help out a rookie ..."ported to the PTSC chip" ?
Sounds good, but I would like to improve my understanding of the terms. Thanks
Porting is the process of making changes to software
to allow it to run in a different environment than
it was written to operate in originally.
Some changes might be necessary when switching language compilers - C is said to be a portable language, easy to move, but complex programs written with the Microsoft C compiler might have to be changed minutely if compiled with the Borland C compiler, or vice versa.
Some changes are necessary when moving to a different hardware platform, more memory, less memory, a different UART, additional functions becoming available, etc.
Some changes are made only to speed things up - changing the software so it does one 32 bit write to video memory, instead of four 8 bit writes to video memory when doing video area fills. Either method works, but one is four times faster than the other.
This process is mostly invisable to the Windows PC user, but each different motherboard can be considered a port. Changes are made to the BIOS on the motherboard because of the different collections of parts on different ones, so that they all look the same to Windows. Major hardware changes are handled by installing "drivers" specific to that piece of hardware. |
