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#1
NC100, NC200, PCW, PDA600 - the rest of the Family! / Re: PCW 8256 in colour, cheap ...
Last post by GUNHED - Today at 00:00This is so cool! 
#2
Ok, I couldn't leave it alone without exploring a little further - first, I made the whole thing a bit more generic. Rather than a list of things it tries manually coded, I now have a list of functions that modify registers and record how many bytes/nops they take. To that list, as well as what I had before, I added 8-bit inc/dec and sra/sla. The former of those two new instructions shaved a couple of bytes, the latter nothing
Now I have a more generic way of both trying and adding instruction support, I added breadth-first brute-force searching. As the image is iterated, for each byte that isn't already in a register, it records every possible solution. Then before the next iteration, the current solutions are sorted by size and the list of solutions to search is truncated to the specified breadth.
Adding that brute-force search, a 10-wide search goes from 227 bytes to 213 bytes - a very decent saving! Of course it's a lot slower, but it executes in very reasonable time (a matter of seconds at that width with this dataset).
The tool doesn't combine multiple 1-byte instructions, but I don't think there's a combination that would do anything that an 8-bit value load wouldn't accomplish without trashing a register and it'd add some probably unnecessary complication (I manually added functions that do every valid combination of 2 8-bit register loads). I think I can probably leave it alone for now
Now I have a more generic way of both trying and adding instruction support, I added breadth-first brute-force searching. As the image is iterated, for each byte that isn't already in a register, it records every possible solution. Then before the next iteration, the current solutions are sorted by size and the list of solutions to search is truncated to the specified breadth.
Adding that brute-force search, a 10-wide search goes from 227 bytes to 213 bytes - a very decent saving! Of course it's a lot slower, but it executes in very reasonable time (a matter of seconds at that width with this dataset).
The tool doesn't combine multiple 1-byte instructions, but I don't think there's a combination that would do anything that an 8-bit value load wouldn't accomplish without trashing a register and it'd add some probably unnecessary complication (I manually added functions that do every valid combination of 2 8-bit register loads). I think I can probably leave it alone for now
#3
Very sad the cartridge was not into its box. May be somewhere with the GX4000.
#4
It is great news that the PICO is now being used in the CPC systems, there is some other fantastic open source PICO based systems out there aswell, great to see another.
https://github.com/robinhedwards/A8PicoCart
https://github.com/aotta
Can't wait to see a cartridge version created for the GX4000 and PLUS systems
https://github.com/robinhedwards/A8PicoCart
https://github.com/aotta
Can't wait to see a cartridge version created for the GX4000 and PLUS systems
#5
Let's hope the cartridge turns up and can be preserved, even if it's probably a terrible conversion.
#6
QuoteA third copy of Chase HQ 2 appears to have just been just found!. The cartridge is unfortunately still missing but this was found in an ongoing attic clearance. So fingers crossedsource FB / amstradiens ( Lee Cook )
#7
And if we patched I, BALL, of course master @Urusergi patched :
I, BALL II from Firebird
Controls:
J1LEFT/RIGHT = Move your ship
J1UP = Bounce
J1B1 = Fire
J1B2 = Smart bombs
Pause button = Pause/unpause game
Originally, down direction on the joystick was used to fly, what was a terrible decision that partially ruined the gameplay. We hope you'll enjoy that this function has been moved to fire button 1 after moving the smart bomb release on fire button 2.
Modifications for the GX4000 version:
- Unuseful options removed from main screen,
- All game keys patched,
- Pokes : Infinite lives and time, super bounce feature
I, BALL II from Firebird
Controls:
J1LEFT/RIGHT = Move your ship
J1UP = Bounce
J1B1 = Fire
J1B2 = Smart bombs
Pause button = Pause/unpause game
Originally, down direction on the joystick was used to fly, what was a terrible decision that partially ruined the gameplay. We hope you'll enjoy that this function has been moved to fire button 1 after moving the smart bomb release on fire button 2.
Modifications for the GX4000 version:
- Unuseful options removed from main screen,
- All game keys patched,
- Pokes : Infinite lives and time, super bounce feature
#8
Quote from: Pollo on Yesterday at 18:17Great project.Yes, already a SD card, and the future possibility to use a card, more information in the video that I did summarize on my web site.
Will it have CPC hard drive functionality? Like the M4 board, Albireo, X-Mass...
On youtube I suggested to write a node for Unidos so it would be one more card with the same commands used as others.
#9
Only 3 days left to make the right choice!
#10
Great project.
Will it have CPC hard drive functionality? Like the M4 board, Albireo, X-Mass...
Will it have CPC hard drive functionality? Like the M4 board, Albireo, X-Mass...