
Originally Posted by
Nicolas
I learned programming in VB6. That one has left the building in recent years, but I still do some job related programming in Arduino (C++), batch files and VBA. In the spirit of hobby self-improvement I wanted to do some programming in Commodore 64 basic though. Make some music software for its sound chip. The thing is, I sold all my C64 stuff a few years ago. Yes, just before the prices went up. And now they're overpriced and I know from my days just how unreliable those power supplies, floppy drives and also the main unit can be with the age they've got now. So no way I'm going to spend more than pocket change on one of those.
However, I happen to live in the future. A future where there's a decent emulator for everything. So I'm now running C64 basic right here on my W10 laptop, with the same interface, speed (or lack thereof), very similar sound and even fake CRT scanlines. So I can have a go at programming the dinosaur without having to own one.
And, given that we are living in the future, if I would ever like to run my code on real hardware I could still buy an old one, or an FPGA based reissue. For those not familiar: FPGA is futuristic technology that is rapidly taking over a lot of electronics. Basically, it's a chip in which you can choose the way the transistors are connected through code. That way, you can program it to be any digital chip you want on the hardware level. So you can program an FPGA to the exact digital circuit of, let's say, a Sega Megadrive game computer. It's not emulating a Megadrive, it de facto IS a Megadrive circuit and will behave EXACTLY like the real deal, including all hardware bugs and tricks. Now I can't really use that for my C64 music software, as the original C64's sound chip is largely analog and FPGA can't do that.
Thanks for that, I found it interesting as I am currently using Arduino plus some hardware to do a project that flashes lights. I shall have to look up FPGA to understand how the chip reconfigures itself, rather than emulating. At first hearing it sounds like magic!
sicut vis videre esto
When we realize that patterns don't exist in the universe, they are a template that we hold to the universe to make sense of it, it all makes a lot more sense.
Originally Posted by Ken G