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Asmusr

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Posts posted by Asmusr

  1. Posted

    I'm also looking for a cable, but it's not easy to find. Just finding a 44 pin card edge connector is difficult. Perhaps that's why the connector on my nanoPEB looks like it was cut from a larger connector and then the cut edge was melted? Perhaps you need to make your own adapters for a standard ATA/IDE cable?

  3. Posted

    Just an update to show that my space scrolling demo is still (slowly) progressing. There have been some tough pills to swallow in the process of turning the demo into a framework for a game, but it still looks like a doable project.

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yclHTPRWZko

     

    The frame rate has dropped from 60 to 30 FPS to provide time for a game loop, but to compensate you can now scroll either 1,2 or 4 pixels per frame. At 2 pixels per frame it still looks nice and smooth, but at 4 pixels per frame it becomes quite bumpy.

     

    Because of the >8 sprite bug in half bitmap mode I now update all 3 VDP pattern tables unless an F18A is detected (Classic99 detects an F18A by the method I use). This makes the frame rate drop further to 20 FPS, which is not terrible (see how it looks in Win994a), but my plan is to dynamically switch full pattern table updating on/off depending on whether more than 8 sprites are visible. Has this been tried before? (Note: at the moment I don't think >8 sprites are ever visible).

     

    I have added a basic example of interaction with the scrolling background - you can now shoot the pyramids. This requires more character patterns to be updated so it has to be limited to a few tiles.

     

    I have also added basic support for enemy ships moving around in predefined paths (no interaction yet), and a few animations.

     

    Disk image (E/A 3: SCO) and source code attached.

    spacescroll2.zip

    • Like 6

  4. Posted

    I won't claim I understand all the technical details, but it sounds absolutely amazing. I can't wait to get one...

     

    Is it also intended for distributing specific games and software, or would developers rather release their software as a file that people can upload to their carts?

  6. Posted

    The new bank-switch board project was stalled for a long time, but I delivered the final GROM code and test code to Jon recently, and he is doing some testing. I still need to write the configuration tool for the microcontroller (which will handle loading GROM code and configuring the I/O). I need to do a few more long term tests as well, but it looks pretty stable.

     

    That's sounds very exciting, but will it require a PEB? What are the specifications?

  7. Posted

    Thank you, Matthew, for the information. Actually our local electronics store has some 74LS379 chips left that I might buy for future use, but I think I will stick to the 4 bank supercart as my project because of the cost of getting a circuit board for the 64K cartridge. It's good to know that you don't have to add the GROM so I can wait with this until I find another E/A card.

     

    I'm not sure what the difference is between a supercart, a multicart and a megacart?

     

    This is my shopping list for a 4 bank supercart from www.Jameco.com (enough for two carts):

     

     

    Part Number, Description, Quantity, Unit Cost, Total

    41988,"IC,43256-12L,DIP-28,SRAM","2","$3.75","$7.50"

    36311,"@ DIODE,SWITCH,1N914","10","$0.05","$0.50"

    690865,"@ RES,CF,1K OHM,1/4 WATT,5%,","100","$0.04","$4.00"

    690582,"@RES,CF,68 OHM,1/4 WATT,5%,","100","$0.04","$4.00"

    691024,"@ RES,CF,4.7K OHM,1/4 WATT,5%,","100","$0.04","$4.00"

    33736,"CAP,TANT,2.2uF,35V,10%","2","$0.39","$0.78"

    333973,"@LED,RED,643NM,T-1 3/4,","10","$0.12","$1.20"

    14162,"BAT,LITHIUM,3V,180mAh,.787 DIA","2","$1.25","$2.50"

    2135478,"SWITCH,TOG,MINI,SPST,ON-OFF","4","$1.49","$5.96"

    2178486,"BATTERY HOLDER FOR CR2032 COIN","2","$0.79","$1.58"

    , , ,Subtotal,"$32.02"

  8. Posted

    I'm not usually a hardware guy, but I think it would be really interesting to make my own 4 Bank 8K Supercart <http://www.mainbyte....art_4bank.html>, and I believe I have found all the components on <https://www.jameco.com/>. The thing that's holding me back is that I have to remove the GROM from my precious (gollum, gollum) E/A card. Does anyone know what would happen if you don't add the GROM, could you still use the RAM for storing programs? An alternative to soldering the GROM onto the board would be to place it in an IC socket - slightly less risky I guess.

     

    I've also thought about building a MegaMod 2010 cart <http://home.vodafone...l#megamod_2010> because I use Cf2k and CfHdxS a lot, but it looks like it would cost $150 to have 2 of Jon Guidry's circuit boards manufactured by <http://www.expresspcb.com/>, and then I would also need get the EPROM: perhaps order it from <http://www.mainbyte....re/EPROMS.html>, or invest in my own EPROM burner.

     

    Does anyone have recent experience with any of these cart projects? Someone from the EU perhaps, who knows a cheaper way to order these components, or suggestions for other great cart building projects?

     

    Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.

  9. Posted

    I'm interested in the cable. The nanoPEB does not have a cable like that. I have read somewhere that it's a standard IDE/ATA cable, and a have one of those, but the terminators are not circuit board edge connectors but ATA connectors with a lot of holes. Which adapters do you need to put your nanoPEB in a box?

    Thanks,

    Rasmus

  14. Posted

    I attached my European console to my Sony Bravia KDL-40EX653 television using a simple component cable from Retro Computer Shack on ebay, and look what I got: an almost perfect picture with square pixels and none of the color bleeding I get when I use the RF modulator. From what I have been reading I'm not sure if anyone else have found a TV that works as well as this. Perhaps Sony is the way to go?

    post-35226-0-69351900-1369342928_thumb.jpg

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    Sorry for breaking into this thread, but I have a question about bit shifting.

     

    When you want to shift a fixed number of positions you can do it like this:

     

       SRA R1,3

     

    When you want to shift a variable number of positions you load the number into R0 like this:

     

       MOV @MYVAR,R0
   SRA R1,0

     

    But when R0 is zero the shift is not zero positions but 16, according to the E/A manual. This means you have to add a check:

     

       MOV @MYVAR,R0
   JEQ SKIP
   SRA R1,0
SKIP

     

    This makes the code longer and more difficult to understand. Is there a trick to avoid this? I don't understand why the instruction was designed like this. When do you need to shift 16 positions? Why not just shift zero positions?

  16. Posted

    I can confirm that in Tursi's test program the bug does not appear when you have 3 pattern tables and only one color table. I tested it on a European (TMS9929A based) console. Moving the sprite pattern table to >3800 did not change anything.

  18. Posted

    290px-Amstrad_CPC464.jpg

     

    Probably mostly known in Europe, but I would have included the Amstrad CPC 464 in the table (a.k.a. Schneider in Germany and the Arnold in France). This was the computer I went for after the TI, in 1984. It was Z80 based with 64K RAM, and it came with a color monitor as standard and a built-in tape drive. It had three bitmap modes (640x200 - 2 colors, 320x200 - 4 colors, and 160x200 - 16 colors (out of 27)). It had a great Basic in ROM and easy access to machine code. The sound was also pretty good, but could not compete with the C64. I think its biggest problem was the lack of sprites and scroll registers, and the decision to use non-standard 3" floppy disks.

  19. Posted

    For Princess Quest and Mecha-8 as both use a lot of patterns, instead of updating the patterns (3 pattern tables and 3 color tables upto 12288 bytes!), I went the other way, I update only the tiles.

     

    Patterns (already precalculated) are preloaded before the level starts.

     

    But I have 70 tile transitions in the demo x 8 scroll offsets = 560 characters. How would you preload all those?

  20. Posted

    Not exactly the full bitmap mode. My solution still use only one color table not 3. But it uses 3 pattern tables instead of one :(.

     

    I see, so you would only have to double the amount of data rather than treble it. That's actually something to consider. And there are no issues then with any of the sprites?

  21. Posted

    It's a bug/feature in the VDP.. when name table masking is activated in bitmap mode, sprites after the first 8 start to ghost and truncate in interesting but not-fully-understood ways. I demonstrated this in a video here: https://www.youtube....jSJqzDR0 (skip to about 8:15).

     

    Do you still have the source code you used for your video available? I would like to test if changing the location of the sprite tables in VDP RAM makes a difference. I would also like to try it on my PAL console. Thanks.

  22. Posted

    Saving frames (one menu item, one go, individual files numbered consecutively). Console C# looping the files reading images into memory (knew how, can't remember if I looked for animated images) and extracting hex strings (for use with XB at the time). Output in one file.

    I guess I could do something similar in Java. Have you considered adding color support to Grapefruit?

     

    BTW, how do you make those GIF screen captures from Classic99 that I have seen you have posted (e.g. the one in the smooth scrolling thread)?

  23. Posted

    Do you scroll all possibilities or only those in view ?

     

    I scroll all the used tile transitions, also those that are not currently in view. If your map is very heterogeneous I think it could make a big difference only to scroll the visible tiles, but the algorithm to determine if a tile was visible would have to be really efficient. Having to run through a list of row intervals for each tile would probably be slower than scrolling everything. Any ideas?

  24. Posted

    I got this problem on my first dev on colecovision few year ago.

     

    here the solution , i found (with the help of some atariage members! :) )

     

    http://atariage.com/...e/#entry1752992

     

    ;)

     

    Thanks, but it looks like the solution is to use full bitmap mode, which is not an option because I would need send three times more data to the VDP to update the pattern tables (note that I need to do this for every frame). Or perhaps I'm missing the point?

  25. Posted

    I use one called Animation Shop 2. It was part of a package now owned by Corel, I think, called Paint Shop Pro.

     

    I actually have a licensed version of Animation Shop 3 that I was thinking about using, but I wanted to know if there was something out there that could generate assembler statements directly. How did you do the bulk converting?

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