Bruce-Robert Pocock

I also realize now that I've omitted — The SaveKey and AtariVox support is based upon code by Alex Herbert.

Thanks for the mention! Unfortunately, I don't think Javatari supports SaveKey (MemCard/AtariVox), which is required for Grizzards. You'll just get the "red sad face" if you try to start a game.

Cripes. Sorry. Will correct in the manual/etc. right now. (Although it won't be visible until I make a new build… my shame will live in on the alpha-0 release…)

TL;DR — A turn-based RPG that requires SaveKey or AtariVox. Now preparing a release candidate build (7/2022) For the latest ROMs, check the web site or my latest post on this thread. This post has the earliest and therefore (hopefully) buggiest version. * You see, what had happened was … Back in June I started a little project somewhat loosely inspired by Pokémon for the 2600. This requires a SaveKey (MemCard) or AtariVox, and it works in Stella. Aside from requiring a SaveKey, this is a straightforward F4 32kiB cartridge. At this point I have reached a sort of alpha quality and put together a little demo build that shows off some of the main mechanisms of the game. There's not much to look at, but you can get the gist of how it'll play. You are a Grizzard Handler, and you can take your Grizzard companion out with you to fight monsters. The goals are to find all 30 Grizzard companions (only one is in this demo) and destroy all the monsters in the game world (except random encounters). Hopefully it seems entertaining enough, and I'll put out a beta version at some time in future (as time permits). The original first post is here in the Spoiler tag (although it contains no actual spoilers)

I've also seen it called a "phono" jack when someone is avoiding the brand name /shrug

Posting this for posterity: When writing to the AtariVox EEPROM (and I presume MemCard/SaveKey), it seems that it's necessary to wait for the write-commit to be acknowledged before starting a second write, or the second write will be silently ignored. Tested both on Stella's software AtariVox emulation and using a Harmony cart with a real AtariVox. Basically all you have to do is something like this: WaitForI2CAck: jsr i2cStartWrite bcs WaitForI2CAck jsr i2cStopWrite Having the second write be completely ignored was driving me nuts trying to debug, and just adding a few frames of wait time didn't help for some reason.

The two main ones are Frodo and VICE. I prefer VICE personally, it includes all of Commodore's 8-bit machines, command-line tools for working with D64 type disk image files, and cycle-accurate disk drive emulation (with drive sound effects!).

I use the c1541 utility that ships with VICE. I'm on Linux, but I think they run under Windows too, and they're scriptable – you can use them from e.g. a Makefile. e.g. format "disk label",p3 d64 local-file-name.d64 8 write local-file.prg "filename",prg write local-file.txt "another file",seq list

It could work in either port, but the standard routines are written for the right port, so you'd have to edit some bit-banging code there to use it in the left port. There's no reason you couldn't use two "at the same time" in general, although the timing is strict so you could not use both at the same instant. But then you would have only the console inputs. The only use for this that I can think of would be some kind of copy utility that used the Select & Reset switches to navigate.

Based on the labels, all 5 of those seem to be PC-DOS disks. If (remotely possible) one of them were CP/M, it might be usable on a CP/M-equipped Commodore 128, but the VGA one is absolutely not going to work there, and I think it's very unlikely if they're from the same label writer that the other 3 are anything but PC-DOS disks. You should be able to run them in DOSBox if you don't have a DOS or Windows system capable of accessing them …

The MOS 6502, 6507, 6510, and 8502 have identical instruction sets (and registers). The 6507 has the reduced address bus; The 6502 is the baseline model (‘lawsuit-compatible’ version of the 6500) The 6510 has a parallel port addressed at locations 0 & 1, used on the Commodore 64 for memory banking controls and Datasette interface The 8502 is a 6510 with glue for the Commodore 128's FAST mode and co-operation with the Z80 coprocessor. The WD 65C02 (used in some Apples, among other things) adds a few instructions and does away with most of the undocumented (‘illegal’) instructions (like, say, ‘lax’) The WD 65816 adds a 16-bit mode but maintains the full 8-bit instruction set, again at the cost of losing the undocumented instructions. The Ricoh RP 2A03 and 2A07 from the NES are instruction-set compatible (including undocumented instructions) with the 6502 for the most part, but Decimal mode is not available, and the sound generator (APU) is on the same chip. HTH