This document lists the software you might need to run the software produced by Cat's Eye Technologies. This includes interpreters and compilers for the programming languages our projects are written in, the platforms or operating systems that they run on, and libraries and tools they might require when run.
Some of these dependencies might be technologies which are, nowadays, considered historical. Legacy. Retro. Vintage. Old. These dependencies are listed at the bottom of this article, under Retro Dependencies and Retro Languages. For more information about Retrocomputing at Cat's Eye Technologies, see the Retrocomputing article.
- specification-link: ANSI C89 documents
Many of our C programs are written in C89, also colloquially known as "ANSI C".
This is supported by many C compilers. Indeed, many C compilers understand
-ansi flag, as well as a
-pedantic flag which makes them stick more
closely to the letter of the ANSI C spec.
Some of our projects can be compiled as either ANSI C or C99. Often, ANSI C
is selectable by setting the environment variable
YES while running
the build command (which is often
An older but still interesting link: C89 at clc-wiki.
- specification-link: ANSI C99 documents
The disadvantage of ANSI C is that it defines only a very crude model of the world surrounding the program, and how the program can interact with it. For example, a program can sleep, but with coarse granularity; it cannot sleep for less than 1 second. Interfaces and extensions that were added to various vendors' C language since ANSI C were collected into a new standard called C99, which improved on this.
Telling a C compiler that it should treat its input files as C99 is often done
with a flag such as
Some of our projects can be compiled as either C99 or ANSI C. Often, C99 is the default, and ANSI C, if desired. must be selected explicitly when building.
- specification-link: Perl.org
Our Perl projects are written in Perl 5. For more precise version numbers they have been tested on, see The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform.
- specification-link: Python.org
Our Python projects are written in Python 2.7. Some of them (especially tools) are written so that they run under both Python 2.7 and Python 3.4. For more precise version numbers they have been tested on, see The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform.
- specification-link: Lua.org
Lua is a lightweight scripting language.
Our Lua projects (barring any that may be in archived projects) are written in Lua 5.1 and tested with Lua 5.1.4.
Note that the 5.1.x series of Lua is not generally compatible with the 5.0.x series. (On the other hand, our 5.1 code appears compatible with 5.2 and 5.3, but we have not audited it.)
Our Scheme projects are generally written in vanilla R5RS Scheme. Sometimes even R4RS Scheme. (And it should be noted that this is like saying "ATM Machine". But the alternatives all sound worse.) For more precise version numbers they have been tested on, see The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform.
- specification-link: Haskell.org
Haskell is a lazy functional language.
Some ancient links that still work:
- home-page: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/
- license: BSD-compatible
- implementation-type: compiler
- host-language: Haskell
- target-language: native code
The Glasgow Haskell Compiler is dangerously close to being "the" implementation of Haskell.
It also has an interpreter,
- home-page: https://www.haskell.org/hugs/
- license: BSD-compatible
- implementation-type: interpreter
- host-language: C99
hugs is a Haskell interpreter. It's used in The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform because,
being written in C, it builds on NetBSD. (Boostrapping
ghci there would, I imagine,
be quite cumbersome.)
- specification-link: Erlang.org
Our Erlang projects are written in Erlang R16 and tested with Erlang/OTP R16B03-1.
Note that this is a pretty old version of Erlang at this point.
Note that the following paragraphs are sorely out of date.
Note that compiled Erlang modules are
.beam files in the
directory. The source code lives in the
src directory, and an Erlang
compiler (such as the one which ships with Erlang/OTP) is required to
build the modules.
Also note that the
.beam files will have to be recompiled in order to
run under recent versions (e.g. R13B) of Erlang/OTP, as the
binary format has changed.
Also note there is a good chance that the sources will compile and run on an older version (say, R9C) of Erlang/OTP, but you may need to make some manual changes and system setup.
- specification-link: An Introduction to the Unix Shell
We try to write our Bourne shell scripts to run on plain Bourne shell — nothing
bash-specific. We try to test them on NetBSD for this purpose. As such, they
run on the version of
sh that ships with NetBSD 6 (which might be
For more precise version numbers they have been tested on,
see The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform.
- specification-link: NASM.us
In our projects, many of these NASM files were converted from older assembly-language sources written in the syntax of Turbo Assembler 3.1 (an old-school x86 assembler for MS-DOS, written by Borland.) In some cases the Turbo Assembler sources are still included in the project for historical interest, but the newer NASM sources are what the binaries should be built from.
- specification-link: ECMA-262
nodejs, but we don't have
is simply kept reasonably up-to-date with current browsers. (At any given time, your mileage
may of course vary.)
- specification-link: Java SE specs — docs.oracle.com
Our Java projects are, as far as I can recall, written in Java 1.6. They have not been tested recently, but when they were, it might have been under the Java SE 6 JDK 1.6.0.
An implementation of Java is not included with The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform.
Our few installations that are Java Applets have been converted into Java Web Start applications, since Java Applets are on the obsolescence track.
If you want to try installing a Java Runtime, you can apparently download a Java Runtime, after you have agreed to the "Oracle Binary Code License Agreement for Java SE".
- specification-link: Ruby-lang.org
Some of our projects have some stuff written in Ruby — we implemented Thue in Ruby, and Castile can output Ruby — but nothing we've written relies on Ruby. (The original version of Velo was written in Ruby, but it was re-implemented in Lua.)
Therefore an implementation of Ruby is not included with The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform.
But the Ruby things should run in Ruby 1.8 or 1.9 or thereabouts, which you could once have downloaded here if you agreed to this BSD-compatible license but apparently 1.9 is just too old and not maintained anymore.
Anyway, here is a fairly good Ruby tutorial.
- specification-link: michaelcmartin/Ophis
Ophis is an assembler (and its concomitant assembly language) for the 6502 and related processors, which some of our 6502 code is written in.
Tools and Libraries
make is a tool for orchestrating builds.
Parsec is a parser combinator library for Haskell.
- specification-link: N/A
- suggested-implementation: catseye/realpath
realpath is a tool that reports the real, symbolic-link-free path
for a filepath which may contain symbolic links.
I'm not sure if it's part of any standard, but it really should be, because it's very useful in scripts. It does come bundled with many Linux distributions, but not with NetBSD, so for The Cat's Eye Technologies Platform, we wrote our own implementation in Python.
- specification-link: ECMA-48
When a project claims it needs this to run, it needs to run in a terminal which understand
the ANSI terminal control codes (more formally known as "ECMA-48") in
order for their output to be intelligible. Almost all modern consoles
and terminal emulators understand these codes, sometimes under the guise
of a particular terminal standard which includes them, such as
vt220. For older MS-DOS systems, a driver such as
need to be loaded.
Here are various formats in which the Musical Compositions have been recorded, and/or software that plays and/or edits music in these formats. Indeed, sometimes the format is named after the software.
- specification-link: ???
This was a popular(?) music format for the Commodore 64. There was an editor for this format called SID Editor, which was written largely in Commodore BASIC 2.0 (there were some machine-language subroutines, but it was largely BASIC.)
This one's pretty well standardized, I think.
I did a lot of MIDI sequencing with a Roland JV-30 and Cakewalk, back in the Windows 95 era.
MIDI files can be rendered to digital audio using a "soundfont" such as "freepats" and a renderer like TiMidity++.
- specification-link: None
- wikipedia: Deluxe_Music_Construction_Set
By Electronic Arts. For the Amiga and the Apple Macintosh.
It could export to MIDI.
- specification-link: Noisetracker/Soundtracker/Protracker Module Format, 4th revision
- wikipedia: MOD (file format)
This is what we talk about when we talk about MOD files, I think.
There's an open-source audio player called xmp that can play MED, Noisetracker MOD, and many other formats.
- specification-link: MED/OctaMED MMD0 and MMD1 file formats
Amiga. The editor is called MED. There was a MED Player.
MED has a "transpose" command, but not all players honour it, and when they don't, well, one of the voices is in the wrong key.
There's an open-source audio player called xmp that can play MED, Noisetracker MOD, and many other formats.
- specification-link: sonantlive.bitsnbites.eu
Rundown: The Apple II series of microcomputers included the Apple ][+ and Apple //e. The CPU was a 6502. Applesoft BASIC was often in the ROM, but it could have been loaded from tape or disk.
Emulators: AppleWin is an emulator for the Apple II, built for Windows, written in C++ and distributed under the GPL. linapple is a port of AppleWin to Linux. zophar.net has a list of other emulators.
Rundown: The CPU was a 6502. Commodore BASIC 2.0 was in the ROM; this is the same BASIC that was in the Commodore 64.
xvic executable from VICE, written in C99 and
distributed under the GPL, is a generally recommended emulator for the VIC-20.
Rundown: The CPU was a 6510, which was a slightly modified 6502. Commodore BASIC 2.0 was in the ROM; this is the same BASIC that was in the VIC-20. The Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide is an invaluable reference, or is it merely a guide? There was also a User's Guide. Lots of C64 stuff can also be found at zimmers.net.
x64 executable from VICE, written in C99 and
distributed under the GPL, is a generally recommended emulator for the Commodore 64.
Also, JaC64 is a GPL Java application which emulates a Commodore 64.
Cat's Eye Technologies uses it to showcase our Commodore 64 games as online installations, using Java Web Start.
We forked it to fix some bugs and because mainline development seemed stalled.
- specification-link: MOS Technologies' 1976 manual for the 650x series
- wikipedia: MOS Technology 6502
The common thread of the above 3 architectures is that they all have a 6502 processor.
Rundown: The CPU was a Motorola 68000, but this could be upgraded to a 68020, etc (and needed to be if you wanted memory protection). It had many custom chips with colourful names such as "Angus" and "Paula".
AmigaDOS 1.3 (with a manual online here) was the version of Amiga's operating system which was current when the Amiga 500 was a really popular home computer — mostly for video games, but also for graphics and video processing, such as ray-tracing and animation.
AmigaBasic was the name of the "advanced" variant of BASIC that shipped with AmigaDOS. It was developed by Microsoft.
Emulators: There's an emulator for the Amiga 500 architecture (and several other models such as the Amiga 2000) called UAE. It's written in C++ and available under the GPL, and while the build of it for windows, WinUAE, seems basically stable, every decade or so the Unix version gets forked into a new incarnation. A few years ago, E-UAE was the thing to use, but now it's apparently FS-UAE. Last I tried it, E-UAE still worked for me, but I have had mixed experiences trying to build it over the years.
For any Cat's Eye Technologies project that claims to run on an "IBM PC compatible," probably a 486 with a BIOS, keyboard, and basic VGA is the minimum to make it worthwhile.
Some modern PC's can handle running that sort of legacy setup, but most don't. Or at least, I wouldn't risk it anymore. Better to run it under an emulator.
Two good emulators are:
- QEMU -- GPL v2 licensed, written in C++, runs on your desktop. QEMU can actually emulate more architectures than just the IBM PC.
For more in-depth information on this wonderful architecture, see Blurry Memories of DOS Programming.
Rundown: By Microsoft.
.BAT files. And x86 machine code
I wouldn't assume any modern Windows installation can handle running MS-DOS programs directly anymore. Better to run it under an emulator.
Emulators: there are a few recommended choices here:
- DOSBox (written in C++, under the GPL) is an emulator, available for many systems, which simulates both an IBM PC compatible and MS-DOS on top of it. It should be plenty sufficient for running DOS-based software found here.
- There's a good free DOS clone called FreeDOS which is written in (I'm guessing) C99 and assembler and distributed under the GPL. It is not, by itself, an emulator though, and you'll need to run it under an IBM PC compatible emulator such as those listed above.
For more in-depth information on programming for this wonderful operating system, see Blurry Memories of DOS Programming.
Any Cat's Eye Technologies project which claims to need MS-DOS only needs
something which emulates MS-DOS sufficiently well. This includes both the
INT 21h handler, and the standard DOS utilies like, for example,
(There are only two projects of Cat's Eye Technologies' that require MS-DOS (or a compatible operating system) anymore, and these dependencies are only partial.)
The Z80 is another 8-bit CPU that was popular.
Here are some links:
- Home of the Z80 CPU — Lots of useful Z80 information, plus a clock circuit
- TI-85 Assembler Programming — Z80 tutorial for the TI-85 calculator
- Opening up Microchips — Innards of a Z80, and more
It's actually a virtual machine designed by Infocom so they could port their interactive fiction onto a multitude of home computers.
Here are its specifications documents.
Emulators: Zplet is a Java application which emulates a Z-Machine. There are other, much better emulators, such as Frotz.
- specification-link: Entry on BASIC at Wikipedia
- specification-link: Entry on BASIC at c64-wiki
- specification-link: Entry on Applesoft BASIC at Wikipedia