question

turmanoidgiz · Post by **turmanoidgiz** » Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:49 am

will the commander x16 come pre-installed with attack of the petscii robots?

kliepatsch · Post by **kliepatsch** » Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:15 pm

I guess not. The software that is on the system is stored in the read-only-memory (ROM), and contains the Kernal, BASIC and perhaps other utilities. Petscii Robots is designed to be loaded into RAM and run from there. Most notably, it is larger than 16 kB (even the shareware version is more than 18 kB, so the full version will be more than that https://www.commanderx16.com/forum/index.php?/files/file/156-attack-of-the-petscii-robots-shareware/). Since ROM only occupies 16 kB of address space, it would be very hard to redesign the game to run out of ROM.

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:08 pm

7 hours ago, kliepatsch said:

I guess not. The software that is on the system is stored in the read-only-memory (ROM), and contains the Kernal, BASIC and perhaps other utilities. Petscii Robots is designed to be loaded into RAM and run from there. Most notably, it is larger than 16 kB (even the shareware version is more than 18 kB, so the full version will be more than that https://www.commanderx16.com/forum/index.php?/files/file/156-attack-of-the-petscii-robots-shareware/). Since ROM only occupies 16 kB of address space, it would be very hard to redesign the game to run out of ROM.

You seem to be saying that if the CX16 comes with a copy of Attack of the Petscii Robots, it makes a lot more sense to include it on a pack-in SD card rather than install it into two or three segments of ROM.

It actually wouldn't be all that challenging to install it on ROM, since one routine to copy data into RAM from the first segment and then call a parallel routine in both segments to switch to the second ROM which has the core code and start the game going would work fine.

But in the old saying, "the game is not worth the candle": it would be simpler to simply promise to include the shareware version, and perhaps have bundling the full version with all crowdfunded consoles as a stretch goal for the crowdfunding campaign.

kliepatsch · Post by **kliepatsch** » Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:19 pm

10 minutes ago, BruceMcF said:

It actually wouldn't be all that challenging to install it on ROM, since one routine to copy data into RAM from the first segment and then call a parallel routine in both segments to switch to the second ROM which has the core code and start the game going would work fine.

True. Didn't think of that.

Lorin Millsap · Post by **Lorin Millsap** » Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:14 pm

I guess not. The software that is on the system is stored in the read-only-memory (ROM), and contains the Kernal, BASIC and perhaps other utilities. Petscii Robots is designed to be loaded into RAM and run from there. Most notably, it is larger than 16 kB (even the shareware version is more than 18 kB, so the full version will be more than that https://www.commanderx16.com/forum/index.php?/files/file/156-attack-of-the-petscii-robots-shareware/). Since ROM only occupies 16 kB of address space, it would be very hard to redesign the game to run out of ROM.

It would be even larger than that since the X16 version will be designed to take advantage of the X16 graphics and sound capabilities which would be more resource intensive than the Commodore versions.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Perifractic · Post by **Perifractic** » Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:20 pm

Current thinking is to include an SD Card with a few games and programs bundled. If we do that will be one of them.