Programming the Atari 2600 Video Computer System (Live)

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Published: Tuesday, 11 February 2014 00:00

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At the end of January I delivered a 35 minutes presentation about the Atari Video Computer System (VCS, Stella, 2600), its history and architecture and how to code for it using WUDSN IDE. Especially the live coding part was very appreciated by the audience. Changing a single line of code and seeing immediately what happens brings you as close a possible to the machine. The recording of the presentation is now available on my youtube channel. The slides (PDF) and the sources can be downloaded from here. I recommend you open the slides in parallel, so you can read the content and code correctly. Thanks to Julien for the event and SvOlli for the slide templates.

New zero installation distribution of WUDSN IDE for 32-bit

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Published: Wednesday, 05 February 2014 00:00

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I've received requests to also provide a 32-bit version of the zero installation distribution. And after figuring out how I can do that without doing everything twice, it's ready for download: wudsn-ide-win32.zip. I have no real 32-bit hardware to test it, so please provide feedback. Thanks also to Timothy, Kevin and Fredrick for the feedback and using WUDSN IDE on Mac OS X. I have extended to FAQs accordingly. 

New FAQs:

• Why is the "Assembler" section not visible in the preferences? 
  If the WUDSN IDE specific sections and features are not visible after a successful installation, you are probably using an outdated Java version. This seems to be a common problem on Mac OS X. Make sure you have Java 1.7 installed and that Eclipse is started using that version. Java 1.6 is out of maintenance since 2013/02 .
• Why do I get "Unable to read repository at ... Read timed out" when accessing the update site? 
  This error message indicates the the Eclipse program is somehow blocked from accessing the site. If you are behind a proxy server, check the general proxy server setttings in the Eclipse preferences. If you use a firewall or internet security tool, make sure "Eclipse.exe", "java.exe", "javaw.exe" or the corresponding program on your host platform are allowed to cannot to the internet. Maybe you have to change the settings, so you are prompted to allow access interactively

WUDSN IDE update 1.6.5 released

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Published: Thursday, 02 January 2014 00:00

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A new version of the IDE is available via the update site and as zero installation download now. The main reason for this release is that I could finally track down the bug in the creation of the disk images for Apple II. 

Fixes

• Automatic creation of ".DSK" disk images for Apple II now works correctly
• Dirty indicator in Graphics Editor is now updated correctly

New detailed documentation section "Annotations for Compiling"

• com.wudsn.ide.asm.hardware for compiling with different target platforms
• com.wudsn.ide.asm.mainsourcefile for compiling complex projects with include files
• Some more annotations which are planned for the next release

New and extended FAQs:

• How to I associate my source file extensions with the correct editor?
• Why do I have to put ;@com.wudsn.ide.asm.hardware=...in the source file?
• How do I compile into disk images?
• How can I use other emulators?

New zero installation distribution of WUDSN IDE

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Published: Wednesday, 18 December 2013 00:00

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One of the reasons why I created WUDSN IDE is to make it easy for people to (re)start working with 6502 assembly for their beloved Atari, C64 or other machines. As you could already see in the Tutorial part 1 , the installation from scratch is easy and fast.

To make your initial steps even easier, I now provide a ready to run zero installation distribution wudsn-ide-win64.zip for Windows 64 bit operating systems. It contains the Eclipse Platform, the latest stable version of WUDSN IDE plugin, all supported compilers and an emulator for each supported platform. All paths to folders, compilers and emulators are pre-configured. Unpack the content of this archive to the directory "C:\jac\wudsn" and click the "WUDSN IDE" link - That's all. Eclipse will open with the predefined workspace that contains "Hello World" examples for different platforms. You can adapt, compile and run the examples with a single click.