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Microvision homebrew (part 10)

atari2600land

Entry posted by atari2600land

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I downloaded the drivers and stuff and it came with some documentation. I was scanning it, and have realized that I'm in over my head here. I have worked with assembly before with Odyssey2 programming, but I have absolutely zero thoughts as to what this all means. One of the pdf documents I got is 399 pages long (!) and on page 32, there is a list of characters that I could use, like letters and numbers and stuff. I don't need that for the Microvision, all I need is to turn the pixels on and off. I wonder how I would tell the Propeller chip this, and also tell it the size of the screen (16x16). With assembly, I still can't memorize even the more simpler hexadecimal numbers, and turn to the windows calculator programming mode to convert decimal numbers to hexadecimal. So I guess the next step is to look at the sample code. That's how I learn, by tweaking sample code and learning the changes made. I think what I'll do is get familiar with the Propeller sample program, what it does and then try to make my own Propeller code. The problem is the box refers to lights, so the Propeller chip lights up. I don't really see anything on the chip that would light up. I think the greatest thing about this is that the Propeller chip can hold up to 32k, so maybe 10 years from now, I might be able to make a Tetris game for the Microvision. (My 2600tris game for the VCS was 32k and worked well.)

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5-11under

There's a few ways of programming the Propeller chip, including assembler, spin, and basic. I'd investigate which one works best for you, and go from there. Starting with the sample code and expanding it slowly is a great idea.

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EricBall

Remember that the Propeller knows zero about how to make pixels appear on the Microvision screen. The Propeller only knows about it's own hardware - everything outside of that requires programming. For some stuff (e.g. serial I/O) someone else might have written code which you can re-use. (Much of this code is in the Object Exchange: http://obex.parallax.com/ ) But even that code may require some tweaking (or at least some effort to use). (Note: you'd have the same issue with other microcontrollers - including the Arduino family.)

 

Yes, there are other languages for the Propeller - FORTH is another popular one. The problem with other languages is they can have problems living in the limited RAM and taking advantage of all eight processors. Thus I'd recommend trying to learn SPIN and PASM, because those are the native languages and can take best advantage of the Propeller. (Although I believe one of the Propeller Basics compiles to PASM and shows the translation in the listing, which can be helpful.)

 

Just like programming in assembly, you need to break your project down into baby steps. You now have the tools to start to learn how to program the Propeller, so focus on that.

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