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c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210283] Fri, 13 September 2013 20:02 Go to next message
Mary Lea Beinhower is currently offline  Mary Lea Beinhower
Messages: 5
Registered: January 2012
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Junior Member
Greetings:
With which ZP pointers would I use to detect, beforehand, when the c64 performs it's own Garbage Collection.. Like, would anyone be able to help me write some code I can attach to the IRQ.

When there is only a tiny little bit of memory left, set a address to (1). Then, when I do my own garbage collection, I can NULL that address. All the while, having an IRQ routine that polls the memory location for a (1), if true, let me collection garbage, and zero that address.

If the address is zero, the irq code will exit..

Im trying to NOT let the c64 collect on its own.. force my own collection code.

Thanks In Adavance! :)

--Steve
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210284 is a reply to message #210283] Fri, 13 September 2013 22:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anton Treuenfels is currently offline  Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
<mbeinhower@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:95f7b290-79c2-46c6-8860-d8dfd52b74dd@googlegroups.com...
Greetings:
With which ZP pointers would I use to detect, beforehand, when the c64
performs it's own Garbage Collection.. Like, would anyone be able to help me
write some code I can attach to the IRQ.

When there is only a tiny little bit of memory left, set a address to (1).
Then, when I do my own garbage collection, I can NULL that address. All the
while, having an IRQ routine that polls the memory location for a (1), if
true, let me collection garbage, and zero that address.

If the address is zero, the irq code will exit..

Im trying to NOT let the c64 collect on its own.. force my own collection
code.

Thanks In Adavance! :)

--Steve

=====================================

Garbage collection on the C64 happens when the Bottom-Of-Strings pointer
($33/34) is about to go below the Top-Of-Arrays pointer ($31/32). The BASIC
interpreter wants to allocate a dynamic string and finds there is not enough
space, so it does a garbage collection and then checks again (if there still
isn't enough room, an "Out of Memory" error happens).

So one way to do what you want is to have your IRQ routine check to see if
$34 minus $32 is zero or negative, or maybe one or two if you want to be
sure to intercept in time.

Another approach might be to note that the BASIC FRE() function also
triggers a garbage collection so that it can properly report how much space
there is between the BOS pointer and the TOA pointer. Strategically placing
FRE() in code so that garbage collection happens at times convenient for a
program is sometimes possible. Or you could set up a USR() vector to trigger
your routine any time you wanted - why wait for the last minute?
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210285 is a reply to message #210284] Sat, 14 September 2013 08:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Christian Brandt is currently offline  Christian Brandt
Messages: 97
Registered: April 2012
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Member
On 14.09.2013 04:53, Anton Treuenfels wrote:

> Another approach might be to note that the BASIC FRE() function also
> triggers a garbage collection so that it can properly report how much
> space there is between the BOS pointer and the TOA pointer.
> Strategically placing FRE() in code so that garbage collection happens
> at times convenient for a program is sometimes possible. Or you could
> set up a USR() vector to trigger your routine any time you wanted - why
> wait for the last minute?

Another approach: Replace the garbage handler completely.

Deep in my memories there was an article in the german 64er magazine in
the late 80ths doing exactly this. The reworked garbage collection was A
LOT faster (100 times at least) and also offered some feed back for
checking current state and starting different types of garbage
collection (fast, normal and slow). Also I remember the whole handler
was expanded later with an interesting option of using $A000-$FFFF-RAM
for arrays - yes really only arrays and all arrays always went to
$a000-$ffff at cost of some performance, effectively expanding basic
memory from 39k bytes to some 60k.

--
Christian Brandt

life is short and in most cases it ends with death
but my tombstone will carry the hiscore
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210286 is a reply to message #210283] Sat, 14 September 2013 15:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mary Lea Beinhower is currently offline  Mary Lea Beinhower
Messages: 5
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Junior Member
On Friday, September 13, 2013 8:02:58 PM UTC-4, mbein...@gmail.com wrote:
> Greetings:
>
> With which ZP pointers would I use to detect, beforehand, when the c64 performs it's own Garbage Collection.. Like, would anyone be able to help me write some code I can attach to the IRQ.
>
>
>
> When there is only a tiny little bit of memory left, set a address to (1). Then, when I do my own garbage collection, I can NULL that address. All the while, having an IRQ routine that polls the memory location for a (1), if true, let me collection garbage, and zero that address.
>
>
>
> If the address is zero, the irq code will exit..
>
>
>
> Im trying to NOT let the c64 collect on its own.. force my own collection code.
>
>
>
> Thanks In Adavance! :)
>
>
>
> --Steve


I appreciate the input. And yes, the code Christian is talking about is called, 'The Sanitation Engineer" and is 100% amazing, except the program im writing, uses memory under basic ROM ($A000 - $BFFF).

Anton:
Do you think you could.. somehow.. come-up with a (Holier than Gawd) code snippet, just to see, exactly, how you would approach this scenario??

If not, ill still hammer away at it, till I get it right.

(*thank goodness for today's cross compiling setups*)

-Regards,
--Steve
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210288 is a reply to message #210286] Sat, 14 September 2013 22:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anton Treuenfels is currently offline  Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Anton:
Do you think you could.. somehow.. come-up with a (Holier than Gawd) code
snippet, just to see, exactly, how you would approach this scenario??

---------------------------

Uh, I'm not sure I'd try approaching the problem from the direction of an
IRQ in any case. I'm not quite sure if you're trying to monitor the
situation from BASIC via a flag set by an IRQ, or trying to do a complete
garbage collection within an IRQ handler, or both.

In the first case you'd have to poll the flag from within BASIC, presumably
using PEEK. If you can do that regularly enough to matter then you could
also get effectively the same result by PEEKing the locations of interest
and subtracting their values directly without needing to fiddle with an IRQ.
As a numerical operation doing so would not trigger a garbage collection
unless you decided to perform one as a result.

In the second case, no matter how much you managed to speed up the process
it would still be too long for a single interrupt.

In the third case (ha! you didn't know about that one, did you?!) it's all
moot unless you have a faster garbage collector to use instead of the
built-in one. Have you?

I did write a replacement once. It worked, but perhaps the only elegant
thing about it was that I tied it to the FRE() function so it was fairly
transparent to the system. Other than that it was quite an ugly hack.
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210289 is a reply to message #210288] Sun, 15 September 2013 05:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dombo is currently offline  Dombo
Messages: 210
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
Op 15-Sep-13 4:43, Anton Treuenfels schreef:
>
> Anton:
> Do you think you could.. somehow.. come-up with a (Holier than Gawd)
> code snippet, just to see, exactly, how you would approach this scenario??
>
> ---------------------------
>
> Uh, I'm not sure I'd try approaching the problem from the direction of
> an IRQ in any case. I'm not quite sure if you're trying to monitor the
> situation from BASIC via a flag set by an IRQ, or trying to do a
> complete garbage collection within an IRQ handler, or both.
>
> In the first case you'd have to poll the flag from within BASIC,
> presumably using PEEK. If you can do that regularly enough to matter
> then you could also get effectively the same result by PEEKing the
> locations of interest and subtracting their values directly without
> needing to fiddle with an IRQ. As a numerical operation doing so would
> not trigger a garbage collection unless you decided to perform one as a
> result.
>
> In the second case, no matter how much you managed to speed up the
> process it would still be too long for a single interrupt.
>
> In the third case (ha! you didn't know about that one, did you?!) it's
> all moot unless you have a faster garbage collector to use instead of
> the built-in one. Have you?
>
> I did write a replacement once. It worked, but perhaps the only elegant
> thing about it was that I tied it to the FRE() function so it was fairly
> transparent to the system. Other than that it was quite an ugly hack.

Another issue with doing the garbage collection from an IRQ handler is
reentrancy.

I doubt the BASIC interpreter, and the garbage collection routine in
particular, is written with reentrancy in mind. Imagine the BASIC
interpreter loading some pointers to string data, gets interrupted by
the IRQ handler which shuffles the location string data. Once the IRQ
handler has done its thing the BASIC interpreter continues were it was
interrupted, at which point the pointers it loaded before the interrupt
occurred are no longer valid. The effect would be that at seemingly
random times your BASIC program would act weird or locks up the computer.
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210290 is a reply to message #210288] Sun, 15 September 2013 06:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Frank Buss

Anton Treuenfels wrote:

> I did write a replacement once. It worked, but perhaps the only elegant
> thing about it was that I tied it to the FRE() function so it was fairly
> transparent to the system. Other than that it was quite an ugly hack.

There is an article in the C64 Wiki has about the Garbage Collection (in
German, but the Google translator works fairly well for technical articles)

http://www.c64-wiki.de/index.php/Garbage_Collection

The article shows an example, which causes the GC to run 1 hour and 49
minutes. One of the three better implementations mentioned at the bottom
of the article runs the same in less than 4 seconds.

I would just call this new GC every now and then. No need to change the
FRE function itself.

BTW: currently there is a GC competition running:

http://www.forum64.de/wbb3/board25-coder-unter-sich/board308 -programmieren/board26-basic/54109-basic-garbage-collection- compo/

The goal is to write a Basic program with the longest GC run. I managed
already infinite, so would be hard to beat :-)

--
Frank Buss, http://www.frank-buss.de
electronics and more: http://www.youtube.com/user/frankbuss
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210292 is a reply to message #210290] Mon, 16 September 2013 00:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anton Treuenfels is currently offline  Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
"Frank Buss" <fb@frank-buss.de> wrote in message
news:l1434h$esa$1@newsreader4.netcologne.de...
> BTW: currently there is a GC competition running:
>
> http://www.forum64.de/wbb3/board25-coder-unter-sich/board308 -programmieren/board26-basic/54109-basic-garbage-collection- compo/
>
> The goal is to write a Basic program with the longest GC run. I managed
> already infinite, so would be hard to beat :-)

Then I imagine the next step is to write the *shortest* program that causes
the GC to run for an infinite amount of time :-)
Re: c64/How to predict when garbage collection occurs.. [message #210359 is a reply to message #210285] Tue, 22 October 2013 01:59 Go to previous message
epc8 is currently offline  epc8
Messages: 19
Registered: September 2013
Karma: 0
Junior Member
On Saturday, September 14, 2013 8:15:29 AM UTC-4, Christian Brandt wrote:
> On 14.09.2013 04:53, Anton Treuenfels wrote:
>> Another approach might be to note that the BASIC FRE() function also
>> triggers a garbage collection so that it can properly report how much
>> space there is between the BOS pointer and the TOA pointer.
>> Strategically placing FRE() in code so that garbage collection happens
>> at times convenient for a program is sometimes possible. Or you could
>> set up a USR() vector to trigger your routine any time you wanted - why
>> wait for the last minute?

> Another approach: Replace the garbage handler completely.

> Deep in my memories there was an article in the german 64er magazine in
> the late 80ths doing exactly this. The reworked garbage collection was A
> LOT faster (100 times at least) and also offered some feed back for
> checking current state and starting different types of garbage
> collection (fast, normal and slow).

This problem was also well studied on the Apple 2. ISTR articles from both "Call APPLE" and "Micro" from the early 80s written by Cornelis Bongers.

See this reference for some explanation and code in a different publication.

http://www.txbobsc.com/aal/1984/aal8403.html

Reassembling this for CBM might work with minor changes to ORG, z-page locations and internal entry points.

(I hang out sometimes in CSA2, but rarely here.)
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