Dan Sanderson

The MEGA65 has a powerful debugging facility built into it that would have been high fantasy for vintage computer programmers back in the day: the Matrix Mode debugger. Today in Lab Notes, we explore Matrix Mode’s capabilities to further help us with assembly language programming, continuing to use our Game of Life program as an example.

When we last attempted an assembly language program for the MEGA65, I described debugging techniques that involve inventing ways to visualize the memory and behavior of your program, often requiring adding code to the program temporarily to do so. Today I want to explore a feature of the MEGA65 that can help with this, the MEGA65 machine language monitor, using our Game of Life program as an example.

Previously, we explored Conway’s Game of Life for the MEGA65 in BASIC. Let’s try it again, this time in assembly language, using the same BASIC timing code for comparison.

Conway’s Game of Life is a classic math game that’s also a fun beginner’s programming project. With a grid of cells and a few simple rules, a flourishing biome of digital organisms comes to life. Let’s try building it for the MEGA65 using BASIC!

On every Commodore computer that has a Home key, I routinely hit Home when I mean to hit the Del key. The only way to move the cursor back to where I need it is with the arrow keys. With the MEGA65, I finally have the opportunity to do something about this, once and for all.

The MEGA65 is a new personal computer based on the Commodore 65, the unreleased 1991 sequel to the inimitable Commodore 64 and 128 home computers of the 1980’s. I’m so excited about mine, I wrote the MEGA65 Welcome Guide, a supplementary booklet for new owners.

Electronic Bulletin Boards by Carolyn E. Cooper, a book report by Dan Sanderson, age 12. Six handwritten pages, in cursive, with a cover page and five printed pages of figures from a Boise BBS. I got an A+.

What would it be like if the #nytspellingbee had an S in it?

@thegridkid is on record as saying an S-Bee would be “too easy,” a nice way of saying it’s difficult to balance difficulty, size, and funness. I wanted a sense of this design space, so I did some computer’ing.

Wow, #pico8 on the RG 351M handheld game console is fantastic! This one from Anbernic is metal, heavy, with solid controls. $139 USD is pricey but worth it.

We were discussing angles and coordinates in the #pico8 Discord and I whipped up this quick demo while we were chatting. It’s a neat demo, and super-neat how easy it was to put it together! The value of a tight feedback loop cannot be understated. gist.github.com/dansanderson/2…