stardot.org.uk

I don't know what hardware the BBC B has but on some computer systems you could store data in the serial port FIFO. They sometimes had a 16-entry FIFO and with a simple loop-back cable you could store data when RAM wasn't available. The BBC B has a 6850, and the block diagram suggests there are sep...

I think you've missed out a decimal point. It's widely regarded that about 1.5m were made (from A to Master), based on serial numbers it's estimated about 1m were made https://bbcmicro.computer/how-many-made For some actual vague numbers from Acorn, see https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p...

An additional oddity: the ADC has a spare, unused bit in its status register! Bit 2 can be set (or cleared) as you see fit. D2 flag input during write mode can freely be set or reset without any influence to the A/D converter itself. D2 flag output during status read will have the contents as progra...

I can't think of anything that good, but on a Master (but not a B/B+), could you use &FE30 to store data? I don't know how wide it is, but I suppose it must be at least 4 bits. It's 4 bits, plus bit 7 as well, and read/write on the Master! If your test code is in the $e000-$ffff region, the bot...

I wrote an Atom RAM test with similar goals: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24634 It makes heavy use of macros, indexed addressing and doesn't need any stack/RAM to run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohPfL5uom7g For additional state, it uses: - the VIA ACR to track the three test c...

I've got a dead B+. It doesn't work with my usual diagnostic tool (https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14849), but I got some useful leads thanks to Tricky's test ROM (https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10268#p139467). While waiting for bits to arrive, I also wan...

I wasn't sure that random noise was a usual failure mode for DRAMs, but if you've seen it too, then that's promising! Thanks for the note. I've got a bunch of bits on order now, so I'll get desoldering when they arrive. I'm not looking forward to working around that stupid riser board :lol: - but at...

(A dear diary kind of thing. Any suggestions welcome, but even if nobody has any ideas I'll be poking at this as I get the chance, and updating the thread with any additional info.) I've got a B+128 that suddenly died. It was working fine, and I was testing some ROMs in sideways RAM that I was plann...

For whatever it's worth, the Master reference manual part 1 divides page D up as follows. (I've always treated this as fairly authoritative, since it's comprehensive official documentation produced relatively late in the Beeb's life.) This suggests that for widest compatibility across the whole 8-bi...

That sounds very careless and amateurish of Alligata to obliterate those two bytes! They probably did a *BASIC, or a NEW, or pressed BREAK, or similar, before doing the *SAVE! Superior's Ghouls rerelease suffers from a similar thing. There's an 0D FF making a mess of the level goal sprite. --Tom

I'm having the same problem with a github link but the advice to switch to a URL with raw.githubusercontent.com does not seem to be working for me. The raw.githubusercontent.com thing only seems to work for files in the repo. I never figured out how to get jsbeeb to use a GItHub release asset. For ...

Success for me too, and mostly with only 1 x 10 minute sanitize/erase cycle needed. (I had one attempt at doing 4 at once, but only 1 came out fully blank, and the rest needed another go. 1 EPROM per lamp seemed to work fine.) Is there a recommended distance? I leant the chips right up against the l...

tass64 looks like an interesting alternative. I've not used it myself, but it looks like it has a lot of options judging by the manual: https://tass64.sourceforge.net I've been using this for a few years now, and it's the best! Full of great features. I rambled on about this in another thread the o...

Thanks a lot Tom. I'm trying out Beebasm for now but I will bear this in mind if that doesn't suit my needs. I assume you're a C64 head first and foremost. I've never programmed one of those babies. I've never even owned one. But that needs to change (the programming part at least). And if/when I'm...

It seems to be using very tiny tubes and I confirm it works perfectly. Auto timer for 10 mins - the EPROMs need to be on their side angled towards the tubes which are at either end - I’ll need to make up a holder for them - at present it clears 4 at once in 10 minutes - it’s well made, runs from us...

I actually downloaded that the other day but I haven't tried it yet. I do have a couple of concerns though. BBC syntax and all that is great in a way but I'm not so sure about portability. It would be quite nice to get this game going on a C64 at some point so I'm thinking ahead. Thanks for the inp...

I had a look at the new BASIC Editor and was interested in the Electron version which was a single ROM rather than the original dual ROM for the Electron. I could not find any reference to the function key controls and they were not the same as the original Electron ones. So I have made a function ...

https://github.com/archie456/BBCMicro/raw/06c46534f2548364659185e80a20e3e0252b27c1/CaveGen.ssd For the link to work with jsbeeb, you'll need to use raw.githubusercontent.com. So the link for the disk above would be https://raw.githubusercontent.com/archie456/BBCMicro/06c46534f2548364659185e80a20e3e...

The player moves slightly faster in Chuckie Egg than in Chuckie Egg 2023! Is this expected? Video here: https://youtu.be/dGnjVaX4dXQ

Left is a Master 128 running original (as far as I'm aware) Chuckie Egg. Right is a Master Turbo running Chuckie Egg 2023.

--Tom

Along similar lines: if you have your ssd in a github repo, you can ask jsbeeb to load it directly via its URL. The URL takes the form https://raw.githubusercontent.com/USER-NAME/REPO-NAME/COMMIT-HASH/PATH; pass this in as the &disc URL parameter for the emulator. Here's an example for one of my...

It's more complicated on the Master. The font data is at a documented location ($b900 in ROM 15 - see Master Reference Manual part 1, page E.4-5), but this is not very convenient to access from BASIC. But it's easy enough to use OSBYTE 25: https://beebwiki.mdfs.net/OSBYTE_%2619 (Note that the BeebWi...

I made a separate thread for the new versions: https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28879

--Tom

I've put together some updated versions of the Master MOS, with bug fixes, and code rearrangement to simplify MegaROM setup. For more info about the changes, and download links, see here: https://github.com/tom-seddon/acorn_mos_disassembly/blob/master/docs/refresh.md Getting this working will involv...

There's an EBBS Data ROM in rom8.zip here: https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11795 - contents look like they're the same kind of thing, but that one kind of peters out after +$750 whereas this one here looks like it fills up most of the 8 KB. SpellcheckII looks like somebody's binary...

Slogger don't seem to have been very organised about their versioning, but you can get a ROM identifier kind of thing out of later versions of DDOS by doing *ROMID. Slogger202.rom doesn't respond to *ROMID, so maybe it's too early, but Slogger345.rom reports "3.45 01-02-86 35000". Greg Coo...

I've added some notes about doing a DIY version of MOS 3.50: https://github.com/tom-seddon/acorn_mos_disassembly/blob/wip/master/docs/MOS3.50.DIY.md - this is basically me going through the process of sorting out the setup shown in the screenshot above. I figured maybe having a somewhat worked examp...

james wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2024 5:17 pm I’ll add my thanks. I have your release of 3.20 and 3.50 working smoothly in my Master + ‘Turbo’ CoPro.

Good to hear - thanks for the note!

--Tom

I've been using this on real hardware (inc a proper copro not the pi version) and using the DFS with hibasic table etc, and it works a treat imo, and it's noticeablely faster in booting to hibasic than the original version, I mean, we're only talking half a second rather than a full second, but it'...

I've made a new release, 1.46: https://github.com/tom-seddon/basic_editor/tree/master/releases Not all that much has changed, but it now generates a relocatable ROM for possible use with MOS 3.50. --Tom P.S. the 32 row limit and colour selection issues have not been forgotten... as you can maybe tel...

Finally got round to testing this on real hardware. It needs more than 1 minute of testing, but it does boot, and my relocation bitmap tool seems to have shuffled things around correctly. (This setup has the relocation bitmaps for BASIC, EDIT, and The BASIC Editor in the DFS ROM.) If this seems to ...