1 hour ago, AndyMt said:
as there seems to be no way to access the other 8k (bank 1)
I don't think there would 'be' any other 8K.
As I understand it (and I should emphasize that as Bruce mentioned, its all unofficially as a result of surmises and speculations given we don't have formal docs of X8 functionality), there's no "ram under rom" under the BASIC and KERNAL on X8, so I don't see how there'd be an alternative 'page 1' of RAM at $A000 to $BFFF. There's only 128K of RAM for the entire FPGA, 64K of it is VERA vid mem and the other 64K is mapped to the 65c02 address space. If the stuff at $A000 to $BFFF is 'kernal buffers and cbdos' stuff then that is what exists at that location. There's no where else that could hold 8K of what the X16 maps in as 'bank 1' ram for that range.
Its really only a headache for those who utilize BASIC and want to use helpers / wedges etc. I would presume if you don't need kernal or basic, you can use their address space as ram (and absent kernal's need for $A000 to $BFFF you could use that too) ... but I must be clear that's just a presumption on my part. The X8 FPGA could be set up so its logic simply does not permit writes to those ranges. I have no idea how to read verilog and the sources are 6 months old anyhow.
And don't forget that even though VERA is reduced to 64K video ram on the X8, if you're not using all of it for display, some of it can be a convenient place to park 'pure data' -- sounds, gfx, music data, etc., especially with what should be fairly easy access through that 256 byte window.
In the end, I'll buy the X8 if its all that comes out, but I'm personally cheering for and wanting to hold out for the X16 as it was spec'd -- whether in through-hole or FPGA only -- for many reasons.
