Dear All,This afternoon I spent the best part of 2 hours reading through most of the posts in this forum, and they are very interesting.
I followed a few links, and found myself in the English section of http://www.dv3.info . I looked through all the tutorials and downloaded stuff, and ended up with a lot of interesting things.
Basically, I waded through reams of Assembler (I think) and Hex code, and in the end was left slightly confused, but inspired to do something with my daVinci.
The tutorials on http://www.dv3.info are excellent, if a little hard to follow. I learned that the daVinci OS is constructed with Assembler code using the instruction set for the CPU, the Sharp 6010 (Olivetti/Royal were forced to put in a third-party cpu after some lawsuit or other, who knows what might have happened if they had used their own? I suspect we would be happier).
Where I got confused was with the recommended hex editor, "Hexmonitor", I was at a loss as to how to edit the disassembled code I had seen with this tool - the data was set out completely differently in the hex editor to what was shown on the disassembler output. I had expected this, as it is essentially converting from one language to another, but I couldn't work out how to edit bits of the hex code that I had seen in the disassembler.
However, good as the tutorials were, they didnt go further than making some text move across the screen (dv3-info.bin, downloads section, http://www.dv3.info).
Anyway, that partially aside, I found a number of posts from people wanting an SDK for the DV3, as Royal were too tight to finish one. I urge anyone reading this to join the petition against Royal, look further down the index for posts by Chris Litwin. I hope our collective voice will be heard.
From the posts I read it seems the starting point on our route to making our own software for the DV3 is to first make an SDK. I believe for this an instruction set is needed for the cpu, this can be found in all its 10MB PDF glory in the downloads section of
http://www.dv3.info .
I'm no expert, but I have had some experience with programming languages, I am a good web designer (see bottom of post) and would be happy to make a site for the campaign/software.
If you know of what happens next after the instruction set is obtained, please reply. I, as well as everyone else who has posted on this forum, would dearly love to see some applications for our DV3s.
Regards to you all, let's make a long thread for all to admire.
>>>BigglesZX
biggleszx@cafeporcupine.co.uk
[incidentally I don't work for dv3.info, but I think that the man behind it is an instrumental tool in our ongoing pursuit]
PS: My sites: http://www.cafeporcupine.co.uk/
http://www.cafeporcupine.co.uk/ks/
http://www.cafeporcupine.co.uk/showcase/
