LoTonah

Not sure what kind of camera you are using, but maybe it has a way of adjusting the white balance? Your colors would be a lot more accurate that way.

But it would also need a tile editor, a sprite editor, sound editor, etc. Still, pretty freaking cool. http://8bitworkshop.com/?platform=vcs&file=examples%2Fvsync&reset=

LOL It took three years for someone to catch that? Well done!

That music makes me happy. I know I'm probably mistaken, but I thought there was more than one screen--a night screen? Can't remember.

Okay, sounds about right. Thanks again, Joe and NIAD (whose real name is escaping me at the moment). You two are awesome!

Well, I feel stupid now. It was 6 pages long, I was confusing it with a different document that I'm working with for another project. DERP! Ah well, still hoping someone out there has the real deal.

Closest I found was the "Using SmartBASIC 2.0" by WA6Msx. Good start, but at 18 pages I feel it may be missing something.

Hi everyone, I've looked everywhere that I can think of, and have come up short (or overlooked it). Wondering if anyone has the SmartBASIC v2.0 manual, preferably in PDF format. Thanks!

I'm sorry I gave bad advice. I was tired and had had a few drinks, so I put zero research into what I said. Wish I could delete it.

I'd say go with the 6502. Slightly newer architecture (by what, 2 years?) but in that time they came up with some neat features. Slower clock speed, but you can do more things per tick due to having a richer instruction set. Probably more support out there for the 6502, too--tons of books for the Apple, Commodore, Atari and BBC machines for programming. The Z80 was used in a lot of CP/M builds, the early TRS-80 computers, the Coleco ADAM, and the Nintendo Gameboy (ok, it was a brother of the Z80), so not as much programming happening there, so less information. If you wanted to ever put faster chips in your build, then the 6502 wins again. If you can find it, a WDC 65C02 chip is a drop-in replacement (plus a change in crystals). If you can find them. They went up to 14MHz, I believe.

Looks great! Any chance of a Coleco Adam port? Saw you did 6502 and 6803 ports, maybe you'd like to tackle a Z80 version next?

I have the entire collection hard-bound. Possibly for sale, if anyone is interested!

Haha! I can't hate you, NIAD. You're a treasure. You probably hate me for so many stupid questions over the years, though.

I have a SX-64 with a broken handle (missing the bolt hardware on one side, bought it that way). The Amiga 2000HD that I used for years won't show an image on a known working monitor. Other than that, all my Commodore stuff works great (LOVE my 128D!) All my TRS-80 stuff works awesome (even my Model 1). My Atari 400 has a bad joystick 1 port. My Atari ST's monochrome monitor stopped working recently, I suspect a blown fuse. But my other 8 Atari systems work great! My Coleco Adam works perfectly. One of my Apple //c's keyboards are starting to stick a lot, contact cleaner does nothing. Also, the little //c monitor needs recapped. My IBM 5150 has recently stopped seeing the RAM card, so it falls back to 128Kb RAM instead of 640Kb. My Compaq model III's screen brightness control is very touchy, changes brightness randomly. Pretty much all of the tape drives for my various systems still work (no stretched belts, etc). All my printers still work great. Overall, I've been very lucky. I still have roughly 3 dozen computers, so for the defect list to be so short is pretty amazing. But, this is also one reason I've been selling off my collection bit by bit, because I know that the clock is ticking and I have no interest in keeping that many computers in tip-top condition anymore. Plus, I'm now more interested in getting very good at a few select systems instead of being just meh on so many.

I just found that I already owned a NEC Multisync LCD 1560NX (ya, call me a hoarder if you want). From the specs, it looks like it should work. Anyone try this model before? I already have the Best Electronics cable, but it is in storage. Don't really want to go there, dig through boxes, etc. if it isn't a good match. Your help is appreciated!

Yes, what NIAD said. It is not loaded. But since it is still physically in ROM, can it be tapped into somehow? Its not loading, but can a programmer load portions of it? I'm just thinking out loud. Otherwise, it is bare-metal programming, like I said before. Whatever routines are built-in to the TI graphics chip, for instance.

https://archive.org/details/Programming_the_Z-80_2nd_Edition https://archive.org/details/Z-80_Assembly_Language_Programming https://archive.org/details/The_Z80_microcomputer_handbook_William_Barden I like that Archive.org allows you to download as a .PDF or .ePub. Very handy (have them on my phone!)

I hate you so much right now //kidding. But I am insanely jealous!

If you are used to programming in Javascript, then you probably want to go with the C programming route. First: https://archive.org/details/the_c_programming_language_2 That'll get you the best book on the language, written by Ritchie himself. Then go to youtube and look up "NewColeco", it'll give you all his tutorials. I'm assuming you are running Windows and have installed the utilities already. Personally, I'm trying to do this with assembler, and I'm following the youtube videos by "ElectricAdventures". Good stuff. Sorry if this wasn't helpful, I'm finding I miss the point a lot lately

Hi jhd. Like you, I grew up in a small Canadian town (Cranbrook, B.C.). It's a town that has two industries: the railroad, and forestry. It has gotten a lot better, but back in the late 70's and early 80's if you were interested in computers you were considered a little "odd". There were a few stabs of computer stores back then, but nothing could last long. Radio Shack had a small section where they had a TRS-80 model III and a CoCo setup, but they didn't like kids (which meant I didn't like them). There was an Atari/Apple store that lasted roughly 4 years (spent a LOT of time bugging them there, they had a training room with a dozen or so Atari 400's set up and they would let me hang out if I was quiet). There were a few pop-up stores selling Apple clones and sometimes even the real deal, but they wouldn't last a year. K-Mart eventually sold Commodore. My parents bought me a Coleco ADAM at an Audio/Video store who sold them because they had a good year selling the ColecoVision, but they soon lost interest when the problems started (and NO ONE there seemed to know anything about how it worked). Libraries weren't much better, I learned a lot about punch cards and batch processing, but they rarely had anything that applied to personal computers. There was a chain bookstore (Coles) that had Compute! magazine and Byte, but not much for books. There was a great independent bookstore (Lotus Books) that would bring in whatever you wanted, but their markup was intense for a kid that only had a small allowance and whatever money I could get mowing lawns. The mid-80's were a bit better. By then there were a few good TV shows (Computer Chronicles) and I had enough money to actually subscribe to a few magazines. We finally got the community college built, so their library had a bit better stuff. There was a great independent computer store named the Soft Spot, which started by selling Commodore computers but would bring in whatever you wanted, really. Spent so much time there, I eventually started looking after the place when the owner had to go out, then I became an official employee. Was the first place I actually touched an Amiga. I didn't even know there was a user group of computers in Cranbrook until about '88. Went to a few meetings, but I was a little underwhelmed, most people just wanted to know how to use their word processors. I'm amazed that I learned as much as I did. I felt like a chicken searching for food on an old, dried up patch of dirt. I figure I'd be a LOT further along if I had lived somewhere more vibrant, like Vancouver or something. As it turned out, people were coming to ME for advice because I knew the difference between a dot matrix printer and a typewriter. Sorry if I missed the point. I was a little overcome with nostalgia from what you wrote, I guess.

Well, I would think that there would have to be. After all, you are seeing fonts on the screen all of the time in CP/M, and they are being generated by the VDP. So...how? Maybe you aren't interfacing with a BIOS like on a PC, but instead speaking directly with the video card (if I can still compare it to a PC). I wish my memory was better. A friend and I hacked an Apple //e with the Microsoft CP/M card in it (using inline assembler in Turbo Pascal), so that we could do simple point plotting using the Apple graphics We were in the middle of writing routines to make squares, circles, etc. when we got too busy with finals, and we never went back to it after high school. I imagine that the Coleco interfaces somewhat in the same way. But that was almost 30 years ago. Sorry I'm not more help. Do you have access to the CP/M source code? You would need to look at how it outputs characters and build up your own libraries.

Hi Paul, Honestly, you'd be best off asking some RadioShack CoCo fans: the 6809 series was used in those. Whoever sells spare parts for it should have something for you.

Any progress on this, Milli? Just remember, I'll help where I can.

I have a brown bottom, too. ...er, I mean my Adam has a brown bottom. Oops!

I don't know where he finds the time. Some days by the time I fire up my emulators I have to go do something else! Milli, you're doing a great job. How's the GUI project coming along?