What’s new and errata

December 31, 2023 – ERRATA #5: Issue #13, pg. 25; the footnote at the bottom mistakenly references the ringing/metallic sound from Bach’s Invention #13 as a Ring Modulator effect when in fact, it is hard SYNCH. You can se this by running the fnx_sid_play in single step or slow mode. See the YouTube series on the Commodore “Christmas Album” for more.

December 26, 2023 – ERRATA #4: Issue #13, pg. 25; the 5th paragraph makes reference to the demo program that is “runable as a .PGX”.

Just prior to posting, it was decided to leverage the SuperBASIC code from Ernesto’s article on pg. 15-22, instead. Please read the comments/description for the file “foenixmas23.zip” for more.

December 26, 2023 – ERRATA #3: (clarification) Issue #13, pg. 22; Ernesto’s article on BMP conversion using SuperBASIC concludes with a few lines of code directing how to load a saved FBMP image into memory and while this is accurate, some clarification is needed.

This command (and the act of turning on bitmap mode and clearing the bitmap screen) DOES NOT address the color palette load. In 99% of the time, the bitmap image that you converted was created with a different drawing program (not a native F256 drawing program) and thus, has a specialized color palette. In fact, if you followed the procedure to create an indexed ‘map’, GIMP (or your tool of choice) analyzed the bitmap image and created the indexed color map based on histogram style data of most used colors. In order to see your FBMP correctly, you need to load it into memory.

SuperBASIC does not have a load method to accomplish this and since color LUTs sit within the $C000-DFFF stack of banks, loading data directly there is complicated. The following will do the trick (be sure to substitute your {filename}):

10000 proc loadpalette()
10010 a$=”{filename}.pal”
10020 try bload a$,$7800 to ec
10030 if ec<>0
10040 print “Error: default palette not found!”:end
10050 endif
10060 ?1=1:for c=0 to 1023:?($D000+c)=?($7800+c):next :?1=0
10070 endproc

December 24, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #13

Full 25 page end-of-year blockbuster posted along with a SuperBASIC example written by Ernesto Contrares (article on BMP conversion), and assembly language example that discusses MicroKernel and DOS, and and interview with Boisy Pitre, author and developer of NitrOS-9 Level 2, ported to the F256 (when strapped with a FNX6809 CPU).

December 16, 2023 – Foenix Rising Issue 12 Supplement

A one-pager entitled “F256 Binary Files & Headers” was published today; an add-on to the main article of issue #F12, this covers a wee bit of Commodore History and a number of examples of code and documentation which will help demystify the self-describing binary and auto-start file formats. This article includes links to some Ernesto Contreras code examples.

December 13, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #F12

After putting the wraps on a significant piece of work concerning MicroKernel and DOS, a decision was made to release issue #12 as a FLASH! article. We will still be publishing a full multi-article issue by Christmas time, but this 8 pager has been published to the Marketplace along with a .zip file containing MicroKernel example code, a .pgx binary, list file output, and an $F2, $56 coded binary.

December 2, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Preview for issue #12

Announce: after 11 months of pushing out single-issue dev focused articles, we are planning on ending the year with a full, multi-article issue. A screen shot of the proposed front page and vtoc is detailed on the “newsletter-appstore” Discord, subject to change.

November 25, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #11 published

This issue continues on the SpeedScript porting project and discusses dozens of details relating to the project, now called “nanoEdit”. As always, a few embedded links and a discussion of code efficiency, 16-bit division including a retro of the Lance A Leventhal and Wozniak effort, redefined characters, using a sprite for an on-screen QR code and more.

September 17, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #10 published

Picking up from issue #9, work on a new dev centered operating environment (monitor, etc) continues with a look into text editors. This issue covers the history of one such ’80s effort which was published by Compute Publications for multiple platforms; there is also a rough demo of the ported code on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2E6wP1LM1U

August 25, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #9 published

Issue #7 and #8 remain in draft but I just pushed out a moderately deep dive into some 8-bit history on Machine Language Monitors and an announce of a monitor and environment for the F256 (Jr. and K). This will be a multi-part series so if you are interested in Machine Language tools, the F256 platform and specifically, having NATIVE TOOLS ON THE F256 PLATFORM, you’ll be interested in this content and eventually, the code/app which I will release at year end (sorry, I’m slow and have limited time…)

August 15, 2023 – Foenix (F256) Graphics Toolkit added

First update in a while, posted upon request from a user on my YouTube “8-Bit Wall of Doom” channel.

For all: If you see something on the Discord forum that you would like posted, please reach out to me directly. Lots of threads come and go and it’s difficult for us to keep track of which are ‘ready’ for general distribution, even if for dev purposes or sharing. This is an open platform, not commercial, so don’t be shy to participate by offering your work to the general public!

March 4, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #6

A detailed look into the methodology and algorithm to update sprite counters from the Issue #5 demo. We also discuss interrupts, and the RTC (real-time-clock) feature and tie the two together using VICKY’s IRQ subsystem. Along the way, we discuss an (one) approach for handling sprite configuration data, and offer a few hints and sample code including a full .asm listing for those that want to follow along at home, modify, or borrow.

Feb 2-3, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #5

This first ‘FLASH!’ release is an experiment in development, single article issues which develop an idea, methodology, or exploit one or more Foenix features via demo or harmless amusement. In this instance, we take an Apple II graphics demo written by Stephen Edwards (recorded for VCF West), and squeeze it (port it) to the F256 Jr. platform, leveraging the crown jewel of the F256 platform, it’s MMU. We also leverage a set of sprite numerals to count and report segment banking frequency.

Jan 4, 2023 – ERRATA #1: Issue #4, pg. 23; the callout on “Outer loop” in column 2 (blue underline) should read “bumps the HIGH-byte”, not the low-byte.

ERRATA #2: Issue #4, pg. 6; point of clarification; at the bottom of column 2 (BASIC ‘wedge’ example), the “INPUT” command will not work as written due to the fact that Commodore BASIC v2 will not allow a ‘:’ character within the string.

It is therefore required that you ‘INPUT “COMMAND”;C$’ then ‘INPUT “NAME”;N$’ then concatenate ‘A$=C$+”:”+N$’ then carry on with the 2nd statement. I didn’t want to spend too much time on the idiosyncrasies of BASIC v2; for the sake of discussion however, the text as printed gets the job done.

Jan 02, 2023 – Ms. Pacman Demo Update for 65xx[x] Foenix Platforms

Jan 01, 2023 – Foenix Rising Newsletter Issue #4

Revision ‘c’ uploaded reflecting vetted 6502 code and closing text adds and fixes; A full 64TASS code example will be uploaded shortly representing a working version of the F256 Jr. no-kernel OUTSTRNG routine. For those interested here is a snippet showing the encoding and output: