Quote from: Blacklord on March 05, 2008, 12:43 PM1. One-man development teams.
2. Concept Games.
5. Publishers based in pokey offices above small computer shops in Sheffield.
13. Taking on the role of an inanimate object.
15. Completely random death.
17. Videogame magazine ads with airbrush art.

These are vanishing from mass-market, mainstream gaming, but thankfully, the indie-game market is picking up where the corporate big dogs have left off. One-man development teams? Cave Story. (A damn fine game, too.) Concept games? Passage. Completely random death? La-Mulana. Even airbrush art is getting its representation - witness Capcom's winking homage with the American cover for Megaman 9.

Quote8. Computer music superstars.

This isn't quite true. Game composers vanished from the limelight in the early '90s, but they've fortunately been getting more recognition in recent years (though more with long-time industry pros like Nobuo Uematsu, but then, those are exactly the kind of people who know more about game soundtracks than "fill a CD with generic movie-trailer orchestra.")

Quote4. Blatant copies of best-selling titles.
16. Conspicuous millionaires.

These I will happily bid farewell to. Well, the conspicuous millionaires, at least - unfortunately, carbon-copy games are alive and well, almost moreso than ever.

Yeah. My local recycling center actually has stacks of Wyse terminals; I got a perfectly functional WY-150 for nothing; the only thing I had to shell out for was the keyboard.

Quite cool SCSI, though? Really? Whew.

I'd be open to buying some kind of newly-developed computer system if it were A. inexpensive ($100-300) and B. an interesting design (i.e. something besides the various "let's make a microcontroller act like an old computer" projects.)

Yes, this should work. CGA and the 128's RGBI video are the exact same standard. The organization is a bit different on the computer end of things, but as far as video output goes, they're identical.

Quote from: BigDumbDinosaur on July 29, 2010, 03:22 PMThe extra processing time required to do AND followed by ORA using immediate mode addressing is only two clock cycles, a microsecond in FAST mode.  The bulk of the execution time will be consumed in addressing the VDC.  Let's not encourage any more dubious programming habits by even suggesting blind writes into hardware. 

Oh feh, that's not dubious at all. If you know what value you want in the VDC memory, there's nothing at all suspect about just putting it there. And even in FAST mode, every microsecond counts!

If you look at the documentation for $CDDA in Mapping, it should probably tell you, but I believe it does return in A, and I'd be awfully surprised if it didn't.

Quote from: stiggity on July 27, 2010, 11:51 PMAnd your AND - ORA examples worked, but what would i AND and ORA to get reverse white? i know it has something to do with bit #7 but im unsure as how to manipulate this..

You seem to be kind of overthinking the whole affair. The attribute map is really quite simple: each byte controls one position, the low nybble of that byte controls the color, and the high nybble controls the attributes. If you want to turn a character's reverse mode on, you can use ORA #$40 to make sure that bit 6 (reverse) is set.

Do you understand the correspondence between binary and hexadecimal values, and how Boolean arithmetic works? (i.e. why ORA #$40 turns bit 6 on?) If not, you should take some time out and brush up on that until you really understand it, because it's a major part of programming in assembler.

One other thing: the read-AND-ORA-write approach is good if you're trying to preserve the bits you aren't changing, i.e. if you want to change a character's color without affecting its flags. If, on the other hand, you don't care about those and just want to set it to a value regardless, it'll be much faster to simply load an immediate value (LDA #$4F for reverse white) and store it without bothering with the read-AND-ORA bit.

Yeah, suppose so. The BASIC code was kind of an afterthought, since I didn't expect anybody would be crazy enough to do VDC programming in BASIC in the first place.

You've pretty much got it, I think; the procedure is simply to set the R/W address to $0800 + (screen position) and write a byte with the color in the low nybble and any mode flags (blinking, etc.) in the high nybble. That's pretty much all there is to basic VDC operation; where I never got anywhere with is in setting up non-standard resolutions.

There's a second area analagous to the VIC's color RAM in VDC memory that controls the color of the characters, as well as a few miscellaneous options like blinking; it's located at $0800 in VDC RAM by default, and it's laid out in exact correspondence to the character map. I wrote a (woefully incomplete) VDC tutorial some time ago that explains (among other things) which colors correspond to what values and what the other bits in the attribute map do; you can read what I had of it here.

As LokalHorst said, the VDC doesn't steal cycles from the CPU the way the VIC does, so turning it off won't make the computer any faster. If you need speed on a 128, one thing you can do is to turn on 2MHz mode outside the visible area of the screen; that should make a much bigger difference than turning off either of the video chips would.

Eh, VICE's VDC support is adequate for most VDC software, as long as it doesn't try to push the limits and play around with unconvential settings. Problem is, most of the VDC software worth looking at is the stuff that pushes the limits...

Hmm, I'll have to take a look at that. I do want to finish the VDC documentation I was working on a while back, but I'd need to get my 128 set up again...

Okay, last call! If the rest of this stuff isn't spoken for by next Friday I'm putting it on eBay.

UPDATE: I've sold a few items off this list, but I don't have the space to hang onto this stuff indefinitely. I think I'm going to give it another week or two before I list the remainder on eBay, so if anyone wants any of this, now would be the time. As I said, I am willing to consider lower offers.

Quote from: Hydrophilic on June 07, 2010, 04:30 AMI'm the type who would rather build my own than spend that kind of money.  I'm sure that approach would save several hundred dollars and, more importantly, it would be a great learning experience.

This. I'm sorry, the SCPU is an amazing little device and all, but there's no way it's worth $1500.

Unfortunately, while it functions that way in bitmap mode, there is no way to enable background colors on a cell-by-cell basis in text mode. It's a pretty significant oversight, but by Bil Herd's account the group behind the VDC chip weren't exactly MOS's best and brightest :/

Aww, I know this is going to go way beyond my price range, but...so cool...

Well, as I said, I'm not looking to spend time or money repairing because I already have a 128; in addition, dabone purchased it for a parts machine, so problem solved!

Okay, I picked up a fair load of Commodore stuff recently, and now that I've tested all of it, up it goes! I'm just going to list the items and what I'm asking for them; I might be willing to consider a lower offer if you're buying multiple items, and I can combine shipping if you buy more than one item. (NOTE: I'm also selling it over on AmiBay, so things will go to the first buyer on either thread.)

Hardware
* Commodore 1701 monitor (composite and chroma/luma video input) - $30
* "Breadbox" model C-64 - $30
* Commodore 64-C - $30
* Composite video cable - $5

NOTE: I only have one composite-and-audio video cable to spare. If you buy one of the 64s and not the cable, I'll throw in an RF modulator for TV hookup free of charge.

* 2 brown 1541 drives (pull-down door model) - $20/ea.
* Okimate 120 dot-matrix printer - $15
* Cardco G-Wiz Centronics->serial printer interface - $5

Cartridge software - $5 apiece
* Fastload (Epyx) SOLD
* Super Expander (Commodore) SOLD

* Music Composer (Commodore)
* Visible Solar System (Commodore)

* Centipede (Atari) SOLD
* Clowns (Commodore)
* Defender (Atari)
* Solar Fox (Commodore) SOLD

Disk games - $10 apiece
These games come in their original boxes, with the manuals. The disks were unfortunately stored in a garage and will poop iron oxide on your drive head, but I'm including working copies I made as well as the original disks. Box condition is generally good; there's some creasing along the seams, but for the most part everything looks fine.

* Alien Syndrome (Sega) SOLD
* Out Run (Sega) SOLD
* Spy Vs. Spy I & II (Avantage)
* Super Huey II (Cosmi)

For your consideration, here's a picture of the boxes:
FS: A bunch of C-64 stuff...

Quote from: dabone on May 31, 2010, 02:24 PMSure, shipping is to 37421, cheapest possible shipping please. and is paypal ok?

Left you a PM with the shipping cost. Let me know what your address is and I can get it shipped off sometime this week.

Yeah, it's still up for grabs. The plastic is a bit dingy and dusty,and there's some streaks of something on the surface (not marker, somekind of residue - it was out in a garage when I got it,) but it doesn'tlook like anything Retrobrite and a little TLC can't fix. Structurallyit's in fine condition; the only problem in that respect is that theF3/F4 keycap is missing (but that's not too difficult to replace.)Here's a picture for you to judge:

(A bit large for forum posting, but I wanted to give a good view of the surface.)

If it's what you're looking for, does $15 + S/H sound appropriate?

JiffyDOS accelerates all disk activity; the extra commands are merely provided for convenience.

Yes, I'm in the US, but just to be clear: I'm not really looking to buy a replacement VIC. I already have a working 128, so I'm just going to write this one off and offer it up for parts if anyone wants it.