Commander X16

Hi everyone

I'm Andy (Andreas, actually) from Switzerland. Back in the 80ies I came into computing because of my father.

It all started with a Texas Instruments TI99/4A he bought in 1982, I was 12 by then. So I did some Basic programming, even got a little into assembler. The machine was quite limited, but I loved it - it did what I told it to do! Mostly that was also what I wanted it to do... 

We then moved on to a Commodore SX64 (the 'portable' version of the C64) in 1984, although that was my fathers machine he brought home from the office frequently. The amount of software and games for that machine was quite overwhelming.

In 1986 we then got an Atari ST. For me this was just plain magic! With it's large memory, colorful graphics and (not so much sound) capabilities it was just crazy! I there got into programming with structured languages like Pascal and C - there I decided to go into computer science as a profession.

Around 1989 onwards the IBM compatibles took over and I started my study. That was the time when computers kind of lost their magic for me... Don't know, but somehow they were just boring tools which did their job. But they were never as exciting again. Just boring grey boxes which initially didn't even compare with the Atari ST.

So now I stumbled over this project here - and I get it! 8 bit computers like the C64 or to some extend the original Atari ST were simple and actually easy to understand. My dayjob doesn't involve programming any more - and I miss it. Tinkering with IoT stuff and my smart home setup is fun, yes, but not as rewarding as getting the maximung out of a limited machine. 

I'm now thinking about getting into developing for the X16 - just don't know what it should be yet... so let's see what happens ?...

So I've made up my mind what to do. I'll start by implementing a Breakout/Arkanoid alike game in C using cc65 and maybe some assembler ?. I think this will get me into sprites and tiled graphics. Some very early prototype is already working, showing some sprites, accessing the mouse and switching video modes etc. It was fun digging into the VERA documentation and fiddling with bit fields again...

I'll post a Prg when there is something playable.