bstl on intel mac, how?
Tracy Allen
Posts: 6,664
Trying to run bstl on an intel mac, 10.6.7, from the terminal window.
I found rumors to the effect that .osx type of files don't work on Intel macs. But bst itself works fine and it seems like it would have the same basis.
[SIZE=1][FONT=arial narrow]Thomas-Allens-MacBook-Air:bst thomasallen$ ls bst.app bstc.osx bst_manual_0.04.pdf bstl.osx [/FONT][/SIZE]If it can be done, what is the syntax? I can start the bst gui itself just fine with open bst.app.
I found rumors to the effect that .osx type of files don't work on Intel macs. But bst itself works fine and it seems like it would have the same basis.
Comments
I can't say firsthand whether files with an .osx suffix differ, or how, from .app suffix files, but assuming they are both executable, you would just type:
along with whatever parameters bstl.osx requires (try ./bstl.osx -h for help).
Cheers,
Jesse
".osx" is just the extension that identified the Mac OS X version of Brad's bstl program. The easiest way to tell if a command-line program will work on your Mac is to use the "file" command in the Terminal app, like this (you'll need to "cd" to the directory that contains "bstl.osx", first:
[myUser@myMac]$ file bstl.osx
bstl.osx: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
bstl.osx (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386 <== the executable binary for Intel (32-bit)
bstl.osx (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc <== the executable for PPC (32-bit)
So, looks like bstl.osx will run on Intel and PPC based Macs!
If you want to know how to use the program, you can get usage data like this (again, you'll need to cd to the directory containing bstl.osx):
[myUser@myMac]$ ./bstl.osx -h <== "./" helps to execute the file from within it's containing directory!
For more details on the bstl loader program:
See page 2 of Brad's Manual for BST gives all of the detail on using bstl: http://www.fnarfbargle.com/bst/manual/
dgately
[FONT=arial narrow]Thomas-Allens-MacBook-Air:bst thomasallen$ ./bstl -h -bash: ./bstl: No such file or directory Thomas-Allens-MacBook-Air:bst thomasallen$[COLOR=#020FC0] [B]./bstl.osx -h[/B][/COLOR] Brads SpinTool Loader v0.05 - Copyright 2008,2009 All rights reserved Compiled for i386 Darwin at 09:34:59 on 2009/07/03 Program Usage :- bstl (Options) <FileName> -d <filename> - Serial device to use (Default /dev/tty.usbserial) -p [123] - Program Mode 1 - Ram only (Default) 2 - Eeprom and shutdown 3 - Eeprom and Run -f Load at high speed -t Test mode (Undocumented) -h - Show this help Thomas-Allens-MacBook-Air:bst thomasallen$ [/FONT]Using the./bstl.osx syntax I was able to load a .eeprom file from the command line, but the binary (created from bst right before the .eeprom file) came back with a checksum error. Is there any advantage to one over the other?
... inquiring (and frustrated) mind wants to know ;-)
I've tried BST on my 2011 mac-mini with Lion and it acted strangely. Problems with sizing bars on windows and lost focus on some controls. I need to try it again (from home) so I can post some details. I also need to check if I'm on 10.7.3
I got distracted since I last tried it.
I use BST on Lion, daily...
Did you follow the instructions at: http://propeller.wikispaces.com/Propeller+Font ? This is what helped me, the first time I used BST...
Also, page 12 of the BST manual warns:
OSX and Linux users must download a modified version of the Propeller font. I can't stress this enough, thefont supplied with the Parallax Propeller Tool is BROKEN on Linux and OSX. If you install it by mistake, it willcause all sorts of horrible things to occur that are hard to debug. Please install the correct font. The locationof the correct font is kept up to date here : http://propeller.wikispaces.com/Propeller+Font.
OSX users can install the font simply by double clicking on it and clicking the “Install” button.
Linux users have to figure out where their particular distribution installs the fonts! On an Ubuntu system, theare located in ~/.fonts. The easy install is to copy the modified Propeller.ttf there and to log out and back inagain.
To debug (a bit) your problem, try launching the application from the command-line in the Terminal app (this example assumes that BST is in the Mac's Applications directory):
[myUser@myMac]$ /Applications/bst.app/Contents/MacOS/bst.osx
This should show any errors in launching the app! Else, look in the console application's log window for errors
Not sure, but I notice that the usage info expects a "-p 3" for an Eeprom load and run. Odd that your Eeprom load worked, but your binary (supposed to be the default) did not because of the checksum error. Try "-p 1" when you load the binary version...
You may want to run the command-line bstc with a "-b" option to compile and create a binary. Then match that to the binary created by the BST app.
dgately
I did what you suggested and it did compile from the command line, into a binary which then loaded successfully using bstl.
The last syntax did load successfully to prop EEPROM.
There must have been some problem with the original binary that I had created from the bst GUI, a fluke in the way I did it, because I went back to the GUI and did it again, and this time it's binary worked fine. Hex dumps of the good and bad file were very different.
Incidentally, the binary file for this small test program is 244 bytes long, and from $30 to $F0 corresponds exactly to the compiler output. The eeprom file is a full 32kbytes long, most of it filled with $00.
Yes, the Eeprom is always created with a size of 32K bytes!
Probably many better ways to do this, but here's a simple script (AppleScript) that could help:
[SIZE=2][FONT=courier new]on run set theFile to choose file with prompt "Select the Eeprom file to load" set theUnixPath to POSIX path of theFile do shell script ("'/PathToYourBSTProgramFiles/bstl.osx' -p3 " & theUnixPath) end run[COLOR=#0433ff] [/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]This is an AppleScript. Open the AppleScript Editor, found in the Utilities directory on your Mac and paste the above code into the editor window. Change the "PathToYourBSTProgramFiles" to the path to where you keep the bst programs. Save this as an application or a script. With a bit more time, I'll describe a more automated way to to make this work from an email-attached file, but this is a start...
I chose this script as a simple-to-explain solution. A much better solution would be to put the script and the Eeprom file into a single bundle that you can double-click to load the file to your prop (I'll work on that!)
dgately
It starts up and gives me a menu bar...I can open things up, compile them and it works fine....I just NEVER see the main window. It's off hiding to the left someplace.
The only way to see it is to tell bst to show all windows. It looks great then but as soon as I click anywhere on it, it rushes off to the left to disappear.
I'll have to play more when I have more time.
#!/bin/bash #This script will compile, download, and open a terminal #If any errors are encountered then it will stop at the appropriate point. echo echo bstc.linux -f -p0 -L lib src/source.spin > output.txt cat output.txt grep -q "Error" output.txt if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo Found Error! else echo ---------------------------------------------------------- echo No compiler errors... grep -q "No Propeller detected on" output.txt if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo Could not find Propeller chip... else echo echo echo To exit picocom, type C-A the C-X echo picocom -b 57600 /dev/ttyUSB0 fi fi(I see there is a misprint in the bst documentation where it says the options for -p are 0,1,3, but that should be 1,2,3, from ram/run to ram/eeprom/run.)
There is this as well as other promising options available. It's nice to get a little handle on the Mac inner workings. I really liked hypercard scripting back in the day, and I was sad when that went away.
I don't have a Linux machine at the moment but one of the people working on the project will be know more about that.
Yes, Hypercard was fun. The core of how it worked became AppleScript, but its simplicity was never replaced. I actually got a similar result to the AppleScript above using Automator which is on every Mac as well. It was more difficult to explain, so I decided to use the AppleScript example.
Something that I did not explore was to create a "smart" folder where any binary or eeprom file dropped on it would be loaded onto the prop. This could be done in either AppleScript or Automator.
For Linux, I'm a lot less "informed" on the how to do it. But, am fairly certain that a script similar to SRLM's could be created as double-clickable, as well!
dgately