Search found 21 matches

by xopr
03 May 2019, 14:09
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: Expansion bus
Replies: 98
Views: 91417

Re: Expansion bus

... Cool! It can work with some relocation :-). Under BASIC, you need to find another place in memory to store this program. BASIC itself is sitting at 1280 / 0x500, and it has more variables in the zero page than WozMon. ... I dug around the memory model, how BASIC is using the remaining memory an...
by xopr
30 Apr 2019, 15:28
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: Expansion bus
Replies: 98
Views: 91417

Re: Expansion bus

Although I didn't have enough time to play with the Gigatron the last year, I'm really excited about the possible I/O expansion. Since I'm a little more confident with (Commodore) Basic than GCL, I was wondering if it would be possible to speak to I/O that way. This is probably completely silly (and...
by xopr
30 Apr 2019, 13:27
Forum: Kit assembly gallery
Topic: Assembling Gigatron the hard way
Replies: 29
Views: 22125

Re: Assembling Gigatron the hard way

To be honest: I had trouble running my (soldered) Gigatron the first time. In short (no pun intented), it had exactly one bad connection which worked perfectly fine on low frequencies (I think even in the kHz range), so you would see the LED pattern blink, but, naturally, no VGA signal. With the nat...
by xopr
12 Jul 2018, 20:13
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: Advanced troubleshooting
Replies: 2
Views: 3483

Re: Advanced troubleshooting

Eventually, I got my Gigatron up and running by following the instructions on the Troubleshooting.xls spreadsheet, only using a multimeter. ICs that were shorted, placed wrong or maybe overheated in a way are not necessarily broken, but could become slow (and unusable). I discovered this (on my Giga...
by xopr
02 Jul 2018, 07:25
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: Advanced troubleshooting
Replies: 2
Views: 3483

Re: Advanced troubleshooting

I'm not able to edit the post anymore, so here is a post with the simple test scenario using Arduino on github: https://github.com/xopr/gigatron-tester As of time of writing, the steps to test the all of the states for Bus access decoder, Condition decoder, Addressing mode decoder and Instruction de...
by xopr
29 Jun 2018, 14:09
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: Advanced troubleshooting
Replies: 2
Views: 3483

Advanced troubleshooting

This post might be updated by me (or moderators) from time to time to make sure the information is relevant and useful. I (xopr) managed to not get the Gigatron up and running on the first try (please don't judge me) Advanced troubleshooting (with cheap/affordable hardware) for people fairly new to...
by xopr
21 Jun 2018, 07:06
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: Where to find the emulator?
Replies: 8
Views: 6445

Re: Where to find the emulator?

Shameless plug :D : I added hlorenzi's custom assembler to Phil Thomas' emulator I have to admit it's really hacky (and maybe too ugly to upload), but it works and I'm not sure if I have enough time at hand to clean it up within the coming months (suggestions are always welcome though). You can find...
by xopr
20 Jun 2018, 09:02
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: BASIC
Replies: 31
Views: 21813

Re: BASIC

That is just plain awesome!
I can't believe the amount of progress on BASIC, especially since I'm trying to pick up the (native) assembly in an emulator (with a hacky debugger); All I got was a blinky LED using nested loops :D

I'm looking forward to try this. Great work, Marcel!
by xopr
08 Jun 2018, 15:19
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: BASIC
Replies: 31
Views: 21813

Re: BASIC

... This YouTube video is an interesting watch, about a time well before both Bill's BASIC and TINY BASIC... Thanks for the link :) ...Here's a video of my current switchable ROM setup ... - Selection of the 64K banks within the SST39SF010A's is also controlled by the 4017, using A16, (the truth ta...
by xopr
08 Jun 2018, 14:49
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: PS/2 keyboard hookup with microcontroller
Replies: 14
Views: 10787

Re: PS/2 keyboard hookup with microcontroller

... My ambition is that Snake, Racer and the setting of the clock in Mandelbrot should all work in this setup.... Maybe it's an idea to toggle between keypad/keyboard mode with the scroll-lock (or num-lock) key (since they also come with the led indicator). In keypad mode, one could also send the t...