430 replies to this topic

[EricDeLee]

just shoot him an email or a pm

[kriz]

PM sent

Looking forward to this !!

[atarian63]

Got mine today, so far so good! Nice packaging! Great stuff!
Thank you for doing this!

[coyo5050]

All I have to say is.... LOVE IT!

Came pretty quickly to the east coast USA, about 10 days. This looks very professional and there is obvious attention to detail. Nice red theme going even on the CD. Took a few minutes to figure it out but works great. First game was Paperboy, I already own it not sure why I picked that. Now for some protos.

Going to burn my roms and the other software I need to a mini CDR and have a short USB cable that will all fit in the packaging very nicely.

[ThomH]

What software do you need on the computer to push information to the flash card?

I was a Lynx hobbyist developer a long time ago (ummm, I did a Mode 7 demo that I thought was a clever subversion of the stack pointer and the multiply-with-accumulate, though nobody else much cared, and also the 3d stuff which ended up in Stardreamer) and found this thread by chance today. I've been on OS X for years, which precluded me from the older DOS utility and serial port cart. Would I be able to use this one? Might respark my interest...

[karri]

ThomH, on Sun Sep 13, 2009 3:43 PM, said:

What software do you need on the computer to push information to the flash card?

I was a Lynx hobbyist developer a long time ago (ummm, I did a Mode 7 demo that I thought was a clever subversion of the stack pointer and the multiply-with-accumulate, though nobody else much cared, and also the 3d stuff which ended up in Stardreamer) and found this thread by chance today. I've been on OS X for years, which precluded me from the older DOS utility and serial port cart. Would I be able to use this one? Might respark my interest...

Nice to hear about you again! If you get interested in the Lynx again there is a brand new C-compiler coming out from cc65 real soon now with lots of new features.

--
Karri
PS. Stardreamer is still waiting to be finished

[SwedenLynxer]

ThomH, on Sun Sep 13, 2009 3:43 PM, said:

What software do you need on the computer to push information to the flash card?

I was a Lynx hobbyist developer a long time ago (ummm, I did a Mode 7 demo that I thought was a clever subversion of the stack pointer and the multiply-with-accumulate, though nobody else much cared, and also the 3d stuff which ended up in Stardreamer) and found this thread by chance today. I've been on OS X for years, which precluded me from the older DOS utility and serial port cart. Would I be able to use this one? Might respark my interest...

Hello, any plan to release Command: Starship? I always thought that game looked very cool!

About the flash card: Im sure Lynxman will be happy to answer any questions about that.

[ThomH]

Well, ummm, I don't want to derail the thread with stuff about me. My interest has been re-piqued because I've ended up working on 6502-stuff for another reason (more small hobbyist stuff, nothing interesting), and subsequently found this thread. I still have the source for Command: Starship (actually, so does everybody) and Navigator (ditto, though the stuff in Stardreamer has had some subequent fixes), though I think my Mode 7 is lost to history but for the binary. And, now, the video of the binary that I recently uploaded to youtube.

Would almost certainly get back into it if this cartridge is usable on a Mac, and I'm happy to write my own Mac-side stuff if the USB is something odd but at least documented. Still being me, I'm still unlikely to ever actually finish anything significant.

[Fadest]

You only need a terminal emulator.
I personnaly use HTerm on Linux, which may exist on Mac OS X, or use Zterm or probably even the terminal included in Mac OS X.
all the logic is in the flashcard, not on the computer side, so virtually, every computer that have an USB port can use this Flashcard.
Some would need drivers, but I had no problem on Linux, and my XP just find them on the net without any problems.

[Atari Smeghead]

ThomH, on Mon Sep 14, 2009 3:51 AM, said:

Well, ummm, I don't want to derail the thread with stuff about me.

I still have the source for Command: Starship (actually, so does everybody) and Navigator (ditto, though the stuff in Stardreamer has had some subequent fixes), though I think my Mode 7 is lost to history but for the binary. And, now, the video of the binary that I recently uploaded to youtube.

Hi Thom and welcome, or welcome back, as the case may be! Derail away; it's what we live for!

Thanks for sharing your work with us! I had never seen Command: Starship before. It has the makings to be a really fun game. I like the shaking effect and how the bullets curve when you turn. Some nice touches in this. I, also, hope you get this completed!

Do you think you could include a link to the Youtube video you mentioned? I'd be curious to see it.

As for the Flashcard, I help to write the English version of the manual. Not to say I understand all that much about it, but I have found it to be a simple, yet powerful device. (I'm only a player, so I can't attest to the programming side. It's easy to load with any standard Term program.)

If you'd like, I could email you a copy of the manual, assuming Bernd doesn't mind.

Cheers,
Smeg

[Lynxman]

Atari Smeghead, on Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:12 AM, said:

If you'd like, I could email you a copy of the manual, assuming Bernd doesn't mind.

Do it!

@ThomH: if you have any questions to the FlashCard, please send me PM.

Kind Regards

Lynxman

[ThomH]

Atari Smeghead, on Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:12 AM, said:

Hi Thom and welcome, or welcome back, as the case may be! Derail away; it's what we live for!

Thanks for sharing your work with us! I had never seen Command: Starship before. It has the makings to be a really fun game. I like the shaking effect and how the bullets curve when you turn. Some nice touches in this. I, also, hope you get this completed!

Well, it was intended to be a semi-remake of an existing Acorn BBC/Electron game called Starship Command. So you can see a sort of slower version of what I was thinking of in this video (not one of my own):

And I think it was 2001/2002 that I was last around, so it isn't surprising given my usual inability to finish anything that my stuff was forgotten so easily.

Atari Smeghead, on Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:12 AM, said:

Do you think you could include a link to the Youtube video you mentioned? I'd be curious to see it.

It's not so impressive (kind of low precision, could be improved), but see here:


Key "cleverness": Suzy's multiply-with-accumulate is used to calculate the next pixel to fetch simultaneously with the CPU fetching the previous pixel, individual scanlines are assembled in right-to-left order on the stack page because the stack pointer can write a byte and auto-decrement, then the unified memory model is used to blit and stretch the line (this is where some of the lack of precision creeps in — I don't offset the lines left or right according to subpixel accuracy, though it wouldn't cost much to do, being a cheap operation performed only per-scanline) to the correct place on the display. The display is in principle full resolution (ie, it isn't 80x102 or 80x51 or anything like that).

As I recall, the response at the time was generally just "it's a nice demo effect, you couldn't use it in a game", which isn't true but was sufficiently disheartening. Poor old me, etc.

The weird messy area is because there is no bounds check on fetched pixels, the entire 64kb memory space is used. That'd be fairly easy to fix, but might add a little to the display cost. I originally intended just to mask it out again. I should look into whether the 65sc02 has any of the unofficial 6502 opcodes, especially SAX, as that could kill that stuff for zero extra cost. Though I no longer have the source, so even if it has SAX it isn't like I can suddenly turn up with a fixed version tomorrow...

To play with it yourself, grab the binary from my web page (though it's the only Lynx thing currently on there) — direct link is here (~6.5 kb). My email address is on that page in a probably-doesn't-help-much encoded format which your Javascript interpreter will decode for you. That's in case these forums don't allow private emails, and I wouldn't know.

No idea what I'll work on if I get back into the Lynx. I just won the Lynx I was bidding on over on eBay, so that's the first hurdle crossed. I'll obviously PM Lynxman as instructed to discuss his product further, will look forward to receiving the manual.

Edited by ThomH, Mon Sep 14, 2009 12:31 PM.

[Fadest]

Wow, this mode 7 stuff is really impressive
Just remember me the SNES, and my flacon, when a lots of demos used mode 7 like screens, but the falcon had a DSP to do this.

[gravitone]

Wow, great to see such a usefull piece of hardware out in the wild. Is this flashcart still available?
Im looking into starting some lynx dev with the cold days of winter comming and this would be really usefull.

[Lynxman]

gravitone, on Wed Nov 11, 2009 7:42 AM, said:

Wow, great to see such a usefull piece of hardware out in the wild. Is this flashcart still available?
Im looking into starting some lynx dev with the cold days of winter comming and this would be really usefull.

Hi,

the FlashCard 3rd run will be avaliable maybe end of November.

If you like to buy one, please send me a PM. Maybe i need some time to answer, because i was on a businesstrip and no Internet was available, so i have first to clean up my emails etc.

Kind Regards

Lynxman

[EricDeLee]

Great news for the ones that want one prior to Christmas.

[TrekMD]

Excellent! PM sent!

[Maddog]

This is the best news!

PM sent, can't wait to get my hands on new the flashcard!

[per]

Just 3 months left until I can buy one, but it feels like I can't wait.

Keep up the good work!

[Edwingamino]

I sent a pm. How many games were released for the lynx?

[The_Laird]

Edwingamino, on Sun Dec 6, 2009 6:19 PM, said:

I sent a pm. How many games were released for the lynx?

Can't remember the exact figure but its over 100

[ThomH]

I can't think of a reason why it might be meant to be secret, so: Lynxman has been in touch to say that the third production run is complete! Maybe this will motivate me to actually start and/or finish something...

[ThomH]

And by the power vested in me as a Lynx FlashCard owner:

[TrekMD]

Awesome! I'm waiting on mine...

[Lynxman]

ThomH, on Mon Jan 4, 2010 3:24 PM, said:

And by the power vested in me as a Lynx FlashCard owner:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGeLCAW4mA"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=wVGeLCAW4mA[/url]

You ever thinked about Ballblazer on the Lynx? (Lynxblazer )
I would buy 1.