It supports MOS 65xx assembler, macros, pseudo commands and has a couple of helpers to load SID and graphics files into memory. KA is still maintained up until today, with regular releases launched every couple of months. We used the Kick Assembler to build the PRG from the source. The code is all annotated, and you can use the issue tracker to ask us questions or make suggestions, we’ll be listening. You can download the source code for it in this repository, change it and run it a real machine or an emulator. Uses raster-based interrupts, perfectly timed.It makes use of the VIC-II graphics, character ROM and sprites.It was coded entirely in 6510 assembly.This is especially important in a time when we’re flooded with hundreds of high-level frameworks that just “do the job.” Until they don’t. The High Voltage SID Collection has more than 50,000 songs archived and growing.Īt Bright Pixel, we like to go low-level, and we think that understanding how things work down there, even if we’re talking about a 40 years old machine, is enriching, helps us become better computer engineers and better problem solvers. The SID sound chip was so revolutionary that it still drives a community of chiptune artists all over the world. There are vast groups of developers still writing C64 games and demos, restoring and using old machines, or using emulators. What ended up being written for the C64 by the fervent community of developers all over the world went way beyond the imagination of Jack Tramiel. Because of the way all this hardware was packed together, handling the machine meant knowing its memory map and registers by heart, and dominating quite a collection of tricks, some of which weren’t documented at all. Programming the C64 was more than a lot of fun, it was a form of art. This was impressive in the 80s, for a relatevily cheap mass-market personal computer. Chips would have to be turned on or off, or instructed to look for data at specific RAM/ROM locations all the time to make the most of the machine as a whole. For instance the $D000-$DFFF block could be used for RAM, I/O or access to Character ROM, by the CPU, depending on a $0001 setting. ![]() To cope with all these chips inside 64Kbytes of addressable memory, the C64 had something called memory overlay, in which different chips would access different physical data locations for the same memory address. The CPU and the other chips also shared common data and memory BUSes. For instance, the VIC-II could generate interrupts on automatic sprite collisions. ![]() These chips were not only powerful for the time, but they could perform their tasks autonomously, independently of what the main CPU, a MOS technology 6510 microprocessor, was doing. Unlike most of the others, the C64 had dedicated advanced MOS chips for graphics and sprites (the VIC-II), sound (the SID), I/O (the CIA), and many others. Its hardware and architecture set it appart from other 8-bit personal computers at the time. ![]() The C64 was a famous 8-bit machine in the 80s and the highest-selling single computer model ever. This is a pure 6510 assembly program for the Commodore 64 made by Bright Pixel in 2019, because why not.
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