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- software timing loops are not recommended because they are both unreliable, generally and due to interrupts, and because they mean the machine is in the awake state but doing nothing, and thus wasting power. The system provides a delay routine which sends the machine into snooze and then returns to the program after the delay period.
Tools to develop Z88 software
Although it is possible to use the BBC BASIC as a development environment for Z88 applications, the limited memory capacity of BASIC make this task somewhat arduous. Moreover during development the Z88 is likely to crash fairly often, so much time would be spent in backing up source files to EPROM or another computer. The Z88 however, is not easy to break down. We've managed to work for several months on software (using both a native Z80 assembler and a cross assembler) with plenty of soft resets and without loss of files. It depends on the type of crash. Software should always be developed on the original computer - this is our philosophy!
Finally, it is needed to have a unique application card id, if you are going to produce EPROM card application software. When Cambridge Computer still were manufactoring the Z88, they administrated the card id's. Since they moved their office to Scotland (and have stopped production and interest of Z88), the card id registrations were lost. The Z88 development team has implemented a card builder tool which generates unique ID's using CRC32 checksum on the binary application code.
The Z88 development project at http://cambridgez88.jira.com have made a substantial effort to produce a fully featured Z80 macro assembler tool-chain containing a Z80 cross assembler, card builder tool, linker and library manager to compile large assembler application projects such as the OZ operating system. The Z88 Assembler Workbench is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and other Unix operating systems. Further, a Z88 emulator and debugging environment is available that supports tracing, breakpoints and many other features to analyse your applications both on simulated EPROM, Flash or RAM. Finally, an application EPROM programming utility has been implemented on the Z88 to produce your own application cards. If you have ideas, bug reports, suggestions for new applications or features of the Z88 operating system, or have an itch to develop software, dont't hesitate to join us.