DZMBASIC for the DAZZLER ...

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I got it working very well on my Altair-Duino Pro computer ... 

Here is the .DSK I made for the Altair-Duino Pro computers:  http://www.brainless.org/Altair/Repository/DISK1B-DZMBASIC+WKP-Programs.DSK

Other DAZZLER manuals and software:   http://www.brainless.org/Altair/Repository.html#section12

More of the programs I've already written:  http://www.brainless.org/Altair/Repository/WKP-DAZZLER-Collection.zip

also ... while messing around I found a slight trick to turn the KSCOPE program to RED only:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FY9703sPxA

.

[John Kennedy]

Sounds like I’d better flash my AltairDuino and give it a go. None of the several versions I have are the ones with the expansion bus, but there is a Windows emulator for the hardware, right?

[Paul Hatchman]

I collected some Dazzer programs and documentation here when I was making the "pico-dazzler". Maybe there are some there you haven't already found? I found a couple of dazzler basic programs and a music program I hadn't seen anywhere else.

There is also my tetris clone you can try:  Tetris for Altair8800

Cheers,

Paul.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I tried:  TETRIS.COM and TETRISDZ.COM ... 

TETRIS.COM just plays on the console, the DAZZLER screen doesn't change.  Maybe that's an initialization or page problem?  

The TETRISDZ.COM just hangs up after listing the controls ... neither program "Q"uits ... 

.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

How about listing all the files on that CDISK04.DSK?  

.

On Thursday, June 5, 2025 at 6:45:25 PM UTC-7 phat...@gmail.com wrote:

[Paul Hatchman]

Hmm,

I'm not sure what the issue could be, or even a good way to debug it without putting a whole lot of debug statements throughout.

When it works, the DAZZLER output should be blanked on startup, and then you won't see anything until you press S when the screen is drawn.

If you were able to play the ascii terminal version (TETRIS.COM) then that would rule out anything about reading to/from SIO2.

That's a shame. Quite a few others managed to get it working, on both emulated and real dazzler cards. If I think of something, will let you know.

Re: Contents of the disk. Of course, I should have done that originally. 

[Paul Hatchman]

It just occurred to me that you said neither program quits.

Can you do anything on the terminal version except view the start screen? If not, it suggests an issue with reading data from the serial port.

I read/write directly to the ports from the SIO-2 as below. I assume you are using SIO-2?

The fact that you can see output at least means we're outputting to the correct IO port. Strange one.

The IO ports used are below in case you are able check that vs your configuration. But these are the standard defaults, so unless you've done a lot of reconfiguring of your serial output, it should be fine.

SIOSTAT EQU 16 ; status port

SIODATA EQU 17 ; data port

[udo....@freenet.de]

Same here, plays fine on Z80pack Altair VM.

[Paul Hatchman]

Really happy to hear that. A lot of sweat went into it as it was my first attempt at writing something in 8080 asm. One day I might add controller and sound support. 

(Apologies for hijacking the discussion)

On Friday, June 6, 2025 at 11:52:14 PM UTC+10 John Galt wrote:

have been playing your tetris on the dazzler for a few years works great.

:)

 

[udo....@freenet.de]

I also had a look at the source sometime, saw that it supports terminal output besides Dazzler output and tried that too. Works both and if that was your first attempt at 8080 assembler, then this is a pretty good job.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I wrote another new DAZZLER program today ... it's a DZMBASIC similar to KSCOPE the kaleidoscope program.  

You can see the demo of one variation of the program on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLryqOvn8ZU

The program is in my DAZZLER collection online:  http://www.brainless.org/Altair/Repository/WKP-DAZZLER-Collection.zip

IF you have a DAZZLER and the I/O Expansion, you can add another two lines into the program to activate the LED display board:  

915 X = INT(RND * 256)
916 OUT 255,X

.

[udo....@freenet.de]

Really, no offense meant, but this just is another example, why no one is interested in such an ancient display, showing one pixel per second in a few colors. Instead everyone is using their smartphone, tablet and such, to run around in very realist looking 3D worlds, were even water and rocks look very close to nature. And the guys kill dragons with a sword, shoot down planes, tanks, space ships and what not, and that all in realtime, with 60 fps or faster. HD colors and resolution of course.

Everyone should do for hobby what one likes to do of course, but time spend with some graphics programming would be better spend with doing that on current hardware, IMHO.

[Tom Lake]

Nostalgia is a very powerful thing. I still load the Altair BASIC interpreter from cassette from time to time. Once in a while, I even load it from paper tape on my ASR-33!

Even when I'm not quite that nostalgic, I don't use solid-state storage with my AltairDuino. I use real 8" floppy disks.
So not everyone is using their smartphone.
Were you around during the "Altair Age"? Many of us who were are trying to recapture the Zeitgeist.

[udo....@freenet.de]

Yes I was. And when I read the Article about the box I thought, pretty useless expensive thing, and went on building other things ;-) I was born in Germany, at Altair time your Dollar was strong and then there was transport, customs. In German Marks unbelievable expensive, not very popular here, sorry. Even later, when Computerland offered more complete and better Altair systems in their stores here, it was ridiculous.

[udo....@freenet.de]

While thinking about it... I don't know one single German who got an Altair in 1974/75, there must have been a few though, one system is in Nixdorf Museum here.

At work we were using a PDP-8 for lab automatization, way cool machine. Then the IMSAI 8080 came along, looked much better than the Altair, rugged designs, can be assembled in 19" rack etc etc. So we got one, maybe we could substitute the somewhat expensive PDP-8. Hooked up teletype, entered echo program with front panel, cool, works as advertised. Now, where is plenty memory, disk drives, assembler, even more essential FORTRAN compiler??? Not there yet, but all in the works ;-) Don't know anymore what happened with the system, but it did not replace the PDP-8.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I think every VCF show has had at least one display showing off the DAZZLER board in various S-100 computers.  The KSCOPE program on the video display gets a look by most people walking by.  

But this is mostly a S-100 related Google Group, not a cellphone group, not an Arduino robotics group etc.  I believe some of the modern technology is good to experiment with to make newer S-100 hardware and software, but still, this is a S-100 group at it's core which is why I post original S-100 buss project ideas.  

The DAZZLER isn't a dead-end project.  The DAZZLER is a good learning tool besides an eye entertainment system.  The DHansel DAZZLER has the cleanest, brightest DAZZLER display.  I have computers with reproduction DAZZLERs as well as the DAZZLER II so I can test my programs on each to know I'm writing real DAZZLER compatible software.  

.

[udo....@freenet.de]

r4r...@gmail.com schrieb am Sonntag, 8. Juni 2025 um 17:38:26 UTC+2:

I think every VCF show has had at least one display showing off the DAZZLER board in various S-100 computers.  The KSCOPE program on the video display gets a look by most people walking by.

That is correct and most often it is the only Dazzler program shown, it still looks interesting

nowadays. If you show the tank game or some such even to kids, they might laugh at you,

if not most go away after 30 seconds watching this ;-)

 

But this is mostly a S-100 related Google Group, not a cellphone group, not an Arduino robotics group etc.  I believe some of the modern technology is good to experiment with to make newer S-100 hardware and software, but still, this is a S-100 group at it's core which is why I post original S-100 buss project ideas.

Oh really, must have missed that, on my display the group name shows Altair-Duino, sorry.

 

  The DAZZLER isn't a dead-end project.  The DAZZLER is a good learning tool besides an eye entertainment system.  The DHansel DAZZLER has the cleanest, brightest DAZZLER display.  I have computers with reproduction DAZZLERs as well as the DAZZLER II so I can test my programs on each to know I'm writing real DAZZLER compatible software.

The RP2xxx-GEEK display has the cleanest, brightest DAZZLER display on this IPS LCD, which also has a resolution

of 240x135 at 65K colors. And we draw on it with 60 fps and not with 1 pixel/s. Sure, also can draw a DAZZLER

display, besides several other interesting things.

Likely the Hansel board is fine, I have none, but a VGA video signal is far off the quality for displays I am used too

since more than a decade. Everything HDMI here driving IPS LCD's and so on.

I am using my virtual DAZZLER displays since 2015, a decade now, open source, free for everyone, quite available

since a while. Guess how many have learned to program graphics with this ;-) Some have learned a lot about

graphics programming from implementing such emulated video boards, but this is a bit different.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I did it again ... another new DAZZLER program today ... color rays ... 

You can see the demo of one variation of the program on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9gxsuq0lRI

The program is in my DAZZLER collection online:  http://www.brainless.org/Altair/Repository/WKP-DAZZLER-Collection.zip

IF you have a DAZZLER and the I/O Expansion, you can add another two lines into the program to activate the LED display board:  

915 X = INT(RND * 256)
916 OUT 255,X

.

On Sunday, June 8, 2025 at 5:27:22 PM UTC-7 John Galt wrote:

i put my old demos for the dazzler on my github

https://github.com/johngalt01/dazzler-demos

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

None of the DAZZLERs ... Original, reproduction, DAZZLER IIs and the DHansel DAZZLER take a second to display a dot on the monitor.  KSCOPE shows hundreds if not thousands of dots moving constantly ... the programs I've been writing with DZMBASIC still run plenty fast on the DAZZLERs too.  No lag, no waiting, just neat graphics.  

.

On Sunday, June 8, 2025 at 2:42:20 AM UTC-7 udo....@freenet.de wrote:

[udo....@freenet.de]

See, I played around with DAZZLER graphics long before you even knew that such a device exist. So I sure know how the original kscope program from Li-chen Wang works and looks like.

Then I clicked on your video, that tries to reproduce the effect to some degree with a BASIC program, which of course is very slow. I have some doubts that such a step backwards is any good, but this is just me, feel free to disagree, I don't want to discuss this further.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Udo ... I saw the DAZZLER displays back in about 1976 or 1977 when all the computer stores had them on display.  

My program wasn't trying to copy the KSCOPE.COM program, but be a new way to make symmetrical designs on the DAZZLER display.  

I'm not sure why you see it "slow"?  It works exactly as is was designed for on my DAZZLERs.  I even experimented with adding more delays in the program.  

.

[udo....@freenet.de]

Then sorry about that, I played with the DAZZLER a few years later than you saw it, when the Cromemco systems became available in Germany, they were very popular here. Probably was 1978 or 79, don't know anymore.

So you delay the graphics output even more with the interpreter being slow already, amazing. Each to their own I guess.