[Schach for Channel F]

http://channelf.se/gallery/index.html

 

Updated link

http://channelf.se/gallery/txt/saba20.txt

 

... and perhaps google translate.;) 

[Cut it out! (Trimerous update)]

Know the feeling, 300+ videocarts made... It was a bitch making prefolds myself  on the first 50+. Sanded down a groove in a glass plate from a bathroom scale and then pressed the boxmaterial into it with the rounding of a bent screwdriver... fun times. After that I decided to pay for prefolds - which is a blessing even though their aim has gotten a lot worse.

This time they had to make a new batch, which was better, not as good as five years ago though. 

Getting cut outs usually means having a custom cutting tool made, not cheap so if there's no finished size... there's not much to do.

I still do the inkjet on photopaper with clear plastic adhesive for labels now and then. But double sided adhesive on the back, not glue stick. Either options has pros and cons. 

 

A cutting machine could handle it, perhaps it's a service offered to be purchased somewhere. Hence the marks for aiming. 

I was in contact with a laser cutting firm a while back, it was almost financially sane. The single or a pair for tests is usually what kills a deal. Split over just 20-50 carts it's not worth it. Result needs to stay at a sellable price. 

Of course it's an option to make straight cuts on the labels, they'll just be a bit smaller. 

I bought four different "scrap booking" corner cutters before finding the quad cutter "Kadumaro PRO", shipped from Japan, that got the proper diameter. Any corner cutter will lift the appearance IMHO. 

 

Sending images to China and have them make everything is probably cheaper, at least if they get it right in three attemps.

 

Let me know if you need any moral support and advice, should be pretty straight forward though. 

I feel for you. 

 

 

[Awakening]

Built in reset routine and games are 2KiB hardwired at the start of the address space, so only $0800-$FFFF is available to the user. Free space to the user, with no tricks, is 62KiB which means 62*1024 = 63488, which is probably why someone came up with "Ki" or "K" as 62kB could be (correctly) interpreted as 62000 bytes .

Trimerous actually has 42009 unused bytes, there's a gap because MAME/MESS has a fixed "Chess RAM" area, so to be able to test it in said emulator it needs to be skipped, no data is loaded there (for some odd reason) even if binary file has it. Almost all of the second half of trimerous is unused space.

It's quite possible someone editing MAME/MESS could allow loading data into the "Chess RAM" area, that would help a lot, ideally it should allow configurable RAM in any area, like some other systems. 

If more than 62KiB (63488 Bytes) is needed, you can add more using a bank switch configuration - like the Multi-Cart has. It will however not be possible to test the entire thing in MESS/MAME though as it only emulates the normal address space and no special bank switching methods - unfortunately.

Maybe if we present a fileformat like .chf that is based on .crt or similar with a header and where you can set type and blocks in the file - that would solve the problem as soon as it would be supported by emulator(s). 
Channel F programming community isn't as large as other formats though...  

 

 

 

 

[Channel F musings.]

62kB if you're not using bank switching...  

[Schach for Channel F]

If you read the instructions carefully (perhaps a babelfish-translation from German to English from the instructions on my page http://go.to/channelf, direct link: http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/gallery/txt/saba20.txt ) you'll notice that the game can be set to different levels....

 

Ofcourse, the computer takes much longer time when increasing the level.

 

If you look at my avatar - that's how a re-built SABA#20 may look.

[1979 Protoview]

Have you tried the Pac-man game? Send me a PM if you want to try the latest version.

 

Frank mentioned in the Tetris game by Peter Trauner is Frank Palazzolo, he has done some work on MESS, and me as you already knew and also Sean Riddle.

 

Peter wanted to show it was possible to make Tetris for this system, he was never interested in the prize, I guess that's the reason it wasn't finished (no sound and missing some features). Another reason is that the binary is the same size as the available ram on his favorite computer (I'm guessing a VIC 20).

 

No more attempts on Tetris has been made as far as I know.

[Fairchild VES]

I also love (in a spiritual way) the person that dumped all the carts for the Channel F.

 

Sean Riddle dumped most of them...

[Tetris for Channel F]

Peter Trauner wrote Tetris as evidence that it was possible to make a Tetris game for the Channel F after finding my competition...

 

He wasn't really interested in recieveing the prize (complete set of SABA carts).

 

After a while he got bored with my demands and stopped working on it, the last version I got from him has other scoring and more digits for the score.

 

So... the competition is still on:

http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/competition/

 

 

Me, myself has done a whole lot of work on Blackbirds Channel F Pac-man, trying to make it more true to the original. Latest binary can be found here:

http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/files/...elf/pac-man.bin

 

 

Fredric Blåholtz