Comments on: Racing the Beam

By: Jimmy Ipock

Jimmy Ipock — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:44:29 +0000

Sometimes I yearn for retro. Not sure why. Lately I’ve been going back through all of the 6502 stuff. Programming just isn’t that fun any more, The gui ruined it for me I think.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:19:28 +0000

Hey Jimmy, glad to see you still around, and glad you are enjoying the book!

Sometimes I think y’alls discussions are more interesting than my posts. I love it!

By: Jimmy Ipock

Jimmy Ipock — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:39:22 +0000

Dave, I’ve seen some pretty amazing tricks on the 64. I’ve done assembler on the 64 and some of the apples. I’ve seen some mode changes done on the fly I’m pretty sure. I think LOGO or PILOT used that method to do graphics on the top 2/3 and commands on the bottom..been a looong time though.

The 2600 uses the 6507 which oddly is sort of a cut down version of the 6502 I think.

If you’re interested in going back to the “olden” days, you might check into this, I’ve built one and its damn cool if I do say so..

http://www.brielcomputers.com/micro-KIM.html

By: Dave Farquhar

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 22:10:40 +0000

I programmed C-64s and 128s in 6502 assembly language in the late 1980s/early 1990s. So when someone asked me in the late 1990s if I could program an Atari 2600, I figured, hey, it’s a 6502 variant, how hard can it be?

The only thing I can compare it to is raster programming on the 64, but it’s harder. The 64’s video hardware was sophisticated enough to tell you what it was drawing at the time; with the 2600, you pretty much had to guess. The 64 is a lot more forgiving to program.

But I’ve often wondered if one could “race the beam” on a 64 to do things like change video modes in the middle of a line, like on the 2600.

By: Jimmy Ipock

Jimmy Ipock — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 06:44:31 +0000

I was once a 65xx developer “back in the day”, I had never heard of this book before your blog. I have it in my hands right now and am enjoying it greatly.