19rsn007 Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 Hey people, Can anyone help me? I forgot the command to check the free memory on my aquarius. It was something with print ($) fre or free, but I can't remember!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 print fre(x) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 Hey people, Can anyone help me? I forgot the command to check the free memory on my aquarius. It was something with print ($) fre or free, but I can't remember!! If you would like to have the manual check it out on the former thread [AQUARIUS] Dusting off the old Aquarius ... , where it is posted for anyone's use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted November 11, 2013 Author Share Posted November 11, 2013 hehe thanks for the help. Forgot to mention I already found out how to do it again..... I remembered I started doing some programming for my aquarius this afternoon. So far, I've only done a simple color scrolling demo, but there is more to come 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 hehe thanks for the help. Forgot to mention I already found out how to do it again..... I remembered I started doing some programming for my aquarius this afternoon. So far, I've only done a simple color scrolling demo, but there is more to come I started studying basic for aquarius about 5 days ago. no fancy graphics but Im getting the skeleton built, so far i have three objects that .i can move independent and one guy i can control. At the moment its like a crude version of frogger but with out fancy graphics. I was out this morning, so nextbtime im hoping to add collisions. im thinking it might be possible to do a hybrid frogger/tag along todd type of game where there are objects you avoid and objects you oick up with in a certain time period. I havent worked with colors yet, other than whats i the book. or with sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 (edited) hehe thanks for the help. Forgot to mention I already found out how to do it again..... I remembered I started doing some programming for my aquarius this afternoon. So far, I've only done a simple color scrolling demo, but there is more to come btw we need to change ur avatar. we can replace the atari symbol with running man, replace where it says atari with aquarius , and replace commodore with Intellivision. Atari and other consoles are contraband here. Edited November 11, 2013 by voltron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaman Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 I started studying basic for aquarius about 5 days ago. no fancy graphics but Im getting the skeleton built, so far i have three objects that .i can move independent and one guy i can control. At the moment its like a crude version of frogger but with out fancy graphics. I was out this morning, so nextbtime im hoping to add collisions. im thinking it might be possible to do a hybrid frogger/tag along todd type of game where there are objects you avoid and objects you oick up with in a certain time period. I havent worked with colors yet, other than whats i the book. or with sound.You might be suprised how fancy the graphics can be with clever use of the standard graphic set. This means combining certain graphics with also the help of inverting some of these by using the right foreground and background colours. But I think this is something you have to test out after you got the initial programming done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted November 11, 2013 Author Share Posted November 11, 2013 hey voltron. You are one step ahead of me I just started doing Aquarius since tis afternoon I played around with it earlier, but this is the first time I am actually trying to get output other the 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!" 20 GOTO 10 I have an aquarius for about a month now...... (after hunting it down for years) The first thing I've done was create a demo. Nothing fancy, but still it's cool. I'll be looking more into the aquaius 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 You might be suprised how fancy the graphics can be with clever use of the standard graphic set. This means combining certain graphics with also the help of inverting some of these by using the right foreground and background colours. But I think this is something you have to test out after you got the initial programming done! I saw the bomber game, and that pretty nice, with what the computer can do. Initially I tried to incorporate sound grpahic/colors and objects but, it seemed easier to do things in blocks first. Today I added a few more characters to yesterday code and I have a fence. I think tomorrow I will work on collisions, so if you touch the fence or one of the moving character you blow up. Once all that is done then I will play with the colors. Overall i have something semi playable, there are still bugs, that I will look at later once the skeleton is finished like when the guy tries to move past the grid the program crashes. This is a formula issue since we have to stay with in 12328 and 13248. But im waiting towards the end to change the formulas. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 hey voltron. You are one step ahead of me I just started doing Aquarius since tis afternoon I played around with it earlier, but this is the first time I am actually trying to get output other the 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!" 20 GOTO 10 I have an aquarius for about a month now...... (after hunting it down for years) The first thing I've done was create a demo. Nothing fancy, but still it's cool. I'll be looking more into the aquaius Its not hard at all. The Aquarius guide to home computing is the best resource, once you do each of the little programs its easy. I then looked at the sample programs that came with the zip file and I looked at the code. With those two I sort of got the hang of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 hey voltron. You are one step ahead of me I just started doing Aquarius since tis afternoon I played around with it earlier, but this is the first time I am actually trying to get output other the 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!" 20 GOTO 10 I have an aquarius for about a month now...... (after hunting it down for years) The first thing I've done was create a demo. Nothing fancy, but still it's cool. I'll be looking more into the aquaius Here is a temporary avatar for you. I know the fonts are off, but much better than that atari/commodore stuff 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted November 11, 2013 Author Share Posted November 11, 2013 Here is a temporary avatar for you. I know the fonts are off, but much better than that atari/commodore stuff Well to be honest, I am into a lot of home computers and consoles...so my avater would be turning into Commodore, atari, aquarius, sega logo, nintendo logo, amiga logo, some others Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 Well to be honest, I am into a lot of home computers and consoles...so my avater would be turning into Commodore, atari, aquarius, sega logo, nintendo logo, amiga logo, some others commodore! atari! sega? nintendo! those are hurtful words..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 im curious how hard is aquarius assembly language? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted November 11, 2013 Author Share Posted November 11, 2013 well the basics are Z80, but then comes the additional instructions.... We might want to check it out..... ASM has a lot more possibilities compared to basic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 ASM has a lot more possibilities compared to basic. I sort of noticed that, with the limitations of basic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 I think what makes assembly diificult is the lack of development tools. with basic we can use notepad, and run a block of code to test it. With assembly im guessing its not as easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvdsteenoven Posted November 11, 2013 Share Posted November 11, 2013 There are cross assemblers, just like tasm which comes with the virtual aquarius. You can write your assembler code in a notepad, compile it with tasm and load it as a cartridge into the virtual aquarius. Oke, this is a very simplified view and you need to add some explicit code so the Aquarius will recognize the cartridge, but it is not that hard. Look into the machinecode thread and you will see that it is not that hard. Regs, Martin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted November 11, 2013 Author Share Posted November 11, 2013 the most rotten lack is the fact that the emulator doesn't have a debugger and we don't know the full ASM instruction set of the aquarius. An ASM debugger and built-in assembler in an aquarius emu would be nice, but I am affraid it's never gonna happen. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 the most rotten lack is the fact that the emulator doesn't have a debugger and we don't know the full ASM instruction set of the aquarius. An ASM debugger and built-in assembler in an aquarius emu would be nice, but I am affraid it's never gonna happen. The MESS emulator (which can emulate the Aquarius, along with many other systems) has a debugger. It isn't enabled by default, so you have to enable that option when you compile it. The debugger was extremely helpful to me when I was putting the Aquaricart together. You're right, though, that it would be nice to have one Aquarius emulator that "does it all". Virtual Aquarius seems more accurate than MESS, and it supports handy features that MESS does not (such as "Quick Type"), but it's getting old and it's Windows-only. MESS, on the other hand, is multi-platform and has the optional debugger, and its default character set is now the correct one, but it's missing some of the niceties of Virtual Aquarius. Martin is correct that assembly isn't as hard as its reputation would suggest. The nice thing about the Aquarius is that it uses the Z80, which has been around for a long time (and is still being produced today!), so there are lots of resources and books out there to help you get started. TASM is a great cross-assembler, and I'm also thinking of using SDCC for my next project, since it would be nice to develop for the Aquarius in C. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 The MESS emulator (which can emulate the Aquarius, along with many other systems) has a debugger. It isn't enabled by default, so you have to enable that option when you compile it. The debugger was extremely helpful to me when I was putting the Aquaricart together. You're right, though, that it would be nice to have one Aquarius emulator that "does it all". Virtual Aquarius seems more accurate than MESS, and it supports handy features that MESS does not (such as "Quick Type"), but it's getting old and it's Windows-only. MESS, on the other hand, is multi-platform and has the optional debugger, and its default character set is now the correct one, but it's missing some of the niceties of Virtual Aquarius. Martin is correct that assembly isn't as hard as its reputation would suggest. The nice thing about the Aquarius is that it uses the Z80, which has been around for a long time (and is still being produced today!), so there are lots of resources and books out there to help you get started. TASM is a great cross-assembler, and I'm also thinking of using SDCC for my next project, since it would be nice to develop for the Aquarius in C. Are you talking about a compiler for c? im starting to see the limitations of basic, so maybe as other have suggested a c compiler may not be a bad idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 Here is a temporary avatar for you. I know the fonts are off, but much better than that atari/commodore stuff ... or, how about some "Aquarius-themed" versions of the default AtariAge avatar? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltron Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 Those work.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 Are you talking about a compiler for c?Yes. I understand that developers for the ColecoVision (and other Z80-based systems) are using SDCC for their own projects. I don't believe it offers any Aquarius-specific support, though, so we'll probably need some Aquarius libraries first. In the meantime, BASIC is a good language for learning about programming in general. Something like C or assembly might be too much for a new programmer to jump into all at once, but BASIC is a good "stepping stone" to something more powerful. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 I just remembered that Chris Crawford made the same point (only much better) in an excellent book called "You Should Learn to Program", which uses BASIC as a general introduction to programming. He offers it for free on his website: You Should Learn to Program (1988) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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