SmartBASIC -> CV Games

[Inky]

Is there any sort of program that could assemble games written in Smartbasic on the ADAM, and put them in a rom form that could be played on a ColecoVision?

[Pixelboy]

Nope. SmartBasic programs require SmartBasic to be resident in memory in order to run said programs. With only 1K of RAM, the ColecoVision is ill-equipped to support both the SmartBasic interpreter and any program written in that language.

[Inky]

Nope. SmartBasic programs require SmartBasic to be resident in memory in order to run said programs. With only 1K of RAM, the ColecoVision is ill-equipped to support both the SmartBasic interpreter and any program written in that language.

 

BUt isn't there a disassembler that could put it in pure machine language, readable by the CV?

[Pixelboy]

Nope. SmartBasic programs require SmartBasic to be resident in memory in order to run said programs. With only 1K of RAM, the ColecoVision is ill-equipped to support both the SmartBasic interpreter and any program written in that language.

BUt isn't there a disassembler that could put it in pure machine language, readable by the CV?

SmartBasic programs are essentially texts that are interpreted by an executable interpreter (namely the SmartBasic program itself), they are not assembled machine code that could be disassembled into pure machine language.

 

One thing that could be done is to write a compiler/linker that could compile SmartBasic source code, but even that wouldn't work because of the special graphic modes available on the Adam computer (which combine weird pixel displays with 4 lines of text at the bottom of the screen) that are not natively supported by the ColecoVision graphic chip.

 

If you want to write your own programs and compile them into a ROM, it's much easier to just learn C language and try the Coleco libraries. I've done it myself and it's not hard at all, although there's a bit of a learning curve at the beginning and you'll be asking all sorts of basic questions that are not clearly covered in the online docs. But once you get past that stage, the sky's the limit! (Well, actually, 32K is the limit).

Edited January 12, 2009 by Pixelboy

[Kurt_Woloch]

One thing that could be done is to write a compiler/linker that could compile SmartBasic source code, but even that wouldn't work because of the special graphic modes available on the Adam computer (which combine weird pixel displays with 4 lines of text at the bottom of the screen) that are not natively supported by the ColecoVision graphic chip.

 

I don't understand that... if the Adam essentially has the same graphics chip as the Colecovision, how can there be graphics modes on the Adam not supported by the Colecovision? (How do these graphics modes work?)

[Pixelboy]

One thing that could be done is to write a compiler/linker that could compile SmartBasic source code, but even that wouldn't work because of the special graphic modes available on the Adam computer (which combine weird pixel displays with 4 lines of text at the bottom of the screen) that are not natively supported by the ColecoVision graphic chip.

I don't understand that... if the Adam essentially has the same graphics chip as the Colecovision, how can there be graphics modes on the Adam not supported by the Colecovision? (How do these graphics modes work?)

I'm not really sure. All I know is that the Adam's low resolution graphic mode offers big pixels (something like the large colored pixels in Cabbage Patch Kid Picture Show) together with 4 lines of text at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps it's a variant of screen mode #1, with pixels actually being regular tiles. This is only offered under SmartBasic, AFAIK.

 

Perhaps someone else here has additional info to share?