-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 18
Home
This is a more advanced version, save/load works, the NeoBasic is implemented (no sound/graphics yet) and Apple 1 BASIC and Fig FORTH have been removed.
BASIC is booted via 'N' or 800R. There is a short documentation as a pdf/odt file available and some sample code in the samples.
All suggestions are welcome.
Gnu C for the platforms (Linux and x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ cross compiler) Python 3 & PIL/Pillow installed SDL2 development library Pico SDK (to build the firmware)
It is possible to build the emulators only. This requires Python & PIL, and SDL2, but only the build option for the platform in question. This can be started by "make linux" or "make windows" from the root.
There are pre-built emulators for Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows in the zip files. The Linux build requires SDL2.
This has been tested and has held up so far. However, there may well be bugs.
So if you want to type code into the emulator, or the real machine, it's advisable that you save regularly and save to different file names (e.g. myprog.001 myprog.002 etc.) just in case something goes awry. If it does, let me know.
The SDCard seems more robust than the USB Key but my experience is if it works it always works.
If using the emulator be careful of the ESC key (which exits it) and the Function keys, which do debuggery things.
The emulator has a simple 65C02 debugger built in. This can be triggered from code using opcode $03, which causes a break to debugger. The keys are :
ESC Exit emulator
TAB Shows current display when in debug mode
F1 Reset CPU
F5 Run
F6 Break into debugger manually
F7 Step
F8 Step over
F9 Set Breakpoint
0-9A-F Sets the current code address
(with shift pressed sets the current data address)
The emulator has several options on the command line.
"cold" boots BASIC in standard mode, avoiding the monitor
"warm" boots BASIC in warmstart mode, anything in memory will be retained.
"exec" boots BASIC and runs the program in memory.
Program can be loaded into memory using the syntax @
. That address can be "page" which means the address BASIC expects to find the code in.So to load and run a program use the following :
../bin/neo build/basic.bin@800 build/tokenised.dat@page exec
Or in windows
..\bin\neo.exe build\basic.bin@800 build\tokenised.dat@page exec
This (1) starts the emulator (2) loads the BASIC interpreter to $800 (this is normally done by the monitor which is being skipped) (3) loads the tokenised BASIC program to "page" (currently at $3200 but changes over time) (4) sets it to run 'exec'
One can create an example BASIC program from a text equivalent (see the basic/code directory for many examples), this is done with the makebasic.zip program which requires Python 3
Something like
python3 makebasic.zip build/source.txt -obuild/tokenised.dat
this converts the file "source.txt" which is a basic source file in text form, line numbers optional to a tokenised program which can be run as above.
These examples work. Obviously you may want to change file names and directories.
Arch Linux. Sublime Text is the editor, ARM GCC v13.2, Python 3.11.6 with PIL/Pillow installed (does the graphics conversion stuff). 64tass does the 6502 assembly. CMake 3.28.1 Gnu Make 4.4.1 (though it doesn't do anything clever !). Documentation is mostly libreoffice. Hardware is a i5-4690 with 16Gb of RAM, most of the uploading uses a Pico based debugger from "The Pi Hut" which I think is a standard design. A Raspi Keyboard with USB hub, a SanDisk USB3.1 key and Olimex's SDCard device are permanently plugged in. You can't use both at once but they don't seem to upset each other.
*** IMPORTANT ***
If you are using the SD Card storage board made by Olimex, it requires the switches 2-4 on the B boards to be OFF. The board is shipped with all switches set to 'on' (Switch 1 is the on board beeper).
Without this change the SD Card will not work (see the board manual page 12).
Paul Robson. [email protected] 23rd January 2024
Go home