been messing about with assembler on the vic again. just thought I'd share this little program. hardly anything to it really. bout 5 lines long. still looks pretty.
A.k.a. 1-D Pacman, for the Tandy100/200. https://github.com/dplassgit/games/tree/trunk/t100/pac1
here's a link to my assembler program. I hope you can see the program itself but it says a playable link so not quite sure what that means. anyway here it is:
I clicked on link and all it does is lets you play the program and not look at the code. ok I'll explain what is happening. I synchronised the interrupt to the rasters and had it triggered just after the display window. Is there some way to post a link to my code? also in the emulator what key do I press to get a ")" character?
In day-to-day usage the new C64U recreated SID audio chips are absolutely fine, that said I have had a SIDKick made up by PCBWay and I am hoping my donor board SID still works so I can have a play both on breadboard and in the ultimate :)
Hello. My first computer was a Vic 20. Then I had a Spectrum and after that a variety of PCs. I learned Basic 6502 and Z80 but I never really wrote any large programs. They were generally little basic programs that loaded machine code programs from data statements to explore some facet of the machine I was using which was quite painful. I learned Turbo Pascal when I did my computer science A level and I loved that. Especially the inline statements where you could put in a string of NOPs and look for them in the object code using DEBUG to find out what was happening at the machine code level. It's probably all Python now. Then I went to college to learn C at city & guilds level ( this is before C was popular ). We used Turbo C and I enjoyed that too. You know how when you advance to the next level more and more students drop out, after the third year there were only two of us left. The tutor didn't really want to do the next year and by this time I was Getting a bit jaded because I worked shifts as well as going to college, so it just fizzled out. My love affair with computers didn't end there though. I used to do my own little projects at home I learned a bit of Python and messed about with Pygame and made a few YouTube videos. If You look up Robhobbo on YouTube you'll be able to find them. They were not very serious and just explored a few of the things I was interested in. Lately I've rekindled my love for the Vic 20 and have been messing about with the Vice emulator. It really is painful though trying to program on such a small screen and the programs getting corrupted when something goes wrong. That's when I saw the YouTube video about the online IDE on this website. so I've had a little tinker with the assembler and gotta say I'm enjoying it. even though I know machine code, I've never really used an assembler. It's a bit unfamiliar and I could do with a tutorial. I tried to paste my first effort here but it went all weird. Dunno how else to share it. No idea what .encoding or BasicUptart() is. Ok that's me. Thank you.
I recently got my hands on a C64 Ultimate, and one of the great things about it is the built-in wifi. A great opportunity to do some basic programming that makes use of being "online".
In the past my internetty code for the c64 was using the serial modem, which is speed restricted, but the C64u emulates the Swiftlink cart and that can do 38400 baud which is considerably quicker.
Strangely, though, the Vice emulator seems to struggle with higher speeds and I can't figure out why ...
I bought a(nother) Tandy 100, as "not working/for parts." A quick exam revealed that it was executing code, but not showing anything on the display.
After recapping the board it still was not showing anything on the display. The Tandy 100 Service Manual (https://ftp.whtech.com/club100/doc/m100ServiceManual.pdf) has a good flowchart to debug these things; I knew it was just the LCD, though.
It requires +5V and -5V from the power supply circuit, but the PS was only producing +5V. After some more tracing I found there was a trace broken by the leaky capacitor that I replaced, so I added a bodge wire. Then, the PS produced 0.6V and 0.6V (instead of 5V and -5V). Ugh.
I desoldered the transformer, to maybe swap it with my other, working 100, but chickened out - I didn't want to possibly ruin the working 100... I soldered it back in, removed the bodge wire, and it was STILL producing 0.6 and 0.6V... I had soldered it in upside-down. So I removed and replaced it AGAIN, and it was producing 5V and nothing, so it didn't get worse.
I let it sit for a few weeks and got back to it today. I found that BOTH sides of the capacitor were disconnected from the circuit so I added the original bodge and another bodge wire, and success! +5v and -5v!
But...the LCD still didn't work. It also needs a contrast signal, which was pegged at -5V. Comparing to my working 100, it was supposed to be between 0 and +4V. Back to the board...
I found another broken trace (from a different leaky cap) between the contrast circuit and the connector to the LCD. A third bodge wire was added, and .... success!
Hi all,
I'd like to start learning to write a game for the Commodore PET or the VIC-20...
I've never tried this, but am pretty well versed in programming languages generally.
My question... I'm kind of a weird pure-ist, and am leaning towards creating on the actual emulated machine (through VICE), but am I making this pointlessly hard by today's standards? Do most people use an IDE of some kind these days?
Thanks,
Johnny
Hi all!
Great to be here!
I am an IT professional that has been in the IT industry for 35 years.
But my love affair with computers started with the TRS-80 in 4th grade and then the PET in 9th grade.
I BEGGED my dad for a PET but we just could not afford it...
Then I bought a VIC-20 (could not afford the Commodore 64 when I was in High School!) and programmed it until it ran out of memory (oops!). I spent so many great hours typing in games from magazines, etc, with my friends, but girls and school and social things eventually pulled me away...
I reentered the computer scene in college with DOS/Windows on the Intel 386 processor.
Throughout all this time, I really never stopped loving those first computers and found emulation to be my "retro savior", because now I could "own them all" at no cost!!!
Anyway, I have always dreamed of writing a game for either the PET or the VIC-20, but never got around to it.
I really love that idea still and am unsure what system to program for, but I'm leaning towards the PET as my focus.
Anyway, thanks for letting me join!
Johnny