💫 Dan's #mega65 Digest for July 2026: Calypsi C, part 2: Using memory. https://dansanderson.com/mega65/calypsi-part-2/

Working towards design patterns for large programs, and learning a few things along the way. This will be a three-parter at least! And if you're not into this topic I promise I have some other fun things coming up very soon. 🙂

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Alpha 9 and Alpha 10 were deft - only releases.

AMIGA 500 OCS Version 1 Alpha 11

• True analog picture positioning so that users like Byte should be able to solve their analog display issues and create a nicely positioned image. CAUTION: Screen adjustment files (aexp_screen.cfg) from earlier versions will NOT work with this version. The new python script is able to migrate them, though. You need to re-read the docs, "everything" is new when it comes to analog screen positioning / fine-tuning. (HDMI did not change.) https://a500.mega65.org/doc/screen_adjust/#analog-position-move-the-whole-picture

• Scalable On-Screen-Menu: This is important for users who use real CRTs, real retro tubes that have a 15 kHz frequency. The OSM is too large on these CRTs, you can now scale it. There is a dedicated user's manual "how to work with these retro CRTs with the Amiga core": https://a500.mega65.org/doc/retrotubes/

• User-friendlier aexp_screen_cfg.py

• Ability to toggle Slow RAM/A501: Thanks to dddaaannn I learned, that certain games such as Rogue are not working when the Amiga has more than 512kB RAM. So you can now disable the Slow RAM (A501). This leads to a reboot. The core remembers the setting.

IMPORTANT:

I consider Alpha 11 als feature-complete for the first release of the core (aka "Version 1"). There will be no second drive, hard disk, or other additional features. I will soon release a version called "Beta 1" (will be WIP-V1-B1). Please test Alpha 11 (and Beta 1 as soon as it becomes available). I will continue to fix (major) bugs and release Beta versions as necessary. As soon as the core proves to be sufficiently stable I will officially release it as V1 on our MEGA65 Filehost. I feel that this V1 will be a well-rounded package with which people will be able to have loads of fun for quite a while.

AMIGA 500 OCS Version 1 Beta 1

Fixes a bug discovered by EmseBremse: Deactivating Slow RAM worked like a charme but re-activating did not.

This was slightly more complicated to fix than I first assumed, for the technically inclined, here are the details: https://github.com/sy2002/AExp/issues/21

As written above: From now on we are in the BETA phase of the core, i.e. no more additional features, (major) bugfixes only.