GRG16 Update

Back in March, I posted an update talking about a bunch of stuff I would do.

Nearly 5 months later, those things are pretty much done (with a couple of tweaks), and here is the jaw-dropping screenshot!!!!


What do you mean, your jaw hasn't dropped? O_o

Tbh, I can understand you being underwhelmed.  It is a singularly unimpressive screenshot, and the blank column on the right shows it doesn't even work properly.

BUT!

What the GRG-16 program is actually doing is loading and running a binary ROM file which contains the definition of the screen (set of character codes) AND assembler code to draw that definition to the screen.

So behind the scenes, there are many moving parts. 

There is an assembler which can take a text file and put together a binary ROM with instructions and data.

Then there is the GRG-16 program itself, which has a CPU, ROM device, graphics device and a 'BusController' to copy data between them.

At the minute, this is based on an SDL 'backend', but in the fullness of time, I intend to also do a Linux framebuffer backend which would enable the GRG-16 to run on seriously low-grunt hardware.

So you're still underwhelmed?  Well, thanks for reading anyway.  Just know that I am ridiculously excited by and proud of this achievement. :)

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