Commander X16

I imagine the actual game engine would use key-down and key-up events instead of character input events, which would allow diagonals.

There's something about printing random characters in random colors all over the screen that really brings me back to being a kid messing around in qbasic.

It's not awkward at all. In fact, I was certain keyboard movement + mouse aiming was a common control scheme for 2D shooting games, twin-stick or otherwise. I know this is just for demonstration purposes, but you would definitely want to change the mouse cursor to something more see-through, like a ...

If multiple ATX power supplies are immediately powering off after powering on, that makes me think there's a short on the board somewhere.

By any chance, did you try powering up your board before it went into the case?

After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip Sorry if I'm late to this party. :P Based on what I could find, Zilog themselves will no longer produce classical DIP Z80s, though a modern variant, the eZ80, will still be produced, albeit in a different package. Aside...

Somehow the KERNAL knows when IO is present (I still haven't wrapped my head around how it does this). For instance, if I don't have the card in a slot and I try to read from say $9f60, I will get a $9f back. If the card is in and I have the jumper set to IO3, I will get the correct value from the ...

It depends, the IEC port has a RST line so when the host is reset, all of the devices are reset too. I'd imagine the X16 passes its reset signal through to the IEC port as well (I know the C128 does), but I haven't checked so I don't know for sure.

Is it possible that the X16 is booting faster than the 1541 can initialize? The starting handshake for communications is usually something like this: Host (C64 or X16) pulls CLK low. Devices pull DATA low. Host takes as long as it needs, then releases CLK when ready. Devices take as long as they nee...

This sounds like BASIC++, like what C++ is to C.

In other words, totally doable, but maybe better suited to one of the IDEs that's baked into the ROM.

I can confirm via the Kernal ROM's source code that device 8 is the SD card if and only if an SD card is inserted, and goes to the IEC port if not. It's probably already clear, but the Kernal is trying to load "AUTOBOOT.X16" from device 8 when the computer boots, and it clearly seems to be...