24 replies to this topic

[flavoredthunder]

Here is a quick post to allow you to access the wonderful Andrew Davie tutorials without digging through the forums. Might be good to make this sticky

Session One: Intro
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27186

Session 2: Television Display Basics
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27187

Session 3: The TIA and the 6502
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27188

Session 4: The TIA
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27189

Session 5: Memory Architecture
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27190

Session 6: TV Timing Diagram
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27192

Session 7: The TV and our Kernel
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27193

Session 8: Our First Kernel
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27194

Session 9: 6502 and DASM - Assembling the Basics
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27221

Session 10: Orgasm
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27294

Session 11: Colourful Colors
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27338

Session 12: Initialisation
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27405

Session 13: Playfield Basics
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27595

Session 14: Playfield Wierdness
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=27706

Session 15 - Playfield Continued
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=28219

Session 16: Letting the Assembler do the Work
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=28699

Session 17: Asymmetrical Playfields - Part 1
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=29205

Session 18: Asymmetrical Playfields - Part 2
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=29326

Session 19: Addressing modes
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=29572

Session 20: Asymmetrical Playfields - Part 3
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=30105

Session 21: Sprites
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=32481

Session 22: Sprites, Horizontal Positioning Part 1
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=32896

Session 23: Moving Sprites Vertically
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=38020

Session 24: Some nice code
http://www.atariage....pic.php?t=47639

-------------------------------------
Assembly Tutorials By Robert M

Lesson One - Intro
Lesson Two - Enumeration
Lesson Three - Codes
Lesson Four Binary Counting
Lesson Five - Binary Math
Lesson Six - Binary Logic

[Albert]

Excellent idea, thanks! Making a sticky now.

..Al

[Happy_Dude]

CPUWIZ said:

Albert said:

Making a sticky now.  

..Al

Gross.

ROFLMAO

[Jedd]

I thought about doing this too. Awesome job dude. Maybe Andrew could post a link to this topic from within Session 1?

[Gateway]

I've been referring to Kirk's thread for this.

Understandable though that you made a new one, since Kirk's TOC got buried to the last forum page.

[kisrael]

Yeah, I mentioned this to Al in a jokingly huffy way on [stella].
But it is a pretty obvious idea, and I think by delicate ego can survive getting that much less attention. Just as long as the original poster keeps it up, and so far he's off to a good start, I might or might not bother with mine.

[flavoredthunder]

Hey Kirk,
Didn't even know you had a TOC already, next time I'll do more research before I post, but as was pointed out it is really easy to get good threads burried in a BB like this. I also very much enjoyed your tutorial as well!
Thanks,
Mark

[Happy_Dude]

flavoredthunder said:

if you guys spot something I misunderstood please let me know and I'll correct it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
.
The Atari 2600's processor is the 6507 chip which is a stripped down version of the 6502 processor. The 6502 is the same CPU that other systems like the NES, APPLE II and Super Nintendo used.

The snes uses a 65c816. But thats not really important is it

[Jedd]

My 2 cents...

It would be cool if Andrew could put a link for "Previous" and "Next" at the bottom of each tutorial, so you don't have to go back to the list each time.

Also, someone should put all his tutorials on a website with a menu to the side to quickly skip to a chapter. That way you wouldn't have to look at the forums to read the tutorials. If no one has any objections, I could throw something together real fast.

[Andrew Davie]

[quote name='flavoredthunder']<a name="c4"></a>Recap:
[/quote]


Whilst in principle the summaries are a good idea, I have reservations about this because of the slight errors and misunderstandings that have crept in.

For example, it is not the 6502 that is case-insensitive; it is the assembler. Another: the TIA does not stop until the next scanline, it's the 6502. There are lots of little things like those which make the summaries a danger to new readers.

As to hosting; the tutorials are public domain, so I guess it's up to someone if they want to host or organise them elsewhere. Personally I think AtariAge is a fine place to keep them.

Cheers
A

[flavoredthunder]

Hi Andrew,
I can remove these notes if you want. I was thinking that some people might get confused that these are some how "official notes". Alternatively, I am using these notes as a learning tool as well and would be more then happy to add, edit , massage or delete these notes until they are 100% correct. Great work on the tutorials, I am learning a ton.
Mark

[Andrew Davie]

flavoredthunder said:

Hi Andrew,  
I can remove these notes if you want. I was thinking that some people might get confused that these are some how "official notes". Alternatively, I am using these notes as a learning tool as well and would be more then happy to add, edit , massage or delete these notes until they are 100% correct. Great work on the tutorials, I am learning a ton.
Mark

I barely have enough time to keep the tutorials going, yet alone make corrections to them. Adding another process (keeping the summaries correct) is beyond my capability. That's why I'm a bit dubious about the summaries. Ultimately I'm just going to write what I can, and whatever other people add or do is pretty much up to them.

[flavoredthunder]

Yes, I know you are busy I was not asking you to do more work. I'll remove the notes from the chapter list and instead will re-post them in a general section with the caveat that they may be incorrect at best.
Thanks again,
Mark

[Andrew Davie]

Happy_Dude said:

flavoredthunder said:

if you guys spot something I misunderstood please let me know and I'll correct it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
.
The Atari 2600's processor is the 6507 chip which is a stripped down version of the 6502 processor. The 6502 is the same CPU that other systems like the NES, APPLE II and Super Nintendo used.

The snes uses a 65c816. But thats not really important is it

... but the 65C816 is really just a 6502 in wolf's clothing. It uses exactly the same opcodes and can run exactly the same binaries. The main difference is that it uses the 'illegal' opcodes to implement extra instructions, including switching in and out of a pseudo-crap '16-bit' mode which was clearly a bad idea even before they thought of it.

If you can program 6502, you can program 65C816 -- you just wouldn't want to, that's all. So I lump them all together as the same CPU. They're the same family, shall we say. The 6507 is a subset of the 6502 and the 65C816 (I spit on its grave) is a superset of the 6502.

Cheers
A

[Jonny_B]

Looks like I wasn't so late after all. Thanks for organizing the subjects and making them easier to access.

[Luigi301]

Can someone fix these links? They're looking for viewtopic.php instead of index.php.

[atwwong]

Thanks for fixing all the links! Hmmm... need time to read all this!

[Ruffsta]

flavoredthunder- i can't say what that hand gesture looks like for your avatar LMAO! sorry... was just too funny, especially with the word flavored right above it LMAO!!!


seriously tho.. no offense, it was just funny

[pajaskowiak]

Very nice, i´m startin it now...
hope i can make some progress ;P

[kamakazi]

For those getting into this...I ran across some great information about the 2600 on all aspects, including programming. Here's a sample file for you to load and look at. Please visit the website if you want more. I couldn't believe all of the information they had on just the workings of the 2600.

Here's the website link for those wanting to learn more about the 2600:

http://nocash.emubas...m#technicaldata

I found this information very interesting

Attached Files

•  TIASpecs.txt   8.94K   576 downloads

Edited by kamakazi, Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:11 AM.

[Chainclaw]

I've been reading a lot of tutorials on 2600 all over the net, and these are the most accessible I've found. When I started reading these I had already read a few other tutorials, all of which were pretty awesome, but these are my favorite tutorials yet. The take everything really slow, are really well divided into multiple topics and don't introduce a lot of new ideas at once, and seem like they will be extremely useful as reference when I need to look back and find specific info due to how they are divided into very specific topics. I'm only on session 13 (oddly enough this is the first tutorial set I've found that deals with the playfield, and I found these tutorials after a google search on atari playfield tutorials), so I look forward to reading more of these tomorrow.

Thanks for all the hard work on these tutorials! For being such a low level system, I'm finding the 2600 far more accessible than "real" work on the modern systems due to the dozens of fantastic tutorials, and I'm finding it to be a really relaxing after work hobby.

[davyK]

I'd just like to say that this is a quite brilliant information resource. I got into 6502 programming on my UK 8bit micro years ago (an Oric-1 for those who are into that scene). It was just basic object movement and stuff like that , and the screen was memory mapped so it was a good deal easier - but reading this has inspired me to have a go at something.

Excellent work - and many thanks!

Edited by davyK, Tue Oct 21, 2008 9:47 AM.

[grafixbmp]

Since the forum overhaul, many links inside the forums to other posts, will not work any longer since the addresses have changed. may want to fix them sometime.

[diogoandrei]

Awesome link center =)

[Random Terrain]

Adapted versions of the Andrew Davie Sessions and the Robert M Lessons can be viewed here:

www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories.html#assembly_language