[stella] stella 4a50

[seagtgruff at aol.com]

Yes, there is documentation on many of the bankswitching methods-- especially the "classic" methods-- although it might not be detailed enough for some programmers, and methods that were devised in more recent years might not be covered. So far, the best information on bankswitching is?what Kevin Horton wrote, and there seem to be two versions of it:



http://www.classic-games.com/atari2600/bankswitch.html?-- This seems to be a copy of an earlier version.



http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/files/sizes.txt?-- I think this is the latest version, "Last modified on 4/18/97."

Since the document was last modified in early 1997, it doesn't include any bankswitching methods devised after that. Also, most of the document is devoted to listing the ROM sizes and bankswitching methods used by all the different games, so it doesn't really go into a lot of detailed explanation and examples about how to create *new* programs that use the various bankswitching methods, such as how to use "ORG" and "RORG" in DASM to organize the banks in an assembly program, or ideas about how to most easily or most efficiently (which are not always the same things) call subroutines,?or accessing data across different banks, etc.

Experienced assembly-coding 2600 programmers can probably work those things?out for themselves, but it would be great to have a new document, updated with newer bankswitching methods, giving detailed coding examples and discussions of how to use each method, and also describing?issues related to-- and providing examples of-- *disassembling* ROM images that use each method. Ideally, I think this document should be part of a wiki, so everyone could contribute to it. :)

Michael


-----Original Message-----
From: dott.Piergiorgio <dott.piergiorgio at fastwebnet.it>
To: Atari 2600 programming list <stella at atari2600.org>
Sent: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:32 am
Subject: Re: [stella] stella 4a50




Stephen Anthony ha scritto:
> Andrew Davie wrote:
>> I'd like to formally request through the list that Stella with 4a50
>> capability be released real soon now.  4a50 is a pretty snazzy banking
>> scheme; I'm sure that moving to it will improve the rats-nest of
>> bankswitching that I have now and probably help out with speed, too.
>> So, in the interests of the Atari community :)  can we please have a 4a50
>> Stella soon?!!
>> Cheers
>> A
>>   
> I made a first attempt at adding 4A50 support to Stella, but the results 
> weren't encouraging :(  There are just too many questions I have about 
> the format, and how to get it working in Stella. 

I'm emerging from the lurking to ask a question: there's documentation 
on the various bankswitching schemes made for the VCS ?

Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio M. d'Errico.

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