Transfer BASIC program

Seb Greiner

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Jan 26, 2020, 6:06:17 AM1/26/20

to kerberos-midi

Hi,

I'm just a retro computing fan and never developed anything for C64. Now I have Kerberos, which I only want to use as a MIDI keyboard for a PC (for remote control reasons, nothing music related...). I saw the BASIC examples in the developer info and it should be very easy to program a routine which transforms keystrokes into outgoing MIDI notes. But how do I save a BASIC program, that I'm able to transfer it via the app? .prg didn't work, because "Start from slot" only opened the "About" message and music on top of the C64 BASIC start screen and other endings aren't accepted by the app.

Regards

Seb

Frank Buss

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Jan 26, 2020, 10:06:59 AM1/26/20

to kerberos-midi

First you can save the PRG file on the Kerberos cartridge with the Kerberos App and "Flash PRG", as described in the User's Guide. Then it should be possible to press "S" in the menu to run "Start from slot" and then select the program you want to start. Sounds odd that the About screen is started then. Can you test it with another PRG file? Does your PRG file work in VICE?

BTW, an easy way to develop and test your BASIC programs is to use VICE. You can enable MIDI with "Settings->Cartridge I/O settings->MIDI settings" and then for example DATEL, which you can also select in the Kerberos App for the MIDI emulation when saving your program to a slot. Then you can write and test your program in VICE, and then save it on PC (with "Settings->Peripheral Settings->Driver 8->Directory", and then save"test.prg",8), and then transfer it to the Kerberos cartridge. With "Send PRG and start, no flash", you can test it on the C64 without saving to flash as well.

This is the BASIC demo program from the Developer's Guide, which sends note-on/note-off events to MIDI out: http://www.frank-buss.de/kerberos/notes.prg

Seb Greiner

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Jan 27, 2020, 6:33:18 AM1/27/20

to kerberos-midi

Hi Frank,

thanks for your quick response. I'm sorry, but as I said, I never developed for C64 and made a mistake. I wrote the BASIC script in a text editor and tried to save a text file with ASCII encoding. Obviously a C64's BASIC files are not normal text files in modern sense. I downloaded VICE and saved the file to my local file system, transferred it to the Kerberos and of course it worked. Sorry for that...