Posted in 2019
8bitworkshop 3.5.0 Release
- 20 December 2019
8bitworkshop now supports five additional 8-bit platforms!
The Mango One
- 02 September 2019
In 1976, the first 6502-based hobbyist computers were just starting to appear. MOS Technology’s own KIM-1 had a numeric pad and seven-segment display. The competing SYM-1 could draw simple characters on an oscilloscope.
But the real breakthrough would come when the computer could receive input from a full keyboard, and output to a television set. Steve Wozniak demonstrated such a device at Homebrew Computer Club, a 6502-based machine that could drive a 40 column by 24 row character display, and could run Woz’s own Integer BASIC. This device would later be sold as the Apple I.
We’re going to create a similar device in the 8bitworkshop IDE using Verilog.
8bitworkshop 3.4.0 Release
- 09 August 2019
We’ve added yet another platform to the 8bitworkshop IDE, the legendary Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)!
You can program in both C and 6502 assembler, and there are a ton of examples to get you started.
The IDE lets you write C using the cc65 compiler toolchain. While it has lower performance and greater code size than a well-written assembly program, you can still write a pretty good game in C. We use a fork of Shriu’s NESLib library to interface with NES hardware features, and Famitone to play music and sound.
Optimizing C array lookups for the 6502
- 17 March 2019
Most of the platforms in the IDE that are powerful enough to support a C compiler are Z80-based. The Z80 isn’t the easiest target for C, but at least it has a lot of registers.
While the 6502 only has three 8-bit registers, the 6502 has strengths the Z80 doesn’t, as we’ll see here.
Let’s compare the two dominant C compilers for these CPUs.
We’ll compile a function with the CC65 C compiler for the 6502, and then with the SDCC
(Small Device C Compiler) for the Z80.
We’ll call the function getValue():