This archive contains information about the BCPL internals of AmigaDOS and
example code showing how to call BCPL routines from C.

A different (possibly later) version of these files is in the tripos
directory in dev/lang/BCPL4Amiga.lha on Aminet. Some of these files contain
additional/different comments, so I thought it worth uploading them.

AmigaDOS in Kickstart 1.3 and earlier was written in BCPL. In addition to the
documented dos.library functions, many more are only accessible via the BCPL
calling interface. For example, the 1.x ROM contains a BCPL routine similar
to the ReadArgs() function in Kickstart 2.0. Kickstart 2.0 introduced many
new dos.library functions, so formerly "hidden" routines could be used in a
documented way. But of course those new functions are not present in
Kickstart 1.x.

Most CLI commands on Workbench 1.x disks are written in BCPL. AmigaDOS was
re-written in C for Kickstart 2.0, but Commodore still had to support the
BCPL interface otherwise most existing disks would fail to boot.


(The author's contact details below are no longer valid.)

Author: Bill Kinnersley
Date: Mar 12, 1988
Mail: Physics Dept.
      Montana State University
      Bozeman, MT 59717
BITNET: iphwk@mtsunix1.bitnet
INTERNET: iphwk%mtsunix1.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
USENET: mts-cs!uphwk

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO METHOD CRC     STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                  805    1485  54.2% -lh5- 6be3 Feb 14  1980 BCPL.readme
[generic]                 4763   10585  45.0% -lh5- e26a Mar 19  1988 BCPL/bcpl.doc
[generic]                 1389    3801  36.5% -lh5- c743 Mar 19  1988 BCPL/bcpl.h
[generic]                  903    1586  56.9% -lh5- 581c Mar 19  1988 BCPL/bcpllib.c
[generic]                  573     905  63.3% -lh5- 435f Mar 19  1988 BCPL/hello.c
[generic]                  875    1628  53.7% -lh5- 4e4b Mar 19  1988 BCPL/myendcli.c
[generic]                 2836    7228  39.2% -lh5- d61d Mar 19  1988 BCPL/mynewcli.c
[generic]                 2824    6986  40.4% -lh5- 5e13 Mar 19  1988 BCPL/myrun.c
[generic]                 1354    2637  51.3% -lh5- 868f Mar 19  1988 BCPL/process.doc
[generic]                 3655    8760  41.7% -lh5- 5ee3 Mar 19  1988 BCPL/ramlib.doc
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total        10 files   19977   45601  43.8%            Feb 14 22:28