Prince Of Persia Code Review: Part 3 (POP Bootloader explained)

Now that we have all the knowledge necessary, we can read the source and understand where each files are located in the incredible mess that is the Apple II RAM layout.

You can also find an heavily commented version of the source code on GitHub.

Part I : Introduction
Part II : Bootloader
Part III : Code explained

Here is a drawing of the infamous RAM that will be updated as we read on :

BOOT.S

BOOT.S start by outputting $01 to the instruction stream (line:21). This will trigger the Apple firmware to automatically load one sector from track:0 to the RAM at $800 and branch there :



After setting up a few soft-switches, BOOT.S uses RWTS16 to load a bunch of sectors to RAM using skewing table table (line:79). It turns out those sectors contains the rest of BOOT.S and RWTS18 routines :



After moving RWTS18 routines to an other bank at $D000 (so it can be used easily), it uses RWTS18 to load the entire track 1 to $E000 (line:136) and jump to a mysterious $ee00.

HIRES.S

We have no idea what was on track 1 and what is supposed to be at $ee00.

But we can use grep to find out:

    fabiensanglard$ find . -name "*.S" -exec grep -H "org = \$ee00" {} \;

    ./01 POP Source/Source/HIRES.S:org = $ee00
    ./01 POP Source/Source/MOVER.S:org = $ee00

 

After a bit of exploration, it turns out we are interested in HIRES.S.



HIRES.S features a jump table at the beginning...that takes us to an other mysterious location: $f880 (line:13).

MASTER.S

Again, we have no idea what is supposed to be at $f880.

But we can use grep to find out:

    fabiensanglard$ find . -name "*.S" -exec grep -H "org = \$f880" {} \;

    ./01 POP Source/Source/MASTER.S:org = $f880
    ./04 Support/MakeDisk/S/MASTER.S:org = $f880
    ./04 Support/MakeDisk/S/MASTER525.S:org = $f880

 

So at $f880 is the content of MASTER.S. We can edit the memory map:




The content of MASTER.S is as follow :

 
      jmp FIRSTBOOT
      jmp LOADLEVEL
      jmp RELOAD
      jmp LoadStage2
      jmp RELOAD

      jmp ATTRACTMODE
      jmp CUTPRINCESS
      jmp SAVEGAME
      jmp LOADGAME
      jmp DOSTARTGAME

      jmp EPILOG
      jmp LOADALTSET

    

At this point the game engine has been loaded in RAM and it is about to load the legendary DOUBLE-HIGH intro screen :

Next

That is it for now. I am unsure people are really interested in more POP Code Review. Let me know.