Newbie programming questions

[Nick]

Hi all. Finally got a working VIC-20. Last time I programmed a VIC was in the early 80s. That VIC died and I mom replaced it with a C64. That was a LONG time ago!

Now I have another working VIC-20 with a few programming tools: Super Expander (as I recall this SUCKED because it had a "fake" screen resolution of 1024x1024 which resulted in scaling problems -i.e. making an 8x8 grid would yield uneven spaces); one 16K RAM cart and two 8K RAM carts; and (my favorite at the time) Vic-Forth. I have a "dataset" cassete drive and a 1541 (?) disk drive which are both UNTESTED as of yet.

QUESTION 1) What is the best way to use a PC for programming and/or to save my programs? For example, I've read about some special cable I can use to hook my VIC-20 to a PC. Does this really work? Can I use my PC as a disk drive? Can I hook the 1541 to the PC and load my own VIC-20 assembler or basic code onto it?

QUESTION 2) Does anybody know if I can use the (HES) VIC-Forth to make a standalone program? I recall I could not do it back in the day (VIC-Forth had to be plugged in to work). But I was only a kid back then so what did I know?

QUESTION 3) I have a few Atari 2600's that I like to mess with. I bought a cartridge that connects to my PC via the USB port. I simply compile a program on the PC and download it to the FLASH on the special cart via USB and then plug in into the Atari and it works (if programming is correct). Is there such a thing available for the VIC-20? (see vgwiz.com's MaxiCart for more info)

Mainly I'm concerned with question 1 because if I can't read/write programs from a PC then a can't save/share/download/upload programs very easily.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Boray]

QUESTION 1) What is the best way to use a PC for programming and/or to save my programs? For example, I've read about some special cable I can use to hook my VIC-20 to a PC. Does this really work? Can I use my PC as a disk drive? Can I hook the 1541 to the PC and load my own VIC-20 assembler or basic code onto it?

That's entirely up to you. Personally, I like to program on the vic-20 (and store programs on the 1541). But I have also used a PC assember a couple of times. If you program on a PC and use the special graphic symbols, then you will have a problem to find them on the keyboard

There are cables and software for what you describe. There are different cables and the software can usually use a couple of them. 64HDD ( http://www.64hdd.com/ ) lets you use the PC as a diskdrive (or many diskdrives actually). But it only runs under real MS-DOS. You don't need anything extra on the vic-20 side. "Star Commander" lets you use the 1541 with the PC. It's also a DOS program, but runs under windows. That's the the two programs I use (together with a XE cable). There are some others but I let that to somebody else to explain. Here is Star Commander: http://sta.c64.org/ (together with cable building descriptions).

/Anders

[carlsson]

(3) It probably is doable by someone on this forum (or otherwise people from AtariAge have offered to help!), but as far as I know, no standard solution to flash your own VIC cartridges on the fly.

I don't know about HES Forth, but there is some stuff and documentation on the Datatronic implementation:

http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/ ... index.html

I once tried to learn the language, but didn't get very far. I never even considered the option to compile to a standalone binary.