There’s a problem when you build your own computer and therefore have to write your own operating system. All the things you rely on when coding in other environments – such as maths functions – are not there. You have to write them yourself. The Zolatron 64, like most homebrew computers, is effectively a bare metal project. I’m writing all… Read more »
Let’s be clear about this, I have no idea how you write an operating system. I just know you need to have one. When I first started writing ROM code for the Zolatron 64 (Z64) 6502-based homebrew computer all that really mattered was getting things to work. And I was amazed when they did. I was following in the footsteps… Read more »
There’s no getting away from it. The 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter (VIA) is, well, versatile. Alongside giving you two 8-bit general purpose I/O ports – much like the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi, Arduino and the like – it also has a bunch of handy extra features. These include a shift register and control lines that you can employ… Read more »
With the basic hardware of the Zolatron 64 6502-based homebrew computer working fine, I’ve been spending most of my time on the ROM software. It turns out that writing an operating system in 6502 assembly code is harder than you might think. Well, anyway, it’s harder than I thought. But first… A quick catch-up on the state of play with… Read more »
In an earlier post, I described how I was parsing commands input (via serial) into the Zolatron 64 8-bit homebrew computer in assembly language. That parsing process matched an input command with an internal list and the result was a ‘token’, a single integer value of $80 or more representing that command that is placed in a memory location. Or… Read more »
Okay, so this is going to be a long one. Grab a coffee, settle down and we’ll begin… The last time we talked, I was able to send messages to the Zolatron 64 6502 homebrew computer via its serial port. But all it could do was print those messages to the LCD screen. It’s time to actually do something with… Read more »
One thing it was obvious I would want to do with the Zolatron 64 6502 homebrew computer is have a routine to display the contents of sections of memory – à la Wozmon. There’s a snag, though. The content of any given byte in memory is a number, in the range 0-255. But to display this on the screen, this… Read more »