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ABBUC will publish the most voted article in May 2024 for free.

I will improve the documentation and possibly record a small video on my workflow. I will also create a new version that will work from the command line in SpartaDOS/BEWE-DOS

The ABBUC Freezer is open hardware (and open software), see https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#freezer ABBUC is currently discussing to create another batch of Freezer modules. But that can take some more months (probably 2nd half of 2024). There have been other people building and offering the Freezer in the past, but I'm not aware of recent offerings.

As for development on the A8: I use the ABBUC Freezer to swap three memory setups on the Atari 8bit 1) Text Editor 2) Chip-8 Assembler 3) Chip-8 Emulator I agree it would be nice to have an editor and emulator inside the assembler, as kind of an simple IDE. Is possible, just "work". I'm too busy with running ABBUC to do much coding

I still need to write the 3rd part of the article series -- on how to develop Chip8 with modern (cross-development) tools. Here is my link list from my notes for the 3rd article: c8c - The chip8 compiler, assembler, and virtual machine https://github.com/glouw/c8c A chip8 emulator with an assembly tool-chain and disassembler https://github.com/Pangoraw/chipo Cowgod's Chip-8 Technical Reference v1.0 http://devernay.free.fr/hacks/chip8/C8TECH10.HTM An IDE and Emulator for Chip-8, SuperCHIP, and XO-Chip Programs https://github.com/lesharris/dorito A CHIP-8 variant emulation and development environment https://github.com/gulrak/cadmium A CHIP-8 interpreter, assembler and disassembler in C https://github.com/wernsey/chip8 A Chip8 IDE https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Octo A CHIP-8 interpreter, assembler and disassembler in C (Linux, Windows) https://github.com/wernsey/chip8 CHIP-8 is an assembler, debugger, and emulator https://massung.github.io/CHIP-8/ A C rewrite of the Octo CHIP-8 IDE https://github.com/JohnEarnest/c-octo Octo and C-Octo might be the best starting point.

Here is the list of topics in the magazine:

Hi, I've written a (quick and dirty) CHIP-8 Assembler for the A8 https://github.com/cstrotm/ch8asm It's the first version, and it has limitations it's currently underdocumented it uses it's own memnonics (postfix notation) not well tested (but it assembles the three test source files contained in the repo) only CHIP-8 commands for now (no SCHIP-8 or other extensions - planned for a later version) should be restarted (reloaded) after one assembly run (it does not reset) It's written on top of VolksForth. I considered C and some of the new languages around, but nothing beats Forth when implementing a simple assembler. It just took 3 hours (one evening) to code. It took more time to debug the CHIP-8 example programs If you have questions or want more features, let me know.

ABBUC has published a special edition of the ABBUC magazine to celebrate the SillyVenture SE 2023 Demo Party in GDansk in August 2023. This special edition contains English translations of selected articles from ABBUC magazines issues 151/152/153. Participants of SillyVenture got the printed issue as part of their welcome package. Everyone can now download the free PDF from https://abbuc.de/2023/08/abbuc-magazine-special-edition-for-sillyventure-sommer-2023/ ABBUC Members in Germany will be able to order the printed issue of this magazine (as discussed in the ABBUC Forums), international members can request this issue for no additional cost as part of their next magazine shipment (Magazine 154, containing the hard- and software competition -- please send an E-Mail request to vorstand@abbuc.de). Have fun with this magazine

And here is the German Article: ABBUC_Magazin_153_CHIP-8.pdf

Sorry for the delay, I was on vacation. Please find attached the English version of the article that is in the special edition of ABBUC Magazine for the SillyVenture Party starting in GDansk today. I'm writing on an follow-up article on how to do CHIP-8 Programming. For that, I plan to write a simple CHIP-8 Assembler for the A8, but it will also explain assembler on the PC as well as OCTO. I will also post the original German article here soon. ABBUC_Magazin_Special-Edition-en-SV2023-CHIP-8.pdf

This might be referring to the MIX/MMIX CPU architecture from Knuth: https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMIX

I"m happy to help hacking on the CHIP-8 code, but I also have work and family, and an Atari club to run - so time is in short supply This page: CHIP-8 extensions and compatibility https://chip-8.github.io/extensions/ has a good overview of all CHIP-8 variants and extensions. XO8 would require a fair redesign, as it supports 64KB of RAM (some kind of extended memory paging required), high resolution, multi color and multiple display planes. HC8 is probably "HI-RES CHIP-8 (four-page display)Permalink", which is a variation of SCHIP, that should be possible without too much work. Most CHIP-8 extensions are backwards compatible (like CHIP-8 and SCHIP), so there is no technical need to have an identification.

Hi Andreas, you're going ahead quick. Maybe wait for part 2 of my article series, that will explain the other extenders and if and how they can be done on the A8.

There is a delay loop in the code that can be disabled by pressing the START console key. When pressing START, the interpreter runs at full speed (usually way to fast). There is also a "speed" configuration option for each CHIP-8 program in the CHIP8.CFG textfile.

@pirx Hi Pawel, thank you very much for the CHIP-8 interpreter. I'm currently writing an article on CHIP-8 for the upcoming ABBUC magazine (June 2023). An English translation of the article will be available for free on AtariWiki. I would like to include the CHIP-8 interpreter on the magazine disk, if that is permitted (there is no licensing information on the Github repo). My hope is to spark some interest on CHIP-8 so that more programs are written or adapted for the Atari CHIP-8 interpreter. I'm creating a page in the AtariWiki with information on CHIP-8 and information an all CHIP-8 programs that have been successfully tested on the Atari CHIP-8 interpreter. I've also tried to assemble the CHIP-8 interpreter from source with "omc", but failed (Phase error in "fr55", I've opened in issue on Github). Maybe you have an idea what is causing this issue. A port of the sources to MADS as you hinted in January would be great. Greetings Carsten

I'm sorry I forgot to post the time in my initial post. The time was 20:30 CET (7:30pm UTC), but the registration link only works as long as the meeting has not started. Next meeting in March will be on a Sunday, that will it make easier for people to join with the time colliding with work. I will post the new meeting date soon. There will also be a recording of the presentation of Turbo Rascal, I will post the link here as soon it is available.

Hi, tonight (14. 02. 2022) in the online meeting of the English speaking ABBUC members group I will show "Turbo Rascal Syntax Error (TRSE)", an open source cross-platform IDE with a Pascal-like language, assembler and sound/graphics tools. Homepage https://lemonspawn.com/turbo-rascal-syntax-error-expected-but-begin/ If you want to participate you can register here: https://abbuc.ecosero.de/run/meeting?p_muuid=0978962278161794722833675

Hi, we're (Joachim Bassmann, Thomas "twh" Havemeister, Carsten Strotmann) starting a new "regional ABBUC group" called the "ABBUC group world". ABBUC has "regional groups" where ABBUC and Atari people meet in Germany. As ABBUC get's more and more non-german speaking members, we want to form a new "regional" group called "ABBUC world". Now this is not "regional", in the contrary, but as all other sub-groups inside ABBUC are called "regional groups", we stay with this little BrainF*. It is the group for all non-german-speaking ABBUC members. Meetings will be online, language is English. The first meeting will be 14th February 2022, 19:30 UTC (20:30 CET) Topics: * Charter of ABBUC regional group "world" (what we do) * ABBUC news * English translations of ABBUC magazine * Demo: Turbo Rascal Syntax Error - a new IDE targeting Atari 8bit (among others) * 50 years of Atari - ideas for the big date If you have additional topics, please let us know. To join, please register for this event with the link below https://abbuc.ecosero.de/run/meeting?p_muuid=0978962278161794722833675 Additional discussion can happen also in the ABBUC Forum at https://abbuc.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=423

The Wiki is back online, the investigation found that the application is not vulnerable to the current discussed log4j security issue.

Hi, FYI, the Atariwiki at https://atariwiki.org is currently down due to a security issue with the log4j library used by the Atariwiki software. The admins need to investigate and wait for an update from upstream (the Forum software project). The Wiki will be back online in a few weeks, but it might be after Christmas. Greetings Carsten

I guess the new board might not know about these arrangements. Edit: I've opened a ticket for the ABBUC webserver team

The ABBUC Webpage requires a browser that supports TLS v1.3 encryption. TLS encryption is implemented inside the application (some browser use functions of the operating system and therefore depend on the operating system). Windows XP and Window 7 are "end of life" and have not been update for modern (secure) encryption. The older TLS protocol versions (1.0,1.1,1.2) all have serious security issues. Use Windows XP and Windows 7 in local, closed networks for retro computing pleasure. If you can't upgrade to a modern Windows version, use Linux, BSD or other operating systems that implement TLS v1.3. I plan to create a version of the ABBUC webpage for "retro" machines. It is mainly for older machines (Atari 8bit, Atari ST, Amiga etc). But I guess Windows XP and Windows 7 are also "retro" by now. I can't promise when the "retro" version of the page will be available. It will be "read only" (no posting), it will have minimal theming, no JavaScript, and it cannot contain for technical reasons the "Members only" content. I recommend to not use any outdated operating system and web browser combination on the Internet, it is a thread to your network and to the Internet as a whole.

Next m68k evening chat: Date: Friday 28th of May 2021, 20:30 H CEST (18:30H / 06:30 PM UTC) Information: http://m68k.info In the upcoming m68k chat we will talk to Dr. Volker Barthelmann, developer of the vbcc compiler, vasm assembler and vlink linker. vbcc is a highly optimizing portable and retargetable ISO C compiler. It supports ISO C according to ISO/IEC 9899:1989 and most of ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (C99). vbcc runs on and can produce code for a large number of platforms, such as m68k, Coldfire, PowerPC, 65(C)02, i386 (Linux, NetBSD), VideoCore IV (RasperryPi GPU) and even for the Z-Machine (Infocom Text-Adventure VM). See Volker's homepage http://compilers.de/ for more information on the vbcc compiler.

This might be of interest for 6502 coders as well, as vbcc can target 6502 and the Atari 8bit machines: Next m68k evening chat: Date: Friday 28th of May 2021, 20:30 H CEST (18:30H / 06:30 PM UTC) Information: http://m68k.info In the upcoming m68k chat we will talk to Dr. Volker Barthelmann, developer of the vbcc compiler, vasm assembler and vlink linker. vbcc is a highly optimizing portable and retargetable ISO C compiler. It supports ISO C according to ISO/IEC 9899:1989 and most of ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (C99). vbcc runs on and can produce code for a large number of platforms, such as m68k, Coldfire, PowerPC, 65(C)02, i386 (Linux, NetBSD), VideoCore IV (RasperryPi GPU) and even for the Z-Machine (Infocom Text-Adventure VM). See Volker's homepage http://compilers.de/ for more information.

Hi, the next m68k evening developers chat is tomorrow: Friday 6th November 2020, 19:00 H CET (18:00H / 06:00 PM UTC) Location https://meet.m68k.info/m68k (will be online before the meeting starts) Feature 1: New m68k target in Qemu - Laurent Vivier will talk about the existing QEMU Quadra 800 emulation and the linux-user mode. He will explain what are their limitations are, and then what a pure virtual machine can improve. We will see what the machine can do and how to use it. There will be a little demo. Feature 2: Chroot into m68k - a seamless m68k dev environment on Linux with Qemu This time it is less Atari ST specific, but interesting for m68k developers nonetheless See you there Carsten