Continuing from Part 1 of my book review, here’s Part 2. 68000 Assembly Language: Techniques for Building Programs (Donald Krantz & James Stanley) This is a software book with about half of the book dedicated to describing the 68000 instruction set architecture and the other half describing a text editor project. If you already have …
The Motorola 68000 family of processors entered the market in 1979. With a 32-bit CISC instruction set and 24-bit address bus, the 68000 was a powerful processor that spawned a long, successful line of microprocessors and microcontrollers. The Freescale Coldfire line is the modern descendent. My interest in the 68000 family started in college, and …
I presented a tutorial introduction at KansasFest 2010 on the Mindcraft Macrosoft programming language, a macro assembler package that allows the programmer to achieve machine language speed with a high-level Applesoft BASIC-like syntax. Macrosoft and its companion Assembler run on you favorite 8-bit Apple II. The presentation was well received, and several people left motivated …
My KansasFest 2010 HackFest entry with source code is now available for your enjoyment. This entry took second place behind Martin’s Wizardy crack. I used Complete Pascal 2.0 with Pegasoft Draw Tools 3.1, both of which are freely available, to create my first 16-bit Apple II program. The program displays pictures from KansasFest and asks related …
There are just so many fabulous things to see and do at KansasFest that Hackfest has not gotten much attention! Where else do you get to see the worst Apple product and a disk operating system almost twice as fast as ProDOS? I want to include full-screen bitmapped images in my entry, and I’m figuring out …
The annual KansasFest HackFest is on! I’ve heard rumors of Wizardy cracking and a Rockhurst text adventure. I’m learning Complete Pascal, learning IIGS toolbox programming, and, just in case I run out of things to do, using those skills to write a graphical Apple II/KFest trivia adventure. I have Complete Pascal running and am ready …
Following the model of Eric Shepherd’s “Some Assembly Required: Hello World” article on A2Central and my last post on the Mindcraft Assembler, I’d like to present the traditional “Hello World” program for 8-bit Apple II using Macrosoft. Macrosoft allows the programmer to achieve machine language speed with a familiar BASIC-like syntax. Technically, Macrosoft is a macro …
Following the model of Eric Shepherd’s “Some Assembly Required: Hello World” article on A2Central, I’d like to present the traditional “Hello World” program for 8-bit Apple II using the Mindcraft Assembler. Slide the Assembler disk into your drive or run the BOOT.SYSTEM program. Press “E” to enter the editor. Press “enter” once to get a “!” …
Continue reading ‘Saying “Hello” with the Mindcraft Assembler’ »
The Apple IIgs is a great platform for software development. Compared to 8-bit Apple II machines, the IIgs offers a faster processor, more memory, higher resolution video, and a more modern desktop graphical user interface (GUI). The operating system, GS/OS, offers features found in modern desktop operating systems, such as a relocating system loader, dynamic …
Continue reading ‘Apple IIgs development with MPW – Setup’ »
BlueBot brought home the Rookie Award! Check out the classy styrene rain jacket, too. A local authority (Peter’s Wife) observes that “Peter’s robot is awesome.” BlueBot did well in the AVC but did not finish. The ‘bot successfully extricated itself from encounters with rocks, sticks, dirt clods, pine needles, and curbs. The wheels, however, ended up …