Commander X16

Well, I still can't get a regular PC parallel port to read the byte through the OS. Tried using an old WinXP laptop with a native parallel port and BIOS that supports bi-directional. Using the Parallel Port Tester software, I do get the STROBE indicator to flash. But that Tester seems to be only old...

Keyboard controlled output to the Data Pins on the UserPort. Kind of an "interactive" version of the typical beginner Arduino project. KEY 1-7 to toggle each of DataPins 1-7 KEY 8 Toggles the current state of all the data pins KEY 9 Turns all Data Pins ON KEY 0 Turns all Data Pins OFF A / ...

C version of the prior ACME code. PRG compiled with cc65. Spams "commander x16" out of the UserPort in a loop. DSView filtered to show the bytes as ASCII. IMG_4277A.jpg NOTE: Updated userport.c (added comments and re-arranged order a little bit, but resulting PRG build is the same) NOTE: N...

Compiled the sample.a using ACME 6502 assembler

Only change was having these two lines at the top
And uncommenting some of the data-direction setup code.

Feeling like a LAPLINK cable to xfer data between these systems is going to be possible.

Hooked the X16 UserPort output up to a logic analyzer. I'm not aware of any ready-made 26-pin to DB25 25-pin adapters, so got one of those green "breakout box" adapter things to wire it up myself. I was messing with LAPLink and FileMaven recently for something else, so got to thinking a si...

Haha! I first experienced that audio on the Tandy 1000SX, never actually had a PCjr. Which yes, those systems had numerous issues- a lousy wireless keyboard, sidecar expansion similar to what the TI-99/4 had already tried earlier, its own proprietary cassette cable and joystick interface. In KQ2, up...

Not really. When was the last time you saw software being offered on disk or CDs? There's just not enough market for it. I wish the "industry" would standardize on a form factor for mounting an SD card-slot at the front of these cases. Like a modern version of a tiny disk drive. Even if t...

Wow, yes, very playable! I've always wondered how the waves of patterns (of opponents) in encoded in these games. I've also wondered how "self demo play" was encoded in these early games (most arcade games had a timeout that would kick off a self-play demo, which I always assumed they just...

Another observation: the score sometimes increments by 5 after just clicking the bottom facing card of a stack (not always; but seems if there are multiple facing cards in the stack it always increments by 5 after just clicking the card).

Example of getting the mouse cursor position, button state, scroll status, and clearing the mouse pointer. I forget how I learned that the current mouse pointer is at VRAM 1,$3000 (I don't see it mentioned in the X16 Tech Ref, similar that the current font is at VRAM 1,$F000; where is this "mem...