The third version of the IDE for the SX28/52 microcontrollers can now be downloaded. I added the texteditor/IDE part. It just needs to be polished a bit. The windows are not centered for example and there is not much errorchecking, but assembling the files with WINE and the XGS assembler works as well as the transfer to the SX chip.
Category Archives: XGS
Hello World!
I modified gSXprog, the SX-Key command line interface to read binary files, like the ones from the SX-Key IDE and hardcoded some settings for the SX52 fuse registers. With that changes I was able to transfer a file to the XGS compiled with my Python assembler.
The Beginning Of An Assembler
I haven’t used my XGS much in the last few weeks. It would help if there were an assembler I could use in Linux, because it it inconvenient to boot Windows every time. There is a thread in the XGS forum about how to write an assembler. It seems to be surprisingly easy. The follwing code just needs to be extended to output the opcodes for every assembler command and save that to a file.
#!/usr/bin/python
import string
def t():
print "test"
table={ ';': t,'mov': t, 'DEVICE': t, 'clrb': t, 'setb': t }
f=open('/home/rainer/src/sx52/examples/tut001.src', 'r')
contents = map(string.strip, f.readlines())
for x in contents:
token=x.split(' ')
#print token
if table.has_key(token[0]):
table[token[0]]()
f.close()
My XGamestation finally arived
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The XGamestation finally arrived (on Friday already). I ordered it in September and waited nearly every day for it. The only other order which took longer was a preorder of the RPG “Legend of Faerghail”. That took about a year. Luckily I didn’t preorder Duke Nukem Forever 
.
The XGamestation wasn’t delivered by mail as I expected. I had to go to the customs office to pay the VAT. Luckily I was on holiday and could pick it up at the same day.
I was positively surprised as I opened the parcel it also contained the printed bool “Programming the SX Microcontroller”. It also contained a digital joystick, the fighter pilot type. I never liked those joysticks and threw it away before I went home. I wasn’t able to put everything into the box again after I unpacked it for the customsclerk and I still have two Competition Pros at home. A red one and a transparent blue one with autofire.
The XGamestation board looks beautiful with the red pcb, the chips and the different coloured LEDs. A transparent case with a lid on top would be great. Those lights and windows in PC cases look stupid in my opinion. But it’s ok on the XGS which is not produced in such masses. Built with love so to speak.
The demos all worked fine, I had fun playing Pac Man on it. But programming it really isn’t easy if you are used to C++ and Java at least not in the first few days. I managed to convert a demo program which just shows a blue bar from NTSC to PAL. I should now have a basic understanding how a picture is created.
