Denial

The latest version of VBCC now supports the vic20 as a target. see: http://www.compilers.de/vbcc.html Development thread here: http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?t=6100 My own tests on CONNEX indicate its about twice as fast as cc65, see: http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.ph...

Ok, so heres an "improved algorithm" version of CONNEX, in C: (I will add a v20 version later, see below) Download: https://github.com/orac81/miniapples/raw/refs/heads/main/sconnex-latest.zip https://github.com/orac81/miniapples/blob/main/README.md#sdl-connex sconnex-screen-c64.png (c64 co...

Some interesting points/code I was discussing at 6502.org: http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8260 See this thread for hints to get it as fast as possible, even with bit banging: http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7886&hilit=spi+fast&start=0 Now reading that thread i fi...

Yes, and if you have a pi already, the 1541 "hat" is not too expensive. It depends if you are bothered with 64/1541 demo compatibility. Those modern demos/progs should really drop back to slow mode if the right hardware isnt there. Interestingly someone pointed out this hackaday project: h...

Thanks for that, yes I can see devices like the uIEC are the best/ easiest way to replace a 1541, particularly for a c64 where they support many turbo protocols. Some of the other devices ("tapecart" etc) are sold as c64 only although there is probably a way to make them work for the vic20...

I was about to point you to 6502.org, but seeing you already had posted an equivocal inquiry over there and already got some answers there, too, then so be it. An application for that on the VIC-20 would imply - as the posters before me have pointed out already - quite some extra work to not only a...

Thanks for the feedback, some interesting ideas! I should say that I wasn't yet at the point of doing this yet on a Vic, but it was an idea i saw when i had an 8086 laptop with broken hd i/f some time back, its a simple way of making a hard disk that would port between machines. Yes I was aware that...

One interesting idea I saw on old XT PCs was a bit-wiggling interface for using an SD card as an HD drive via the printer port, using only resistors, diodes, transistors and caps, no external "helper" processor. I think the SD card can be accessed this way with a slow processor, whereas us...

hi wim, sorry i didn't reply sooner, i haven't had a chance to look at much v20 stuff recently. Your version is starting to look like one of those 10 line basic compy entries! Having the extensions means fewer line numbers are needed, if you allow for the max 250(ish) byte line length you could get ...

The strategy for finding a computer move is very simple: A loop counts the 3 letters under each ball, the letter with the most balls above is played. The same method could also work by scanning the screen for ball characters. By the way keeping var for lowest/highest ball could speed up those scans....

Thanks for that! That Vic20 version is pretty much unaltered since 1982, so I thought it was a good idea to release it "as is". I know it could be improved. For example, the balls are "dropped" from lowest to highest, so the paths dont interfere with each other, so I kept an arra...

There is a longer writeup somewhere, I did save it.. somewhere.. The rational was that Basic 4 (and kernal) had a lot of bug fixes and improvements (inc important ram vectors for extending basic and adding device drivers via software) so they worked back from that, removing unwanted features (disk c...

I think with apple2 int basic, in 1978 they wanted to move quickly to the "standard" float point ms basic (applesoft basic), and not spend a year or so updating their own basic. Maybe Woz was too busy by then! The problem with austrospeed is probably solvable - the basic stub and library c...

I havent dug deep on atari basic, but (from memory) with petspeed the 32 most common vars and 7 common opcodes are combined for a 1 byte pcode, ie "add var1", etc, but vars beyond have 2byte+ representation, you are not limited to 32 vars. Yes 9k would be too little for a float var 6502 co...

In Basic 4 and VIC Basic you had an Basic Error vector that can be used to add commands to Basic. You're probably confusing that with a common method on the Sinclair machines to add commands. On the CBM, that would actually be the token dispatch vector in ($0308) and the function evaluation vector ...