done some experiments with llvm but I had problems to understand how to handle some outputs of the symbolic language.

I did an other investigation with lcc (https://sites.google.com/site/lccretargetablecompiler/) to generate tlcs900h asm that can be compiled by "as".
For the moment, I copied the x86 config files and most of the generated code look like x86 asm but I think it could be a good way.

The current version of my lcc modified code : https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5579480/lcc42.zip
Compile it with gcc (make all) using my modified "makefle" file.

Compile ngpc .c file using this command line:
lcc -S -target=tlcs900h -I. -c main.c

lcc has a symbolic output if you want to do your own symbolic->tlcs900h translator.
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#9
Hey Thor! I haven't heard from you in a while.

Can you explain why you chose to try lcc? Do you think that's better than llvm, sdcc, etc., or was it just easier to get started working on?
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
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#10
lcc because I read "retargetable" on the website and in the source, there are some platform config files.
sdcc was too complicated to start for me.
I'm still looking for a low cost solution... because I'm lazy.
lcc is between llvm and sdcc: one can just generate asm (for as) or do the complete stuff.

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