Page 227 - The Ultimate Palm Robot

Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile
Composite Default screen
Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 8
Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 8

210 The Ultimate Palm Robot

Steeping a Steaming Cup of TEA

Before the TEA program above can be loaded and executed on the BrainStem
module, it must be compiled into a form that is executable by the BrainStem.
Unlike C code, TEA code is not compiled into some executable machine lan-
guage form. TEA code is compiled into a form that can be executed by a TEA
virtual machine.

The Robot Geek Says

Virtual Machines
✖ A virtual machine is a computer implemented as a software program
that runs on some other host computer.
✖ A virtual machine contains code specific to a processor and operating
system.
✖ Virtual machines allow you to use the same executable on multiple
platforms, as long as that platform has a virtual machine. (Compare
this to a C program written and compiled for the Palm OS, for
example. That application cannot run on a Pocket PC device.)
✖ Java is another language that runs on a virtual machine.
The Console program is used to compile, load, and launch TEA programs.
If you are running a PC, you should find the Console program in the aBinary
directory.
If you are using a PDA, you need to perform a HotSync operation to load
the console.prc application and supporting Palm database files to the PDA.
Navigate to the \aBinary directory of the Acroname software. Add console.prc
and all the PDB files in the \aBinary directory to the install file list, and then
perform a HotSync operation to load them to the PDA. The current build of
the console program when we wrote this chapter included these files:

❏ console.prc
❏ aIO.pdb
❏ aLeaf.pdb

❏ aSteep.pdb
❏ aSteepGen.pdb
❏ aSteepOpt.pdb

P:\010Comp\Bots\880-6\ch08.vp
Monday, May 12, 2003 1:16:45 PM