Back Online

[Hydrophilic]

I'm glad to see Commodore 128 Alive! again.  On a related note, I just got my website up and running again.  No forums, but some things the C128'er might find interesting are:

• BASIC Encyclopedia
• BASIC 7.80 (graphics from BASIC now operate on 80-column)
• SAM 128 (speech synthesizer)

[RobertB]

• BASIC 7.80 (graphics from BASIC now operate on 80-column)

On a side note, the January 2026 of the new Compute!'s Gazette magazine has a review and comparison of several BASIC enhancements for the C64.

Hmm, how many were there for the C128? 
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

[BigDumbDinosaur]

I'm glad to see Commodore 128 Alive! again.  On a related note, I just got my website up and running again.  No forums, but some things the C128'er might find interesting are:

• BASIC Encyclopedia
• BASIC 7.80 (graphics from BASIC now operate on 80-column)
• SAM 128 (speech synthesizer)

BASIC 7.80 looks interesting.  A couple of notes:

• "Multi-color bitmap modes. The VDC can not display 4 colors in a single cell. You might be able to emulate this with interlace mode."

  I recall BASIC 8 used dithering to simulate multi-color.  Might be a possibility here, although likely complicated to implement.  

• "Split-screen modes.  The VDC does not have a raster interrupt.  Should be possible with synchronized CIA interrupt."

   The problem with doing that is CIA timers are run by the ~1 MHz I/O clock, which cannot be evenly divided  to match either of the two possible VDC scan rates.  So it would not be possible to generate evenly-spaced timer IRQs that follow the VDC scan rate.  You'd have to configure the VIC to raster interrupt at the desired time, as well as the usual time, and wedge into the IRQ handler to trap the mid-screen interrupt.  That, however, poses a synchronization issue, since the VDC dot clock is not related to the VIC's clock.  While I may be wrong, I'm not seeing a workable solution for this.[/list]

[BigDumbDinosaur]

• BASIC 7.80 (graphics from BASIC now operate on 80-column)

On a side note, the January 2026 of the new Compute!'s Gazette magazine has a review and comparison of several BASIC enhancements for the C64.

Hmm, how many were there for the C128? 

Other than BASIC 8, I can't think of any.

[RobertB]

Ah-ha!  By looking at https://telarity.com/~dan/cbm/languages.html , I also see MetaBASIC-128 and VDC BASIC, both for the C128.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

[Hydrophilic]

My BASIC 7.80 offers two color modes for 80-column users.  The first is pure monochrome mode.  All pixels of the bitmap are restricted to one of two colors  -- there are no color cells.  The second is color mode where each 8x8 cell can have it's own definition of colors for the 0 and 1 bits/pixels.  This is equivalent to the VIC/40-Column "high res" mode.  My BASIC 7.80 does not even attempt to emulate VIC/40-Column "multi-color" mode...
That would be a neat trick and only feasible (IMHO) using interlaced video.  In any case, monochrome BASIC 7.80 is available to everybody; the color BASIC 7.80 needs a C128 with a full 64K of VRAM.

Thanks RobertB for the link -- now I have to look into MetaBASIC-128 and VDC BASIC to see how they compare with my BASIC 7.80

[Edit]
As far as I can tell MetaBASIC-128 just adds debugging features.  Based on description -- no download found to try.
VDC BASIC is interesting.  It add commands to BASIC to allow one to access VDC registers or VRAM directly -- no more cryptic POKEs and SYSs.  But as far as I can tell it doesn't do any "high-level" stuff like bitmap graphics.

I could swear I saw a mention -- somewhere -- about a soft-sprite implementation for the VDC.  Does anybody know anything about this?
[/Edit]

[RobertB]

As far as I can tell MetaBASIC-128 just adds debugging features.  Based on description -- no download found to try.

Heh, there is the type-in listing from Compute!'s Gazette at

https://archive.org/details/1987-02-computegazette/page/102/mode/2up



Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan
April 25-26 Commodore Los Angeles Super Show 2026 - http://www.portcommodore.com/class