Enhancement request: Compatibility with Ben's "new" BIOS

[greenonline]

I don't know how feasible this is, or how much work it would be (nor even if there would be any advantage to do so), but are there any plans to either integrate G-Pascal with the BIOS that Ben has recently developed for the board, or to provide compatibility with?

For more info about the BIOS, please see:

• A simple BIOS for my breadboard computer
• Running MSBASIC on my breadboard 6502 computer

In particular, using the ISCNTC, MONRDKEY and MONCOUT routines? Or even the LOAD and SAVE routines (once they have been fleshed out)?

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FWIW, I discovered this repo from a comment on My modified Ben Eater 6502 Computer PCB!, not that that board bears any relevance to this issue/enhancement, whatsoever.

[nickgammon]

I don't have any immediate plans for this. I note he is using an ACIA chip for serial comms, whereas I managed to do it with the existing hardware and some carefully timed loops. In any case you need a suitable converter to actually plug into a PC.

It probably wouldn't be a big deal to modify my code to optionally interface with his suggested serial hardware, after all he posted code showing how to use it.

My own G-Pascal code has its own BIOS (if you want to call it that). It has an editor, lets you examine memory, peek and poke data into memory, and then there is the inbuilt assembler and tiny Pascal interpreter. Basically if you use my code you don't need to keep pulling that EEPROM chip out and reprogram it externally, which I think is a big plus.

I tried to contact Ben over a year ago to let him know it existed, but got no response. He has done an absolutely fantastic job of describing his 6502 board, and lots of other things, so he is probably very busy.

I think I bought one of the ACIA chips (6551) but then I thought there was no big advantage to going to the trouble of installing it. You are limited, in any case, to the speed with which the CPU can retrieve incoming data, whether it goes through that chip or you get it directly from the port (using interrupts).

My code has got a very lukewarm response, maybe I don't advertise it enough. I'm happy with what it does, the on-board assembler, editor, SPI support, I2C support, debugging support, serial interface, tiny Pascal, binary to decimal conversion, etc.

If there's a strong demand, I'll take a look at interfacing with the way Ben set up his ACIA hardware.