ElEctric_EyE wrote:
I wanted to say something as well when I first read your initial post BigEd. I know emulators like VICE, which can emulate the C64, and I know Mikal Kowalski's assembler for the PC. These are excellent tools for 6502(c) development on the PC. I'm just not sure where to place your development of this PC software you have developed for the 65Org16 core? Forgive my questions please if they're ignorant please.
I don't want to speak for BigEd, but I can use my simulator effort as potentially an example.
I had an itch to dabble with the "low level" coding, and I thought maybe building a classic 8-Bit machine, like a Z80 or 6502, would be interesting. But when I thought it all through, the machine itself didn't interest me as much as trying to write something for one.
So I scratched my itch by writing a 6502 simulator, and, because I was on a Mac, and not happy with what I found, I ended up writing a 6502 assembler as well.
My virtual 6502 machine is little more than a CPU with 64K of RAM and a serial port (I should say "character I/O"). No ROM, no monitor, nothing else. But its enough to get Fig-Forth up and running (I have rudimentary disk I/O working as well).
But it's enough to do 6502 development. To give someone a taste of what it's like to write low level code for these kinds of machines. And at the same time, it's not burdened with assumptions. It's not a C64/Apple/Atari, so all of the zero page is mine to abuse, for example.
By creating a simulator for the 65Org16/32, a simple one that happens to have a console as well as some graphics, it lets someone "taste" the -16/32 CPU. See what it's like. "What would it be like to have a 16b Accumulator?" Get your hands dirty without have to do a lot of work.
So, I think it's exciting in its way. It makes the CPU seem more real, and lets the designers start playing with new instructions, or whatever, "for real", rather than as thought experiments or expensive hardware (time and/or $$$) assignments. Now they can write real code and see how it handles.
Good stuff.