mvdsteenoven Posted April 15, 2013 Share Posted April 15, 2013 I could easily think that you could also make a basic compiler for us not so great Assembler programmers That is too much credit Writing a basic compiler is a bit more of a task then resetting some memory ponters 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvdsteenoven Posted April 15, 2013 Share Posted April 15, 2013 (edited) Please find version 2 of the Bootloader attached. It will now also handle BASIC files upto 16K (16K is limit of Aquarius ROM specs). It does this by injecting two BASIC REM lines with the necessary machine code at the right place in memory (at 0xE000) The Caq2Bootload.vbs Visual Basic script has the "intelligence" to do this, so this script has now become more important. The usage is still same: create your Aquarius BASIC program and save it, using the Virtual Aquarius, as a CAQ file. Place the files BOOTLDR.DAT and Caq2Bootload.vbs in the same folder (e.g. your desktop) Drag your CAQ file over Caq2Bootload.vbs and drop it. A file with the extension .BIN will be created in the same folder as the .CAQ file Or by command prompt: C> cscript Caq2Bootload.vbs bomber_bas.caq See also the README file within the ZIP archive. BootLDRv2.zip Any comments are welcome. Enjoy! Regs, Martin Edited April 15, 2013 by mvdsteenoven 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted April 15, 2013 Share Posted April 15, 2013 Please find version 2 of the Bootloader attached. It will now also handle BASIC files upto 16K (16K is limit of Aquarius ROM specs). It does this by injecting two BASIC REM lines with the necessary machine code at the right place in memory (at 0xE000) The Caq2Bootload.vbs Visual Basic script has the "intelligence" to do this, so this script has now become more important. The usage is still same: create your Aquarius BASIC program and save it, using the Virtual Aquarius, as a CAQ file. Place the files BOOTLDR.DAT and Caq2Bootload.vbs in the same folder (e.g. your desktop) Drag your CAQ file over Caq2Bootload.vbs and drop it. A file with the extension .BIN will be created in the same folder as the .CAQ file Or by command prompt: C> cscript Caq2Bootload.vbs bomber_bas.caq See also the README file within the ZIP archive. BootLDRv2.zip Any comments are welcome. Enjoy! Regs, Martin This is great, 16K is even better to play around with! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted April 15, 2013 Share Posted April 15, 2013 That is too much credit Writing a basic compiler is a bit more of a task then resetting some memory ponters I thought I could at least give it a try because at the moment speed seems to be my worst enemy on the basic side of programming!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted April 15, 2013 Author Share Posted April 15, 2013 This is great, 16K is even better to play around with! Yes, indeed! Excellent work, Martin! I still haven't had time to try this myself (just as soon as school is over!), so this may be a "dumb question", but I'm wondering: if a program is developed in BASIC on a 16K machine, real or emulated, and if that program is then converted to a 16K cartridge image and burned to a real cartridge, will it still require the 16K of RAM, or will the cartridge run on a stock Aquarius? I've added some more configuration options to my new SuperCart boards, so they can now support 8K/16K cartridge ROMs, in addition to the larger bankswitched ones. At my first opportunity, I'll try them with an image generated by this program, but I fully expect that it will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvdsteenoven Posted April 15, 2013 Share Posted April 15, 2013 I'm wondering: if a program is developed in BASIC on a 16K machine, real or emulated, and if that program is then converted to a 16K cartridge image and burned to a real cartridge, will it still require the 16K of RAM, or will the cartridge run on a stock Aquarius? The memory variables are still stored in Ram, I believe a number uses 10 bytes, so you could create about 170 number variables (without strings) on a stock Aquarius with 1.7k ram. That should be more than enough.But if the programmer has written his own machinecode to read the handcontrollers then he would probally put this in the upper 16k and then it will not work on a stock Aquarius. So a pure BASIC program could run from ROM on a stock Aquarius, but you should check for machinecoded routines. Regs, Martin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted April 15, 2013 Author Share Posted April 15, 2013 That's what I thought. Thanks for the clarification. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemeilio Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Hi, I am new to this forum purely because I was unaware of any Aquarius collectors. It's good to see things move on, I can remember when I had my Aquarius over 20 years ago, programming machine code in decimal (no assembler's to hand then). I had a go with the emulator yesterday and it all came flooding back, good work. I wrote Aquapede back then, but it didn't sell in great number's as the Aquarius's life was pretty short. It's possible a copy still exist's at my parents house and if so I will make it available to all. Mattel or Radofin were very good to me then by giving me all the tech info on the machine which made the job a bit easier. If memory serves me correctly, taking into account the memory constraint's I had to work with, movements were done using screen memory scans and moving characters either left or right or up and down and a storage area for the screen so I could replace the items under moving characters, All good fun. It would be good to see it again. I also modified a zx81 memory expansion to fit my aquarius. It wasn't at all elegant but done the job. I didn't mind that the Aquarius wasn't high res, but user definable character set would have made a difference. I always remembered it as a solid reliable machine and quite a lot of fun at the time. I am following this thread with great interest and will probably have a go at programming z80 code again. Keep up the good work. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 25, 2013 Author Share Posted July 25, 2013 Thanks for posting, and welcome! It's always great to hear from people who are "rediscovering" the Aquarius (and other classic computers, for that matter!) thanks to emulation and the other tools we have available today. I'd love to see Aquapede, if you still happen to have a copy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemeilio Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 My mother has informed me that she has found some cassettes, maybe master's (fingers crossed). I've never converted a cassette before. Am I right in thinking that I record to my PC and then convert the .WAV to CAQ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 25, 2013 Author Share Posted July 25, 2013 Yes, if you look inside the Virtual Aquarius archive, you'll find some subfolders which include utilities for converting from WAV files to CAQ files, and vice-versa. I've used WAV2CAQ successfully to convert raw cassette data that I recorded into my PC sound card using an ordinary cassette player, so if these tapes are the ones you're looking for, let us know if you have trouble with the conversion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemeilio Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Will do, and thanks for your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Very welcome indeed! It is a very nice surprise to hear from an actual programmer that made Aquarius software in the eighties. I also would love to see Aquapede as I previously only heard about it's existing due to this tape list http://www.geekvintage.com/mattel-aquarius-cassette-list.php. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 By the way I don't know if you ever came across this Aquarius user site:http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mattelaquarius/ At the moment things are more moving towards Atari Age, but maybe it is nice to see that for some period of time Aquarius users have been active! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemeilio Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Hi, Thank's for your comments, I should receive the cassettes from my mother in a few day's so hopefully it is there. I will check out the Aquarius user site and will have to find an Aquarius again. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemeilio Posted July 26, 2013 Share Posted July 26, 2013 Hi again, Anyone know if a DOS version of Virtual Aquarius exist's. Just an idea, I have a HP thin client and used it as a BBC Micro emulator under DOS. It was totally solid state and supported USB as that is what it booted from. An ideal candidate for Aquarius emulator, getting the sound card maybe a bit tricky though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 (edited) Hi again, Anyone know if a DOS version of Virtual Aquarius exist's. Just an idea, I have a HP thin client and used it as a BBC Micro emulator under DOS. It was totally solid state and supported USB as that is what it booted from. An ideal candidate for Aquarius emulator, getting the sound card maybe a bit tricky though. I am unaware of a DOS version! The only other emulators I know of are Aqemu and MESS, but these are also window based! Edited July 27, 2013 by Aquaman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share Posted July 27, 2013 There is an old DOS binary of MESS floating around (I don't remember the exact version; somewhere in the 0.8X range), but the Aquarius driver is probably in a fairly primitive state. I know that the character set has been fixed in more recent versions, because I dumped the Aquarius Character Generator ROM image that MESS now uses. I suppose you could compile a recent version of MESS for DOS, if you really wanted to. The thing I like about MESS is that, unlike Virtual Aquarius and AqEmu, it's still being actively developed, it's multi-platform, and it has a good built-in debugger. I think the sound and hand controller support is probably better in Virtual Aquarius, and Virtual Aquarius also has "QuickType" and WAV2CAQ and other convenient features and tools. But of course, nothing beats having the real hardware! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 There is an old DOS binary of MESS floating around (I don't remember the exact version; somewhere in the 0.8X range), but the Aquarius driver is probably in a fairly primitive state. I know that the character set has been fixed in more recent versions, because I dumped the Aquarius Character Generator ROM image that MESS now uses. I suppose you could compile a recent version of MESS for DOS, if you really wanted to. The thing I like about MESS is that, unlike Virtual Aquarius and AqEmu, it's still being actively developed, it's multi-platform, and it has a good built-in debugger. I think the sound and hand controller support is probably better in Virtual Aquarius, and Virtual Aquarius also has "QuickType" and WAV2CAQ and other convenient features and tools. But of course, nothing beats having the real hardware! Are any of your hardware projects going to bring remapping the character set to the Aquarius? Something like that could make smooth scrolling games possible. Also, I heard somewhere that James the Animal Tamer used his own font for Virtual Aquarius and had that under pubic domain. Is there any way to extract that font with one of your tools? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share Posted July 27, 2013 Are any of your hardware projects going to bring remapping the character set to the Aquarius? Something like that could make smooth scrolling games possible. I'd like to include that in my upgraded Mini Expander. It originally started as an idea for a standalone upgrade (see here), but I've since decided that making it a part of the Mini Expander would make for an easier installation. Also, I heard somewhere that James the Animal Tamer used his own font for Virtual Aquarius and had that under pubic domain. Is there any way to extract that font with one of your tools? He probably re-drew the character set (or had someone else do it) because a dump of the original Character Generator ROM wasn't available at the time. If the replacement set isn't a separate file, it's probably inside the emulator binary, and whether it can be extracted would depend on how it is stored. The easiest way to capture it would probably be to write a quick BASIC program which prints out every character in the set on the screen. Then, all you'd have to do is run it inside Virtual Aquarius and take a screenshot. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvdsteenoven Posted August 31, 2013 Share Posted August 31, 2013 James used a font that was hand-drawn used by the AqEmu emulator, as descriped on this post at Yahoo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted October 18, 2013 Share Posted October 18, 2013 Hi, Thank's for your comments, I should receive the cassettes from my mother in a few day's so hopefully it is there. I will check out the Aquarius user site and will have to find an Aquarius again. Hi, Any news regarding those cassettes and any luck scoring an Aquarius? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pset Posted November 13, 2013 Share Posted November 13, 2013 (edited) Start the MessUI (Mess User Interface). There's no such program "MessUI" in the current MESS 0151b. MessUI has a new home and download location. Edited November 13, 2013 by Pset Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pset Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 (edited) A host of handy Z80 books can be found on Archive.org. Z80_Assembly_Language_Subroutines_1983_Osborne Z80_Assembly_Language_Subroutines_1983_Leventhal Z80_Assembly_Language_Programming Zilog_Z80_assembly_language_programming_classic bitsavers_zilogz8Z8ArammingManualDec80_7518576 Edited November 27, 2013 by Pset 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pset Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 (edited) Ok I got my AquariusmanAdventureHacked.asm* all set to go when I get shut down by the 64 bit incompatibility with TASM.So I DosBox to the C drive and try it there and get a failed compile on CScript error from Make.bat I then spend an hour or two bent over a teenaged Sony Viao with windows professional 2000 moving files by thumbdrive, mostly its fighting that trackpad and damnable UI. I run the make.bat and it spits out a bunch of info including some Data lines. But the virtual aquarius 7.5 doesn't recognize the .caq files at all in the file selector. Won't load them as 'all files" It sees the original quest_a.caq but doesn't load it. What's the best Aquarius assembler workflow workaround on 64 bit windows 7? ***Awesome Aquarius Man on Adventure machine code wizardry* http://atariage.com/forums/topic/174798-aquarius-man-goes-on-holiday/?hl=%2Bpanscr&do=findComment&comment=2173637 Edited December 13, 2013 by Pset Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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