I just came across a post that referred to a Py65 emulator where the author loaded the KIM-1 Monitor and KB9 BASIC into the emulator. Whoa, how cool is that?

So, I found a page for the Py65 emulator but it doesn't mention what platform(s) it runs on and doesn't seem to have installation instructions (that make sense to a Windows user, like me).

Is there a secret society (illuminati, perhaps) that knows how to use Py65?

Cheerful regards, Mike

Hi Mike
I usually run py65 on linux but I have successfully run it on windows.
You should start by installating a python: either cygwin or activestate python. You want a version of python2, not python3.
I should be able to talk you through the steps.
Cheers
Ed

Hi Ed,

Thank you for the kind offer. Installing Python and then PY65 sounds like it might be a lengthy process and I don't want to impose on you, Sir. Perhaps I can find an emulator similar in function and capability to PY65 that uses Java or another language that is already present on my Win 7 laptop?

Cheerful regards, Mike

Hmm, no, should not be lengthy...
Activepython is here http://www.activestate.com/activepython/downloads and is in no way detrimental or dangerous!
According to https://github.com/mnaberez/py65 you then just need to do
> easy_install -U py65

Or, if you specifically choose to install the 32bit version of activestate, you can apparently
> pypm install py65

Of course, many other emulators exist but I'd recommend giving py65 a try first. It's set up for experimentation, rather than for emulating some specific machine.

Cheers
Ed

Hey Ed. I appreciate the personal help but the more I look at these programs (PY65 and SyMon) the more I realize I don't have the skill set to work with them, yet. For example, the directions provided for Py65 don't seem to be complete. That is, they don't tell me how to actually launch or get into the program.

I think I better pass on this for now. I appreciate your willingness to help and I apologize for taking so much of your time.

Cheerful regards, Mike

Hi Mike
I appreciate it might not be the right solution for you - although I haven't given up on you - but for the record here's what I did.

On Windows, use Windows+R to get the Run dialog (or use the Start Menu) and run "cmd" to get a command window. You need a DOS prompt - so whichever way works for you. It might be that you run "command".

If you've successfully installed ActiveState python, you can do
(that's a capital V) and you'll see something like


If you have the right privileges, you can do

and it will fetch and install py65. If you don't have the privileges, you might need to login as a different account, or try


If you get no errors, you should then be able to

and you'll see the py65 monitor command line:

or indeed

and see the help:


(For anyone on linux: same process, but install with "sudo easy_install py65")

From the py65 monitor prompt, there's a help command:


Hope this helps
Ed

(Edit: I see instructions for installing have already been posted above.)

It's written in Python, which means it runs on just about anything. Mac OS X and most Linux variants have Python out of the box, for example, it's the default language of the Raspberry Pi (BTW, I'm still somewhat in shock how many of the tools mentioned here are Windows only, I'd expected this to be more of a Linux crowd). If you haven't tried it, Python is a fun language that is very easy to get started in once you get past the whitespace thing, and the py65 code is interesting to read for its own sake (lives under /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/py65-0.15-py2.7.egg/py65/ on OS X).

Which is a good thing, because you are right, the documentation is basically non-existant. Digging around in the source, I found some hardwired routines:



There doesn't seem to be a configuration file with an easy way to change this. Also, py65 has the annoying tendency to want to load programs at $0000, which of course is the zero page. To load a ROM image where it belongs, you'll have to do something like



to start the program and then



The first line of 6502 code at e000 then has to be a hack to the jump vectors. The reason for all of this is that py65 is not an emulator in the sense that it pretends to be a SBC, but for experimenting with the 6502 commands. As such, I've found it very useful to just hack in short code snippets for testing through its interactive assembler.

(As an aside about Python, while I was learning the language, I read the "Python Cookbook" (http://www.amazon.com/Python-Cookbook-A ... 0596007973) on Berlin public transport on my way to work. You wouldn't believe the looks I got, though nobody every asked me why I would want to cook snakes. It probably didn't help there is a squirrel on the front cover.)

BTW, you can do
py65mon -r romfile
which will load an image to the top of memory instead of the bottom (which -l does) - this is mainly because I'm lazy and didn't want to write the code to take an address as well as a filename.

You're quite right about the I/O mechanisms being hard-coded and underdocumented. Pull request needed!

Cheers
Ed

Ah, I didn't see that, thanks!

Finally got around to trying this, and somehow, I can't seem to get it to work:



This was after a call with "py65mon -m 65c02 -r sqos.prg". I tested it the hard way (load to e000, use mem to get the address of the reset vector, goto the reset vector), and that works fine, so that's not the problem. Building a 16 kB instead of an 8 kB image doesn't change anything either.

As far as I could trace the Python code so far, the -1 is used as a marker to defer the address processing so that the image can be loaded to the top of memory (last byte in $FFFF). Then something goes wrong -- I'm still working on the "what" -- and the -1 is transfered as the actual address. Not going to be able to much more today (family, Easter, etc), so wanted to document what I found so far.

Ah, you're right. It used to work!

I've pushed a fix to the github version: are you able to install that? There's probably more than one way. It's just a small change to one file: see
https://raw.github.com/mnaberez/py65/f7 ... monitor.py
for the file, and
https://github.com/mnaberez/py65/commit ... c04305958c
for the differences.

Cheers
Ed

I just saved the new version off the webpage to monitor.py. Works perfectly now, thanks for the quick fix!

Great! (and, more importantly, thanks for the bug report!)

I've released a new version (0.16) that includes your fix.

_________________
- Mike Naberezny (mike@naberezny.com) http://6502.org