Heads up that the X16 1000 units has a good chance of happening before the end of this year. It might slip to early next year - but the already-released 100 units has been successful, no show stoppers on the hardware side of things have been reported, and the 1000 units has been funded. So it's definitely a go, just the timing is at least still a couple months out.


Prog8 is proving to be a decent development environment for the system.
More info is here: https://prog8.readthedocs.io/en/latest/


ASMEDIT is an on-system assembler and editor, verified to also be working on the hardware. It uses an older/original "CBM" format of assembler than the more modern .s format. You can certainly develop "from the outside" and transfer code in, but there's been a general goal/desire of being able to develop standalone on the system itself.

More on-system support tools (e.g. X16EDIT, hexEdit, BASIC tokenizer from text files) and tutorials are also available.


Of course the cc65 C compiler works fine for the X16 as well.


Some 3D work has been done, but we're all still curious to see what this system could really do with the 8MHz speed and banked memory (and the new audio/video hardware). Planning on showing a couple new things on the hardware next month at VCF!

While it has an IEC like the C64, one slight negative is the X16 UserPort isn't quite the same as C64. So I've been looking into getting some kind of RS232 or WiModem support going, I think we'll need some new terminal software - could use help on that too.


Anyway, if you haven't caught up with the X16 recently, just a reminder about it !!

It is based on a 65C02 and it has a licensed ROM build of Commodore BASIC, so it starts right up to that - that gives it some familiarity, but it is not a Commodore clone. There is a bit of a learning curve to the VERA and YM hardware, but it's doing great stuff!

https://github.com/x16community/x16-docs
https://www.commanderx16.com/ (forum)
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commander_X16
https://discord.com/invite/nS2PqEC
https://voidstar.blog/using-cc65-c-comp ... nd-wintel/

I've been watching prog8 with interest. It's simple enough that at some point I want to try and write a Prog8 parser that can compile down to a sort of pseudo 65816/6502 assembler. That would make writing programs for the two variants so much easier.

And it's significantly simpler than C++ which is still my (long term) end goal - a good practice step and hopefully useful. My ramblings aside I like the look of Prog8. I find it far more readable than straight assembler.

[EDIT - I should probably have added that I'm also waiting for the X16 to become generally available. I'm just a little too over-committed to be following it closely.]

Yes I thought Prog8 looked interesting. I got a bit confused by the page about adapting it for other systems, but I presume there's nothing stopping us just getting our hands dirty and doing it rather than filling it a form of some kind requesting support.

I see Prog8 is licensed under the GPL 3.0 (with an exception that compiled output can be distributed without restriction) so no problem with anyone adapting for other systems.

Some 3D reference samples are presented in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n_4kE2SPt0


Still working on a RS232 solution - which CBMSTUFF may present some options this weekend. In attempting to replicate the UP9600 work, a couple issues are that the VIA's aren't tied to NMI, and the kernel clock at $A2 isn't available like the C64. Not total showstoppers but will have to work it a different way (the IBM 5150 also had no onboard bitbang, it needed an 8250 assist).
https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1656

Thanks for the update. As I don't have any familiarity with Commodore systems, I think I am missing the point of why, for the serial I/O, it is necessary to try to make this old software-based technique work? It feels like there must be a lot of better and easier options.

1) Mostly just for the challenge of it, showing a kind of "mastery" about the system (in implementing an asynchronous capability to reliably shuffle bits into a byte). Also, the 1980 CoCo1 and even the 1977 PET could do it (at barely 1MHz). The entire concept goes back to the late 1958 SAGE computer doing 110 baud.

2) There is a kind of "purity" about it - of digital data exchange with just 3 wires - and that "out of the box" the system can talk some kind of standardized-ish protocol to other (RS232) systems (even if it's "stupid slow" by todays standards). A CPU by itself doesn't do much, it needs to be supported by some amount of chips and hardware - in this case, it's those onboard VIA's. Everyone with an X16 is going to have that standard set of hardware (yea, Gen2 exceptions, etc; I know), so a solution that doesn't need any expansion cards is what I mean by "out of the box." It's also showing more value for your $300 (or whatever the price ends up being). Of course a NIC based expansion card is going to be available -- at another $30 - $50 -- which will be the solution that makes more sense - but again, just the challenge of it: finding solutions with what you have, not just throwing more hardware resources at it.

3) Older systems - I'm talking 1960s systems or Datapoints, IBM 5100-series, Wang systems, early 1977's systems - they can't be upgraded with a NIC. But many of them can do RS232. So just for the fun of interacting with those systems, where generally they aren't going about 1200 baud anyway.

4) 1200 baud is fast enough to give slew commands to gun turrets, tracking telescopes, "things that swivel" or communicate GPS updates. Less hardware (and power) you need to do that, the better.

Not great reasons, but those are some reasons

Hope it worked out getting bit banged serial running on the J6 jumper, but if I was looking for a "no expansion slot" serial port, I'd look at putting a MAX3100 onto those spare VIA ports for to try to get to somewhere north of 19200.