There are different number types, such as natural numbers (positive numbers), integer (positive and negative), rational (1/2, 1/3, 1/4), irrational (sqrt(2), e, PI), real numbers and complex numbers.
In my code I constantly use floats, without considering how it works. This week was spent making our own floating point calculator to add, multiply, subtract and divide [...]
Archive for the ‘Console Development’ Category
W5: Floating Point Numbers
Posted in Console Development on March 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
W1: Memory Optimization
Posted in Console Development on January 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This week’s lecture focused on Memory Optimization; so different techniques that can be used to optimize memory within a program were covered. There is great need for memory optimization since CPU speeds are improving faster than memory speeds annually; thus programmers need to understand techniques to improve memory within the program to meet quality standards.
A [...]
W8: Linking files together
Posted in Console Development on November 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This week to get to grips with the PSP debugger me and my group (same as last week) had to create a project with multiple source files to understand the linking behind it. We decided on creating a program that calculated the mean, mode and range from a set of numbers we specified.
The easiest bit [...]
W7: PSP Development
Posted in Console Development on November 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
After a few weeks of MIPs I finally got the chance to do some C and learn the fundamentals of using Cygwin Bash Shell (a command prompt which was used to create a small hello world program and other various things) and getting a program onto the PSP screen.
After creating my “hello world” program I [...]
W6: Pushing and Popping
Posted in Console Development on November 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This week Console Development concentrated on how data is stored. The following is just for my reference when needed…
A subroutine is self-contained code in one area of the program; other parts of the program may call it to complete operations. A subroutine call is when one routine passes control to another subroutine (e.g. main to [...]
W4: Branches & Loops
Posted in Console Development on October 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This week I’m working with branches and loops in the assembly language. Here is a program which works out the Fibonacci series. It was part of an exercise.
## fibo
.text
.globl main
main:
ori $8, $0, 0 # Previous
ori $9, $0, 1 # Current
ori $11, [...]
W3: Notes
Posted in Console Development on October 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Since I’m likely to forget certain things, I have decided to note them down here just to remember them.
Converting from Decimal to Hex
If you wish to convert 1128 to Hex. Firstly…
1128 / 16 = 70.5
Take the numbers after the decimal place and multiply it by 16
.5 x 16 = 8
Continue this routine with the number [...]
W1: Mega Drive’s Motorola 68000
Posted in Console Development on October 12, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Sega Mega Drive uses a Motorola 68000 for the main CPU. Interestingly, the 68k was also used on the Sega Mega CD, Sega Saturn, Neo Geo and the Atari Jaguar. Besides home consoles, it has also been used in networking equipment, telephones and even PDAs. It is often used as a sound controller, and [...]
W1: Disassembling one of my favourite consoles…
Posted in Console Development on October 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Console Development currently focuses on computer architecture, but will soon move onto programming on the Sony PSP Development Kits. For the time being, I have been investigating the Sega Mega Drive system.
Last week, I and two colleagues disassembled a Sega Mega Drive (1 of my favourite consoles of all time) to investigate the components [...]
