Instructor Notes

February 18, 2008

quote

"The mind's essence is creativity and the ability to improvise -- this is what demarcates humans brains from computer software." (Garry Kasparov 2003)

Hello Sprite

• assignment: due Sunday March 2 midnight
• demonstration
  • Interrupts
  • Assembler commands

  • GameBoy video

Discussion of Hello GameBoy assignment

• due by Tues midnight...
• Clint: scrolling in both directions
• Korey Kemnitz: blink
• Tommy: altering ibmpc1.inc

• August & Thinh: resubmit?

• Alec: good example of asking questions that the assignment brought up
• reminders:
  • post should include your name in the title

  • both the binary and the source in 1 post

  • a short description of what the program does
• dev tools install

GameBoy Architecture

get it all from gbspec.txt and gbhw.inc

Hello I/O

• gbspec lines 1016 to end of document
• I/O registers from $FF00 to $FF4B, and $FFFF (gbspec.txt lines 1016 to the end)
  • timer, read joy pad, serial data, sound, video modes, window placement, etc.

Hello Video

see ECE238Spr08/tutorials/GameBoyVideo

Assembler commands

• help: asm.htm
• MACRO: asm/macro.htm
• SET, PRINT, RSSET, HOME, BSS, .labels (see line 101 in hello-world.asm for example),
• walkthrough of hello-sprite.inc:

  • LoByteVar sort of like declaring variables in c

  • declaration of a structure
• show docs for rgbds

Interrupts

• Z80 Interrupt vector not on the GameBoy

• interrupt addresses: gbspec.txt lines 156-180
  • vblank
  • timer (rTMA, rTAC (gbspec lines 1137 - 1155)

  • serial transfer (for connecting multiple GameBoys, for example)

for another class

• instruction types
• more on addressing modes (TRS-80 book page 41 chap 3)