Dispatches from the Anarchic Collective

A Feersum orchestra

If you've read Line out for NanoBeast you'll have seen my successful attempt to build a line out interface for my Feersum NanoBeast. The same circuit can be used on the MicroBeast, although it requires some delicate surgery to get it connected up as the MicroBeast

Line out for NanoBeast

Recently I was doing some one-bit beeping on my borrowed NanoBeast and comparing it to my MicroBeast. An unfair comparison because the MicroBeast has been modified to provide a line output, which is connected to some beefy speakers, and it sounds pretty good. Andy pointed out that there's

AntForth 3.3.0 released

I made a new release of AntForth, because there are a couple of words I need for another project. There were a few digressions and bugfixes along the way! Get it here. Release notes: antforth v3.3.0 Twelve new words, stack-underflow checks on every word that takes arguments, and

Make a PCB for the Kempston joystick interface

The joystick interface we played with in Testing the Kempston compatible joystick interface works beautifully, but it is somewhat delicate. Even moving the MicroBeast a couple of feet or so runs the risk of connecting wires becoming dislodged, and those absurd flying resistors need the flimsiest of excuses to short

uc80 C compiler for z80 CP/M

Recently I covered the Minz retro-compiler which made some grand claims about code size and performance, but wasn't quite able to back them up. Not yet at any rate, but it's exciting technology that I'll keep my eye on. Meanwhile, I stumbled across uc80

Minz retro-compiler

Recently I've been on a mission to find relatively modern languages that compile to z80 (and bonus marks for compiling on a z80), my most promising candidate so far being Cowgol. While trawling through github, I discovered Minz ("mints") which describes itself as: Modern Programming Language

Adventures with Cowgol

I've written two languages so far for the MicroBeast: AntForth, which I use heavily every day for experimentation, and another Lua-like language which is part of a super-secret future project that is still under wraps. But I'm always on the lookout for new projects, and fancied

Testing the Kempston compatible joystick interface

In part 2 we built our interface hardware, now it's time to try to read it from the MicroBeast! To do that, we'll have to actually connect it to a MicroBeast, so we'd better clear up the support circuitry we've been using

Making a Kempston compatible joystick interface

In this post, we'll make our own version of the Kempston joystick interface that I described in part 1. We'll make a slight modification: full address decoding, to avoid any future resource conflicts. We'll keep the 74HC138N (3-to-8 decoder) for decoding the control signals,

The Kempston joystick interface

In the 80s, everyone who was a serious ZX Spectrum nerd had the Kempston joystick interface. If you were unfortunate enough that your parents bought you some Protek, DK'Tronix or (horrors!) Interface II nonsense, you kept quiet about it: that kind of gear would get you laughed off

Sexing your Beasts

The new Feersum Technology NanoBeast is nearly with us! It shares a lot of DNA with the MicroBeast, but there are some subtle differences that might call for special-case handling in any generic cross-beast software. How do we go about that? Examining the firmware The easiest approach is to look

SLIDE v0.6.1 released

I just released version 0.6.1 of SLIDE, the PC<-->Beast serial file transfer tool. This version of SLIDE brings it up to date with the latest version of the SLIDE Protocol spec. The headline item is the introduction of a "command channel" which