The code I have been following is a mixture of 8080 assembly, and 8080 assembly transposed onto Arduino assembly with macros.

And for the largest part of the code, it works. Given the ATmega chips allow so many addressing modes for the 32 general purpose registers a chip has, you can just define r24 to be an 8080 accumulator and have it work.

Macros are really useful in assembly language. Don't every forget to leverage the C preprocessor for Arduino assembly. Highly suggest at least looking.

Thinking about scrapping this latest attempt at a BASIC interpreter, and sitting down and having a think about what a nice BASIC would require for my purposes.

Array variables. Some nice string operations, such as INSTR() and LEFT$ etc.

I am getting stuck on following crabbed code from the 1970s. I have 8K of SRAM, a large complement of registers, and enormous amount of flash memory--256KB. The Arduino mega is quite beefy.

https://codeberg.org/vidak/dandelion

Submit nominations for the 2027 award period of the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize until November 23, 2026

https://www.irtf.org/anrp/

Thinking about Dandelion BASIC, the Tiny BASIC that I am writing in assembly language for the Arduino Mega.

The method I am using is the "interpretive language" one. A type of virtual machine is set up which is what actually runs BASIC. Everything written in assembly language for the Arduino is just routines for running that virtual machine program.

The difficulty curve is steeper, but the long tern benefit of the method is that you can modify and extend the BASIC far easier.

#retrocomputing

@screwlisp beep i am available at the usual time, if you have capacity to record the show?

Still getting my arse kicked at Zelda Breath of the Wild ha ha

given the ubiquity of the commodore 64, and its recent re-entering manufacturing, it kind of makes sense for me to support it with the people's permacomputer project.

the hardware the project currently supports is the LILYGO TTGO VGA32, an ESP32 based board.

it is considerably cheaper than a commodore 64, but it does not have the 'just works' benefit that buying a commodore 64 has.

i find myself writing a lot of commodore V2 BASIC anyway, annoying but true.

thoughts?

Still thinking about extremely resource limited computing.

And general purpose computing at that too.

My previous explorations have taught me that you can have quite a nice time with about 8K RAM.

On the arduino mega, for instance, you have about 5K free user program space after loading Tiny BASIC.

BASIC remains on the menu, of course, despite its negative reputation. Lisp and FORTH are both live options as well.

#retrocomputing #permacomputing #solarpunk

i have musings on what i like about UNIX.

i like that ssh example.org automatically assumes the username that i am currently logged in as.

makes me think -- users should be quite transportable across systems.

not sure where this thought goes, very "up at 4am writing my operating system" vibes

@permacomputer VIC EDITYPE BASIC text editor research log.

I have been studying the core loop of the program.

What happens is a tight loop around:

120 GET C$:IF C$="" THEN GOTO 120

And then after we test for special menu characters, we echo the character, using a semicolon to prevent a newline:

PRINT C$;

then a little later, append the character to the line:

A$(K)=A$(K)+C$

And that's the magic for NEW mode, where the user composes their text.

#retrocomputing #permacomputing #devlog

Anyone seen @screwlisp ?

@screwlisp beeping again

Did I mention there was a parade?

There was a parade

A buddy of mine works at a place where they did the "please! use as many llm tokes as you can!" to "oh shit this is way more expensive than the people and services we thought it was going to replace" speedrun in just a couple of months.

Their suggestion for reducing token use? "Ask Claude how you can use fewer tokens."

Corporate America is out of ideas, folks

How much do you know about the whale and would you like to know more?

@screwlisp hey! Are we on in about 4 hours??

Research has continued on VIC EDITYPE, for the purpose of writing a more idiomatic ~5KB Tiny BASIC text editor.

The intention is to publish this under the umbrella of the peoples @permacomputer project.

The way text entry works is straightforward.

Editing is a little crude, you step through each line of the text file with the letter F, and then correct the line with the keyboard letter C.

#retrocomputing #permacomputing

Indigenous activists Gary Foley and Bruce McGuinness at Marx's Grave in London, 1979.

The original caption from the magazine 'Identity' reads: "Gary and Bruce with a hero from the past."

From "Identity," vol. 3, issue 11, Nov 1979 (p. 19)

#auspol #indigenous #blacklivesmatter #landback

Been doing some research on a text editor for the VIC-20. Named: VIC EDITYPE.

https://vidakovich.itch.io/vic-editype

https://retro.social/@permacomputer/117222312816732484

Was confused for a good long while about how to get back to the menu after composing a new file, and a little trip through the user's manual allowed me to bind the menu key to @ instead if £.

There is power to BASIC, this text editor requires about 6 or 7 kilobytes of free RAM only.

This editor can centre text, and some other simple editing tasks.

#retrocomputing