New C64 emulator for A8

[drpeter]

2 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

It actually worked to the C64's advantage, no one was interested in BASIC

? COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2- so bad, it's good ?

 

You may have a point there...

[Mazzspeed]

Just now, drpeter said:

? COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2- so bad, it's good ?

 

You may have a point there...

It actually wasn't that bad. It's one advantage is it was fairly fast in comparison to other basic interpreter's.

[drpeter]

3 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

It actually wasn't that bad. It's one advantage is it was fairly fast in comparison to other basic interpreter's.

 

OK, OK.  It was both good and bad at the same time ?  Like pretty much every BASIC. And every 8-bit machine.

Edited August 18, 2021 by drpeter

[Mazzspeed]

Just now, drpeter said:

 

OK, OK.  It was both good and bad at the same time ?  Like pretty much every BASIC.

I think the worst basic I ever used was Amiga basic...

 

[drpeter]

To get colours in PAL similar to C64 original, try:

 

POKE 53272,100

POKE 53274,106

 

(N.B. the usual shadow colour registers 704-712 don't work as there is no 'AtariOS' VBI to write them to the hardware registers)

Edited August 18, 2021 by drpeter

[drpeter]

38 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

I think the worst basic I ever used was Amiga basic...

Never suffered that....

 

Worst BASIC I ever used.... that's a tough one ? ?

[+skr]

18 hours ago, Sugarland said:

Awesome. Would be fun to have this as a .ROM for U1MB please. 

My heart shouts: NO WAY! ?

[Mazzspeed]

19 minutes ago, drpeter said:

Never suffered that....

 

Worst BASIC I ever used.... that's a tough one ? ?

It was all of them! BASIC wasn't the best language, especially interpreted BASIC. Even on my A8, I think I've only used it a handful of times.

 

This tech concept is sort of like wine under x86/64, the CPU is the same, you just redirect kernel calls. The problem is that unlike x86/64, it's only the CPU that uses the same instructions, the rest of the architecture is vastly different.

 

I find it cool, but I can't really see the point TBH. I see plenty of value in retro hardware, with new software being release all the time, not to mention the enjoyment of being able to do all the things I loved in the day. I just can't see the emulation of retro hardware on retro hardware serving much of a purpose, especially when it's unlikely the important aspects are going to be resolved by redirecting kernel calls.

 

I will say, it looks pretty damn convincing.

[carlsson]

As mentioned by the author, the inspiration was when The 8-bit Guy adapted Apple Integer (?) BASIC to run on a C64, which caused him to think that C64 BASIC probably could be made to run on Atari too.

 

If he gets load and save to operate, it could be a fun challenge to make a qualified program in this environment. See how much of Atari 8-bit features you really can access in an effective way from this alien environment. Or like I commented on Twitter: "It's C64 Jim, but not as we know it".

[drpeter]

9 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

BASIC wasn't the best language

Well... there's no best language like there's no best car.

 

In both cases, depends on your skills, experience, environment and what you want to use it for.

 

Formula 1 car.... amazing.... yet most drivers wouldn't easily be able to get it out of the garage, even in the unlikely event they had somewhere they could drive it to. And nowhere to put the dog, your coffee cup or your shopping...

 

BASIC I reckon sort of does pretty well what it says on the tin- Beginners, All-Purpose...

Edited August 18, 2021 by drpeter

[youxia]

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

It actually worked to the C64's advantage, no one was interested in BASIC, it was all assembly

I don't want to rehash that old argument about C64's BASIC, since this machine's fans will always manage to rationalize it away, but on the whole this statement isn't really true either. BASIC was very important as an educational and introductory tool, used to entice people to jump into the world of microcomputing in general. It was great to learn some simple commands and see immediate effects, and then move onto writing simple programs which actually did something. If I (and many others)  were thrown straight away into the assembler deep water, we would have never bothered and just play games.

 

Of course, assembler was much better for writing commercial programs, that goes without saying, but it's not really the point here. The clue is in the name of the tool after all.

[carlsson]

Look at the yearly BASIC10Liners contest and be amazed what you can cram into 10 lines of either 80, 120 or 256 characters of mostly pure BASIC.

[StickJock]

44 minutes ago, drpeter said:

Well... there's no best language like there's no best car.

[Sugarland]

6 hours ago, skr said:

My heart shouts: NO WAY! ?

Would be great to prank a C64 user with a power-on C64 basic screen. ?

[+CharlieChaplin]

16 minutes ago, Sugarland said:

Would be great to prank a C64 user with a power-on C64 basic screen. ?

 

You only want a prank? Try this...

 

C64GAG.xex

[Mazzspeed]

8 hours ago, youxia said:

I don't want to rehash that old argument about C64's BASIC, since this machine's fans will always manage to rationalize it away, but on the whole this statement isn't really true either. BASIC was very important as an educational and introductory tool, used to entice people to jump into the world of microcomputing in general. It was great to learn some simple commands and see immediate effects, and then move onto writing simple programs which actually did something. If I (and many others)  were thrown straight away into the assembler deep water, we would have never bothered and just play games.

 

Of course, assembler was much better for writing commercial programs, that goes without saying, but it's not really the point here. The clue is in the name of the tool after all.

I remember the first time I wrote a simple program in assembly to rotate the color of the screen, it wasn't just faster, it was staggeringly faster - And as a language it made sense. What you believe to be rationalization works both ways and yes, BASIC was designed as a programming language for the masses, but that era didn't last long before people simply started using proprietary software to achieve their tasks. As school kids, we were also taught 6502 assembly language.

 

As stated, this is an interesting proof of concept, but I don't see it as much more than that. You'd mainly use it to see the reaction on people's faces.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[_The Doctor__]

heh that's what they said when david small made the magic sac and don't tell that to Darek Mihocka either... put a sid emulation, slight sid, pokeymax sid core or whatever crap can't be emulated and vectored by the Atari on a cart/eci/pbi device and I won't have to drag my 128 out to muck about anymore... lolzors funny stuff... could prolly do a complete personality change..

Edited August 18, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[drpeter]

2 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

And as a language it made sense.

Hmmm.

 

10 PRINT "Hello World!"

 

vs

 

05     .OPT OBJ
10     *= $0600
0100 ; CIO
0110 ICHID = $0340 ;IOCB 0 S:
0120 ICCOM = $0342 ;IOCB Command
0130 ICBAL = $0344 ;Xfer Buffer Adr
0140 ICBAH = $0345
0150 ICPTL = $0346 ;PutByte Adr
0160 ICPTH = $0347
0170 ICBLL = $0348 ;Buffer Len
0180 ICBLH = $0349
0190 CIOV = $E456 ; CIO Vector
0500 ; Setup CIO Call
0510     LDX #0 ;IOCB 0
0520     LDA #9 ;Put Cmd Val
0530     STA ICCOM,X ;Set it as the cmd
0540     LDA #HELLO&255 ;Str low byte
0550     STA ICBAL,X
0560     LDA #HELLO/256 ;Str high byte
0570     STA ICBAH,X
0580     LDA #0 ;Str Len low byte
0590     STA ICBLL,X
0600     LDA #$FF ;Str Len high byte
0610     STA ICBLH,X
0620 ; Call CIO
0630     JSR CIOV
0640     RTS 
1000 HELLO .BYTE "Hello World!",$9B

[Mazzspeed]

1 minute ago, drpeter said:

Hmmm.

 

10 PRINT "Hello World!"

 

vs

 

05     .OPT OBJ
10     *= $0600
0100 ; CIO
0110 ICHID = $0340 ;IOCB 0 S:
0120 ICCOM = $0342 ;IOCB Command
0130 ICBAL = $0344 ;Xfer Buffer Adr
0140 ICBAH = $0345
0150 ICPTL = $0346 ;PutByte Adr
0160 ICPTH = $0347
0170 ICBLL = $0348 ;Buffer Len
0180 ICBLH = $0349
0190 CIOV = $E456 ; CIO Vector
0500 ; Setup CIO Call
0510     LDX #0 ;IOCB 0
0520     LDA #9 ;Put Cmd Val
0530     STA ICCOM,X ;Set it as the cmd
0540     LDA #HELLO&255 ;Str low byte
0550     STA ICBAL,X
0560     LDA #HELLO/256 ;Str high byte
0570     STA ICBAH,X
0580     LDA #0 ;Str Len low byte
0590     STA ICBLL,X
0600     LDA #$FF ;Str Len high byte
0610     STA ICBLH,X
0620 ; Call CIO
0630     JSR CIOV
0640     RTS 
1000 HELLO .BYTE "Hello World!",$9B

As you stated I suppose, there's no best language like there's no best car?

[drpeter]

2 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

As stated, this is an interesting proof of concept, but I don't see it as much more than that. You'd mainly use it to see the reaction on people's faces.

 

Indeed. There's probably not much real incentive to run Commodore BASIC on an Atari other than the novelty factor. There are numerous faster BASICs more suited to the platform.

 

As stated above, being able to run an Atari dialect of BBC BASIC might be a different matter...

[Mazzspeed]

Just now, drpeter said:

 

Indeed. There's probably not much real incentive to run Commodore BASIC on an Atari other than the novelty factor. There are numerous faster BASICs more suited to the platform.

 

As stated above, being able to run an Atari dialect of BBC BASIC might be a different matter...

Actually, BBC BASIC was probably the best implementation of BASIC I've ever seen. Even Commodore users don't use CBM BASIC V2 anymore, there's many more suitable options out there nowadays - As stated, the only time you use it is for quick and dirty test programs.

[carlsson]

Btw, as expected this program works like it should:

 

10 A$="ATARI RULES"+CHR$(0)

20 FORI=1TOLEN(A$):POKE678+I,ASC(MID$(A$,I)):NEXT
30 POKE780,167:POKE782,2:SYS43806

 

$AB1E is a routine that prints a zero terminated string (up to 255 characters IIRC) pointed by A/Y (low/high), similar to the CIOV routine mentioned above but one where you don't have to set string length.

Edited August 19, 2021 by carlsson

[Rybags]

I'd assume just about everything should work except colour Ram, sprites, sound and external I/O.

 

Colour Ram - would be fairly trivial with VBXE to blit/translate and provide.

Other graphics modes - for the most part these could be done but a stopping point is if they want to occupy RAM that's in use by the C64 Basic or OS.

Sprites - this is something that's not so simple.  VBXE blitted sprites are either 8bpp or 4bpp in the 640 mode.  The problem here is that there's not really an easy way to translate 1bpp and 2bpp into the other forms.

[carlsson]

Custom characters is easy as long as you redefine the "ROM" font, but if your program tries to put a font elsewhere in memory and change the pointer at 53272, it won't work because those are Atari registers, not VIC-II registers. So when it comes to graphics, it would seem to me that anything that only uses monochrome PETSCII works at the moment, which is also what you can expect from a BASIC + Kernel environment not specifically intended to be a full emulation.

[sack-c0s]

21 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

The C64 also has color memory that runs from a fixed address at $D800 via it's own bus direct to the VIC-II.

 

This is a cool tech concept, but I sort of can't see the point. It's naturally going to be fairly limiting beyond anything very basic.

The idea is fine - the big pain in the ass is that it's only a single buffer so you can double-buffer the character map but when it comes to time to flip the buffers you still need to race the beam to update the colourRAM.

You were so close, commodore....