If you're curious about the progress of my projects, this is the page to bookmark. I will update this time after time. To keep it small enough to load fast only the latest notes stay.
| Fun | Utility | Programming | Hardware | [email protected] |
| 2012 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 |
With a little help of EightyOne, the famous emulator, AutoIt, the fine automation tool that works also on Linux, and avidemux I created two videos of some of my ZX81 programs. They are available for instant view and for download. Enjoy!
Well, I didn't had much time the last year. But some new projects made it into the listings: 10ssg is a PIC driving 10 numeric led displays. The software counts down to a destination date... p2b_st is a Palm tool I forgot to add some years ago. And finally lcd_3keys is a small circuitry consisting of a PIC controlling a one-lined LCD.
Phew, just some days before the ZX microfair: Puzzle99 works now on ZX81s with decoded M1 signal. Have a lot of fun!
Another week, another project: an electronic doorbell.
OK, it took me just one week to assemble the stuff of the time switch for a gas central heating.
After a long time there are three new "old" projects on-line:
OK, these are not the ones mentioned last february... Anyway, have a lot of fun!
Well, all my spare time goes into Phoinix, still. But I promise to document some more projects, as there are a week timer for a gas central heating, a educational 8-bit RISC computer built from discrete logic, and so on...
Oh, dear, it is long ago that I changed something. Today I added two new projects, and two corrections. The latter are the "Last Bug" in the Jupiter Ace schematic and the update of the ZX81 Load & Save software.
The new entries are really NEW! Not some old stuff, now undusted and documented, no, ma'am. We have two nice demo programs for the ZX81, rezurrection (original by Minas) and 25thanni. Simply launch your favourite Timex/Sinclair emulator (is there any other than EightyOne?) and LOAD them. Have a lot of fun!
Nothing really changed, I just found some time to repack the ZIP archives so that they are not doubled-packed.
Unfortunately that austrian provider didn't make it. Now I'm trying Fortunecity, hoping the best. We'll see... To be able to upload all stuff, I had to archive everything in ZIP format, so you'll see some archives double-packed.
Here we are again! Of all services I found, the EDELWEISS MEDIENWERKSTATT in Vienna has the best conditions, at least for me.
Sad but true: Spaceports stops offering free webspace, due to the massive changes in the online advertising marketplace. Aside from moving myself to theplace of my girlfriend, I have to look for another place to store this pages at. It may take some time, please be patient!
While adding the little page for yuccadvent, I also wrote a page about PalmBoy. In case PalmBoy's actual homepage ceases to exist, you still have a chance.
Thanks to the great effort Isidro Nuñez Blanco De Arenas spent, the last doubts about the correctness of the schematics are gone. His selfmade Jupiter Ace works well!
WHOOPPEEEE! You folks at SourceForge have accepted my request for "Phoinix", thank you very much!
Phoinix is now the name of the Gameboy emulator for PalmOS, please visit the new homepage, and get all you like there. Hopefully there's enough time in the Holidays to setup everything: downloads of the emulator (after killing all bugs of the betaversion), tarballs of source code of released versions, CVS access to current source code, mailinglists, ... When the new home of the emulator is up and running, I will stop updating PalmBoy's pages.
After months of boring backgrounds now all my pages are enhanced with light graphics. I hope you like it, if not don't hesitate to write me.
On request of (you know who you are ;-) I added two old projects: ZX81VID, the precursor of ZX97, and my re-engineering work on the not-so-well-known Jupiter Ace. I hope you have fun with them!
News for all STemBoy users: Matthias Jaap took my sources and went on. Please visit his STemBoy page for more information. I have to thank him for his great work!
What I never expected has happened: there's the first contribution to my software! Scott L. Baker wrote the table for the COSMAC and sent it for inclusion in the DisAssembler package.
As I was updating the HTML files of my site, I found another fine tool that could be useful for you: the universal monitor X51. You may use it for some examinations of 8051 series microcontroller systems.
Here you are: V3.2 of STemBoy is ready! As promised it supports color screens and cursor keys. The limit for the size of cartridges is extended to 4 Megabytes - the biggest ROM I heard of is just 2 MB. And yes, you may hunt all those tackling monsters!
These were the good news, now for the bad: if nobody else does anything for STemBoy, this will be the last version. There are still things to implement, sound, speed, cartridge RAM save... I managed to use the GNU SDK for developing PalmBoy, so there's no need for STemBoy for me anymore. All sources are available - so come on and do it yourself!
You might have read this in the PalmBoy news already: my good old Atari ST broke down last november, so I had to buy some modern machine. Now I'm running a Linux box - really cool! It took some time to set up everything but now I'm back.
One consequence will be a big step in STemBoy, it will support color screens and the cursor keys for the direction pad. The main internal change will be support for more cartridge types and hsync interrupts, so all you PokeMon players: there are good chances that PokeMon will run on V3.2!
Trying STemBoy on STonX I found it running at full speed or more! It depends on the emulated screen mode, my favorite is 16 colors with 960 x 640 size. BTW, my machine contains a 700 MHz Duron and 128 MB main memory.
I decided to post news about PalmBoy now only at the dedicated news page. Links to this and possible other pages are at the top of this page.
Till and I got web space offered! So I decided to use the already installed domain palmboy.suburbia.com.au and copied all PalmBoy stuff. Please update your bookmarks! Logically there's a new email address, too: [email protected]. Please use it for comments about PalmBoy.
What a shame... there are many replies of pleased users, but on some Pilots (mostly Visors) PalmBoy crashes! Now that's the main point to work at.
You waited such a long time, BUT NOW IT'S READY! The first really useable versions of STemBoy and PalmBoy are available for download.
Nothing more to say...
Whoopeeeeeeeeee! Yesterday late at night I tried all the GB ROMs I have with the pre-3.0 version of STemBoy. And nearly all of them worked! There's just a small problem left with Dr.Mario and Tetris: they use a timer to get random numbers - and this is not yet emulated. So I get always the same tile resp. pill.
For the converter program "GB2PDB" I plan to implement a patch database. I know that there are GameGenie® and GameShark® cheats, but I found no documentation what they mean. Please, can anybody help me with this?
Another port of Pilot support software is done: you'll find the changed sources and a compiled program of PilotDis in the Programming section.
First I planned to release another version of PalmBoy and STemBoy with implemented DAA opcode. But today I implemented the first interrupt functionality (the vertical blank) - and it works! I think I can make it in a short time so stay tuned...
BTW, has any GB programmer a cute small game with less than 5 KBytes? There's some space in STemBoy and I like to fill it. Because of the nature of the emulation it has to be cut into many small pieces, therefore I need the source code.
Completely unexpected I got feedback for STemBoy! It does not run on Falcons... So, if you like you may help me making it run on other machines than my MegaST with TOS 2.06! Write to [email protected]!
You waited a long time, but now it's available: the next generation of
PalmBoy and
STemBoy. If you miss the scroller
"PalmBoy" of v.1.0, you'll have to wait for Easter ;-)
I hope that you'll have no problems, but if mail
me!
Is there anybody still using PalmOS 2.0? Please try to load PalmBoy, POSE
rejects it because of a big record - but the record isn't too big...
Now the discovery of the secret: the game to play is PuzzleX! It runs
smooth and perfectly (even without overclocking), I came upto level 4.
I made another suggestion to the makers of "liberty": wouldn't it be cool if you could play two-player-games via IR with either emulator? Please comment to Maven and me.
Sigh! It is done... The preliminary V2.0 of STemBoy works like I want it to. Now for the simpler part: converting the algorithms to PalmBoy. I wont make any promises, but expect v.2.0 to appear the next weeks. Both STemBoy and PalmBoy will be updated together. I found another fine (free!) game to play on the emulators - you'll love it! Until release its name is -psst- a secret!
Finally I created this news page, hoping you appreciate it. Because I found it sad to have just this note, I added some elder "news."
I was so happy after trying "Jurassic Park II" with STemBoy, it uses no interrupts. But when the demo parts started, shock: the screen flashes and some parts are scrambled. After spending some hours I found the reasons for this. Currently I don't emulate the horizontal syncs - that's for the flashing. The scrambling comes from using the stackpointer as pointer into the ROM and switching banks. The latter is not emulated for the stackpointer for speed... For now I leave this problem alone, may be it will be fixed by patching the cartridge.
The window emulation is ready!!! Scrolling and colors are OK, I'm now looking for some demos to try out. Still to implement for V2.0 of STemBoy are the objects, aka sprites. Then, when this is done, I will port the algorithms to v.2.0 of PalmBoy and throw it at you.
At work I found a digital camera, so I took some pictures of my prototype of LCD124 for your pleasure.
YEAH!!! After many hours of coding and debugging the background of STemBoy works as I want it to! The "Space" demo scrolls and fades like hell (hrm, it's slow as usual.) Did you know the key mapping for it? The joypad controls the speed of movement, with "A" for the window, or with "B" for the background, else for the planet. Hitting "Select" lets the background and window fade to black and back, "Start" opens resp. closes the window. You can't look through the open window, because the real hardware won't let you, too.
Still in contact with Maven, the author of "liberty" (another emulator), I suggest to make the databases of converted games compatible. I think that most users would like this very much. Comments to me are welcome, you may try Maven, too.
At this remarkable day my account at Spaceports is set up. In the last weeks I prepared some pages and had much fun with HTML. The best guide to this language is SelfHTML, written by some german guys.
Back to my home page.
Comments and such stuff go to: [email protected]