Super Expander Japan edition (Vic-1211m)

[cercamon]

Hello,

recently I stumbled upon this cartridge which is slightly different from the one that was sold in Europe and USA, I guess. In particular, I am interested in the additional commands for getting hires graphic screen and plotting and drawing lines. I've found the manual for the Vic-1211a but the keywords are different. I've seen some listings written for the SE JPN and the commands are all different.

Maybe there's a Japanese manual out there in PDF, which would be as useless to me as having none so I'm asking if anyone has a small list of commands with a simple description and the proper syntax. Something I can use as a reference when programming for the SEJPN.

Thank you in advance.

P.S. I love minigrafik. It just works fine but I'd like to immerse myself into the past sometimes and use old tools as they were released.

[MysticSword]

Out of curiosity, I did a bit of searching.
I found something at http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/ ... /tools/4k/;
"vic1211m-SuperExpander.prg
VIC-1211M from Japan. Same as Super Expander, with slightly diff commands.
Starts at $a000."

I downloaded the prg file, but wasn't able to get it to work on vice (I'm assuming it would require the 1211m cartridge for that program to work), but via DIR Master software and CBM prg Studio, I was able to view / import it (as seq file) and it showed some interesting results. From looking at what Dir Master and CMB studio showed, here a list of what I think might be commands that could be used with it:

Code: Select all

sound
texT
ploT
boX
circlE
pa5
setC
tempO
musiC
keY
pianO
locatE
chaR
releasE
pdL
joY
lightX
lightY
po5
fgC
bgC
bdC

~
Maybe that prg would give a demo of the various commands of the 1211m cartridge? I'm not sure.
Some things I can imagine what it might do by the command word, like joy could read joystick input (probably as outlined in the 1211a manual that could be found): http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/ ... -expander/ , bgc might be 'background color', fgc is probably foreground color, bdc probably border color, lightx and lighty might be for reading a light-pen (as I recall, that was one of the things that could be got for the Vic-20, though I never personally had one back in the day when I owned a real Vic-20), pdl for reading paddle controller and so on. Some other things looks like drawing commands, sound commands, the piano command I think was exclusive to the 1211m version (turned the keyboard into a 'piano' of sorts?): viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8962&hilit=1211m#p100463 (there's also some other interesting info in that thread).
Maybe try contacting User ka20 on the forums here and ask if they might have a full scan of the 1211m manual.

Of course without my not having a real Vic-20 or the 1211m cartridge, I'm not able to test or experiment about the commands (perhaps there is a way with VICE emulator, but I don't know enough about it though).

Hope something of all of that helps point you in the right direction or hopefully some others here in the Vic-10 Denial community will have more info or knowledge of it. Good luck!

[Mike]

MysticSword,

Hope something of all of that helps point you in the right direction [...]

sorry, but trying to interpret machine code as BASIC program definitely is not the Right Thing™ to do here.

The people who know their stuff use hex dumps combined with a raw ASCII display for the data portions and a disassembler of any kind to view the code portions. I spent some time doing exactly this to get the Japanese SE working with Programmers' Aid and the IEEE-488 cartridge as has been laid out in the other thread you already linked to. BTW, the dump on zimmers.net originated from that thread.

Edit: As an example of such reverse engineering, here are three screenshots where I analysed the Japanese SE with my own tools (MINIMON and a transient ASCII dump utility). Here's the command list as ASCII dump:



Note the apparent mixed lower-/uppercase is an artifact of the tokenizer using bit 7 in a byte to signify 'end-of-token'. With the uppercase/graphics character set, all commands are simply written in normal, uppercase letters.

Then, a hex dump of the (changed!) vectors of the BASIC interpreter:



The token dispatch routine is vectored through $0308 (this is declarative knowledge taken from a ROM listing). The changed vector points to $A22B. Here's the start of the new token dispatch routine. All token numbers below $CC and above $DA branch to a routine at $A24B which specifically deals with the original BASIC V2 commands. The new commands of Super Expander are handled by the code beginning at $A23C:



... and so on.

P.S. I love minigrafik. It just works fine but I'd like to immerse myself into the past sometimes and use old tools as they were released.

Even if you can't read Japanese, there are some example programs in the manual which you could try out to use, to infer the syntax of the new commands and functions.

All the non-graphics commands of Super Expander can be expressed as standard BASIC V2 statements at negligible cost. Programs written using SE either require the cartridge being inserted beforehand or SE being softloaded. The softloading procedure requires a reset to activate SE. This reset interrupts any automated loading procedure for client programs.

These observations led me to abandon Super Expander for any new programming projects on the VIC-20.

Greetings,

Michael

[cercamon]

Thank you for your prompt reply.

@MysticSword: that prg file is in fact the binary dump of the Vic-1211m, and you can use it with VICE x20 by attaching the prg as a cartridge at $a000 and then reset the emulated Vic. You will also need some expansion memory, say 8k or more, in order to write and run some examples. It's interesting to hex dump the prg to see the list of commands. Meanwhile I've found some documentation but not the whole Japanese manual. If somebody has a copy I'd like to take a look.

@Mike: thanks, your words are always throwing a light of knowledge in the Vic world. I've been using the SE JPN in Vice for a couple of hours testing some little fractal generating programs sent by an acquaintance and so far it looks pretty nice. Having a good list of commands with syntax details could make it even easier to use.

[armypavarmy]

Vic 20 Graphic- Program.zip

(7.72 KiB) Downloaded 270 times

Hello
see if it can be useful to you
I wrote this summary.
greetings Armando

[srowe]

There are some example programs in the VIC-20 Listings collection

http://www.vic20listings.freeolamail.co ... ic_jp.html

[cercamon]

Vic 20 Graphic- Program.zip

Hello
see if it can be useful to you
I wrote this summary.
greetings Armando

Thank you very much, Armando. That's very useful indeed.

[cercamon]

There are some example programs in the VIC-20 Listings collection

http://www.vic20listings.freeolamail.co ... ic_jp.html

Thank you, I'll take a look and study some the listings to learn the syntax of the additional commands.