20 min
robotfindskitten, part 1 Dan’s MEGA65 Digest Podcast
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- Tecnología
A new month, a new feature, a new game, a new demo, and a coding exercise that really brings the room together. Let’s dig in!
Available to test: New keyboard scanner
We’re getting closer to having a complete release candidate, with features being finalized and bug fixes piling in. There’s one new feature that’s near and dear to my heart, and I’m thrilled to be able to share it with anyone up for early beta testing.
The very first thing I noticed when I got my MEGA65 is how the typing experience felt nostalgic. Even with the new mechanical key switches and the 40 MHz CPU, the ability for the computer to recognize key presses felt exactly like a Commodore 64 did back in the day: sluggish and imprecise. I like nostalgia as much as anybody, but I type much faster today than I did when I was nine years old. I wished my MEGA65 could handle fast typing more like a modern computer, so I could enjoy on-device composition without slowing myself down. It was one of the first feature requests that I filed with the MEGA65 team.
Paul and company started working on an idea for fast typing, and an early version of the chipset support required made it into the core last year. The feature wasn’t wired up to the KERNAL ROM, and only a few built-in applications used it. I brought it up again with the team this summer, and we had many design discussions and tried several ideas. I learned a bit of FPGA coding, and even built a high-speed Linux PC just to build and test new cores and ROMs.
I’m proud to present the all-new MEGA65 hardware-accelerated keyboard scanner. Using the latest development core and ROM beta release, you can now enjoy a typing experience that is more accurate and more reliable for fast typists throughout the BASIC screen editor and many applications. These changes will be in the v0.96 release, and you can test it today and file any bugs you find. I also wrote a test plan and detailed description of how it works.
I plastered this all over the instructions, but I'll repeat it here: the latest ROM beta versions (920387 or later) require the latest development core. If you use the newer ROM with an older core, typing won't work. You *can* safely use older ROMs with the newer core, so you can revert to the legacy keyboard scanner at any time if you encounter any issues just by going back to an older ROM (920386 or earlier). Also, the latest ROM betas will not work with the Xemu emulator until emulation for the new core feature has been added (hopefully soon), so stick with 920386 or earlier in Xemu for now.
For me, the difference with the enhanced typing quality is like night and day. On-device programming and other typing applications are much more usable, and I just enjoy using the computer much more, confident that I won’t have to struggle with missed keystrokes. Try it out, and let me know what you think!
Classy, by deathy
Classy, by deathy, is a new match-3 game for the MEGA65. Careful with this one: it’s addictive! A joystick in either port or the keyboard sets you on your tile swapping journey. If the game is still running, it means you still have moves remaining. Keep looking!
MEGApple, by MirageBD
The MEGA65 gets its Bad Apple!!
MEGApple is MirageBD’s MEGA65 version of the popular demo challenge: recreate the shadow-art music video of the Japanese pop song, “Bad Apple!!” The original video was a collaboration of animators on the Japanese website Nico Nico Douga, based on the pop remix by nomico of a track from the video game Touhou Fantasy Land: Lotus Land Story. Over a decade later, it persists as a popular meme to recreate the music video in unusual media, including (but not limited to) retro computers.
To run MEGApple, download and expand the archive, then copy the files to the root of your SD card. Start your MEGA65, then type: MOUNT "MEGAPPLE.D81":RUN "*" The program on the D81 disk image loads the data from the other larger files.
Xevious, new arcade core by muse
muse has a new arcade cabine
A new month, a new feature, a new game, a new demo, and a coding exercise that really brings the room together. Let’s dig in!
Available to test: New keyboard scanner
We’re getting closer to having a complete release candidate, with features being finalized and bug fixes piling in. There’s one new feature that’s near and dear to my heart, and I’m thrilled to be able to share it with anyone up for early beta testing.
The very first thing I noticed when I got my MEGA65 is how the typing experience felt nostalgic. Even with the new mechanical key switches and the 40 MHz CPU, the ability for the computer to recognize key presses felt exactly like a Commodore 64 did back in the day: sluggish and imprecise. I like nostalgia as much as anybody, but I type much faster today than I did when I was nine years old. I wished my MEGA65 could handle fast typing more like a modern computer, so I could enjoy on-device composition without slowing myself down. It was one of the first feature requests that I filed with the MEGA65 team.
Paul and company started working on an idea for fast typing, and an early version of the chipset support required made it into the core last year. The feature wasn’t wired up to the KERNAL ROM, and only a few built-in applications used it. I brought it up again with the team this summer, and we had many design discussions and tried several ideas. I learned a bit of FPGA coding, and even built a high-speed Linux PC just to build and test new cores and ROMs.
I’m proud to present the all-new MEGA65 hardware-accelerated keyboard scanner. Using the latest development core and ROM beta release, you can now enjoy a typing experience that is more accurate and more reliable for fast typists throughout the BASIC screen editor and many applications. These changes will be in the v0.96 release, and you can test it today and file any bugs you find. I also wrote a test plan and detailed description of how it works.
I plastered this all over the instructions, but I'll repeat it here: the latest ROM beta versions (920387 or later) require the latest development core. If you use the newer ROM with an older core, typing won't work. You *can* safely use older ROMs with the newer core, so you can revert to the legacy keyboard scanner at any time if you encounter any issues just by going back to an older ROM (920386 or earlier). Also, the latest ROM betas will not work with the Xemu emulator until emulation for the new core feature has been added (hopefully soon), so stick with 920386 or earlier in Xemu for now.
For me, the difference with the enhanced typing quality is like night and day. On-device programming and other typing applications are much more usable, and I just enjoy using the computer much more, confident that I won’t have to struggle with missed keystrokes. Try it out, and let me know what you think!
Classy, by deathy
Classy, by deathy, is a new match-3 game for the MEGA65. Careful with this one: it’s addictive! A joystick in either port or the keyboard sets you on your tile swapping journey. If the game is still running, it means you still have moves remaining. Keep looking!
MEGApple, by MirageBD
The MEGA65 gets its Bad Apple!!
MEGApple is MirageBD’s MEGA65 version of the popular demo challenge: recreate the shadow-art music video of the Japanese pop song, “Bad Apple!!” The original video was a collaboration of animators on the Japanese website Nico Nico Douga, based on the pop remix by nomico of a track from the video game Touhou Fantasy Land: Lotus Land Story. Over a decade later, it persists as a popular meme to recreate the music video in unusual media, including (but not limited to) retro computers.
To run MEGApple, download and expand the archive, then copy the files to the root of your SD card. Start your MEGA65, then type: MOUNT "MEGAPPLE.D81":RUN "*" The program on the D81 disk image loads the data from the other larger files.
Xevious, new arcade core by muse
muse has a new arcade cabine
20 min