Now that MESS supports the Arcade Board...

[Arbee]

I've had so much trouble with MESS I pretty much gave up using it. Way too volatile.

 

Lemme know if I can help in some way with that. It should be much less volatile now for 8-bit IIs than in the past; I gave up on extending the original 2002-era Apple II emulation code and wrote completely new drivers from scratch which run much faster on lower-end PCs, among other benefits. We also fully emulate the unique features and hardware of the //c, and the semi-compatible Laser 3000 and TK2000.

[The Usotsuki]

http://3.buric.co/tms061.zip

 

Here's a demo program I made that walks a goomba across the bottom of the screen (and needs features in this version):

 10  REM  INITIATE GR1 MODE
 20 BO = 245: REM  BORDER
 30 CO = 240: REM  COLORS
 35 D = 50: REM  DELAY
 40  &  GR 1
 50  PRINT : PRINT  CHR$ (4)"BLOAD SYSTEM.FNT,A$6000"
 60  &  DEF 24576: FOR I = 0 TO 31: &  POKE 8192 + I,CO: NEXT I: &  COLOR= BO
 70  &  ON : &  HOME
 80  TEXT : HOME
 90  PRINT "Loading sprite table..."
 100  PRINT  CHR$ (4)"BLOAD TEST.FONT,A$5000"
 120  &  LOAD 0,20480,22528
 130  PRINT "Setting 16x16 sprite mode..."
 140 AB = 49280 +  PEEK (975)
 150  POKE AB + 3,194: POKE AB + 3,129
 160  &  POKE 4096,176: &  POKE 4098,0
 170  &  POKE 4099,8
 175  PRINT "Walking the goomba..."
 180  FOR I = 0 TO 239 STEP 2
 190  &  POKE 4097,I: &  POKE 4098,0
 200  FOR J = 1 TO D: NEXT
 210  &  POKE 4097,I + 1: &  POKE 4098,4
 220  FOR J = 1 TO D: NEXT
 230  NEXT I: &  POKE 4099,0

This is the important part of the test font:

5000: 03 07 0F 1F 3F 77 77 F5 F1 FF 78 00 00 18 1C 0E
5010: C0 E0 F0 F8 FC EE EE AF 8F FF 1E 00 0C 3E 7E 7C
5020: 03 07 0F 1F 3F 77 77 F5 F1 FF 78 00 30 7C 7E 3E
5030: C0 E0 F0 F8 FC EE EE AF 8F FF 1E 00 00 18 38 70

[carlsson]

Unfortunately I can't seem to get CP/M to boot on the current MESS so the possibility of running the Z80 and the AB side by side isn't there, which would make the idea of porting from, say, ColecoVision be a bit less daunting, slower Z80 aside.

Back in November 2013 you were up to coding an automatic translator to convert Z80 to 6502 machine code. JamesD mentioned you should expect the code size to grow by 15% and yourself mentioned 25%. Did you go along with that project, or is it on the wait list for the future? :-)

[The Usotsuki]

Back in November 2013 you were up to coding an automatic translator to convert Z80 to 6502 machine code. JamesD mentioned you should expect the code size to grow by 15% and yourself mentioned 25%. Did you go along with that project, or is it on the wait list for the future? :-)

I don't know enough about Z80 to actually do it, but I still want to.

 

A 25% increase in filesize is fine: a 32K game would still fit in contiguous memory (32*1.25=40; 0800-B7FF is 44K).

[carlsson]

Understood.

 

Who knows, perhaps I'll install a recent MESS and try this expansion as well. If nothing else, it would give me a butt-kick into Apple land.

[JamesD]

Back in November 2013 you were up to coding an automatic translator to convert Z80 to 6502 machine code. JamesD mentioned you should expect the code size to grow by 15% and yourself mentioned 25%. Did you go along with that project, or is it on the wait list for the future? :-)

Just remember that was a port by hand.