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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
reviving the real thing
just heard that the atarians have a solution to control their machines fully from a pc: disks/keyboard/joystick/etc. I find that approach extremely useful and cool :) maybe it will be possible with 1541ultimate? |
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JackAsser
Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 2014 |
Quote: just heard that the atarians have a solution to control their machines fully from a pc: disks/keyboard/joystick/etc. I find that approach extremely useful and cool :) maybe it will be possible with 1541ultimate?
I bought and constructed HW to control the keyboard from PC, but never bothered coding the PIC.. ;D I also bought a tv-card to grab the output. My intention was to integrate a real C64 into a PC so that I could run the real thing inside a window. But then I got bored and codenet came so.... |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
maybe through the usb port you could controll everything, together with a small asm client on the c64 side? the major difference to codenet, that now you can assemble whole disksides on pc and test on the real thing like a breeze. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
you can do something like this.... with PDS, from 20 years ago :) or any other of the various solutions =P
(really, what exactly do you want to do?) |
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Burglar
Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1085 |
kinda hard to do that with a 1541u, as you cant connect to it from PC over network or anything.... |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
control what disk image is seen by the c64 in u1541, control the keyboard/joy of the c64 from pc, reset the c64 from pc. using the c64 as an "emulator" from pc, or kind of using the c64 as whats VNC is supposed to do :) so you can spare having two keyboards, maybe even two display (see jackasser's comment) |
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Devia
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 401 |
A bit hard to command the c64 to reset remotely with no regard to its current state.. That would require some MCU, an ethernet chip or similar connectivity device, a bit of wiring and a bit of coding.
Like JackAsser I also once started making some shit based on a PIC and an EDTP ethernet board.. but got bored as I got rr-net and later codenet ;-)
With codenet you can just set up an NMI rout that does something like:
lda #$37
sta $01
lda #$18 ;Select Bank 3
sta $de00 ;in the Retro Replay
jsr $ff81
jmp $9800 ;Jump to CodeNet
..and handle the interrupt to fit your needs, and you'll be back at CodeNet ready for your next piece of code at the touch of RESTORE
Maybe if the 1541u ever gets open-sourced you could modify it to fit your remote control needs.. That remains to be seen, I guess. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
Quote:
control what disk image is seen by the c64 in u1541, control the keyboard/joy of the c64 from pc, reset the c64 from pc. using the c64 as an "emulator" from pc, or kind of using the c64 as whats VNC is supposed to do :) so you can spare having two keyboards, maybe even two display (see jackasser's comment)
that'd require quite some hardware effort ... (and some things, like keeping the whole machine in a freeze state still wouldnt work, making things like single-stepping impossible)
to achive something like that, using a reimplementation in fpga is a much better idea, imho (and peters core is coming to a state where it beats accuracy of all existing emus...so its not that far fetched either).
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
you're totally (and intentionally) missing the point. I did write emulator with quotation marks with a reason. everyone understood what this would be about except you (deliberately I guess), asking for even more descriptions, finally finding the word "emulator", and taking it literally for some nitpicking.
also adding some stupid boasting that this was done already 20 years ago and there are various solutions. show me the various solutions where you can swap disk images in a virtual drive which works 99% like the original + keyboard + joy control. bullshit. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
i totally understand what you want, and all i am saying is that it would require a quite massive hardware effort (interface to various places on the c64 board, usb to controll it all etc) - and it would STILL be missing a lot of the features that you can see in "real" hardware based development kits. for example to make this somewhat useful you would need all the mentioned interfacing for the diskdrive as well. you would need a lot of logic and effort to sync the whole bunch.
unless ofcourse, you dont care for features like proper freezing or singlestepping - but then the whole thing sounds even less useful to me. if all you want is a c64 inside the pc, with no further advantages - go ahead, you can probably built this in an evening or two using an avr or whatever you favor. |
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hollowman
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 474 |
What good for development is swapping disk image remotely if you cant change the content of the image remotely? |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
i guess one implies the other, no? |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
Groepaz, I dont think when one wants to control a c64&a virtual drive remotely with a pc, it is crucial to implement a singlestepping debug mode aswell to have it "somewhat useful".
Being able to feed the real thing with disk images, with a few clicks downloaded from the internet, 3 seconds before, is useful enough for me already. |
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hollowman
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 474 |
Quoting Groepaz
i guess one implies the other, no?
Ah, its another "everyone understood what this would be about except you"-things again. Very well then ;) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
Quote:
Groepaz, I dont think when one wants to control a c64&a virtual drive remotely with a pc, it is crucial to implement a singlestepping debug mode aswell to have it "somewhat useful".
well for me, it would be. i dont see moving my c64 from one box into the other as an improvement. (unless it'd mean moving it into my laptop case =P)
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
indeed, what I am proposing here is to move the c64 from one box into another. mission accomplished: thread destroyed. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351 |
whatever suits your trolling needs.... |
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Devia
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 401 |
Having the 1541u + rr-net connected at the same time, you could in theory create a new CodeNet that would allow you to transfer both code to the c64 as well as disk images to the 1541u.. - and since the reset and freeze buttons on 1541u are both routed through the FPGA as I have understood it, an option for software initiated hardware reset could be implemented if the author can be persuaded. This along with an option for UltiMax mode bootup would yield some pretty interesting possibilities I guess.
Of course this is all speculation and the 1541u doesn't currently carry any of these features as I have understood it.
Maybe even some pseudo sort-of singlestepping could be implemented this way by saving stuff/resetting/ultimax booting/loading stuff/executing/re-entering singlestep freeze mode.. a bit cumbersome, but theoretically doable, unless I'm overlooking something ;-) ..hmm it would probably not yield any better results than simple breakpoint-style stepping, though ;-)
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