pics | ||
Apple2eFont7x8.png | ||
c_2_fontbin.c | ||
code_0300.bin | ||
font_codepage_437_8x8.png | ||
font_codepage_437_9x16.png | ||
font.bin | ||
font.h | ||
hgr_scroll_up.bin | ||
hgrtable.bin | ||
image_2_c.html | ||
image_2_hex.html | ||
README.md | ||
scroll_hgr_up_pixel.html |
#Apple ][ //e HGR Font 6502 Assembly Language Tutorial
Revision: 54, Jan 27, 2016.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Problem
- The Solution
- Hard-Coded: A
- Functions we want & will write
- Quirks of the Apple HGR screen
- Non-Linear Memory
- No FONT data in ROM
- HGR bytes are reversed
- Half-pixel shift
- Font Data
- Raw Font Data
- Image to Font Data (JavaScript)
- DrawChar()
- Font -> Screen Memory Trace
- DrawChar() version 1
- X Cursor Position
- CursorCol()
- Introduction to Optimization
- Recap - Listing 5
- DrawChar() version 2
- DrawChar() version 3
- Character Inspector
- Character Inspector version 2
- Character Inspector version 3
- Y Cursor Position
- Natural Params SetCursorColRow()
- DrawString()
- Copy text screen to HGR
- Exercises
- Exercise 1: ScrollHgrUpLine()
- Exercise 2: ScrollHgrUpPixel()
- Recap - Font Draw
- Other Fonts
- Fat Stroke Fonts
- Beautiful Boot
- What's Next?
- Conclusion
- Solutions
- Solution 1: ScrollHgrUpLine()
- Solution 2: ScrollHgrUpPixel()
- References
- Misc. Utilities and Files
- TODO:
Introduction
A lot of people in comp.sys.apple2.programmer and other places on the internet have wondered how to "print" text onto the Apple's High Resolution Graphics (HGR) screen. Here's a tutorial on "6502 Font Blitting."
Note: We will prefix hex numbers with $
(or C's notation of 0x
). We will prefix binary numbers with %
.
Fire up your favorite Apple emulator (cough AppleWin) or real hardware.
If you use:
-
AppleWin press
F2
(to reboot),Ctrl-F2
to Ctrl-Reset, and then pressF9
until you get a Monochrome screen. -
Jace press
Ctrl-Delete
to reset. -
You will also need the Java JRE.
-
On OSX, Jace has an copy-paste bug and won't paste in the first line of the clipboard. :-/(Update: Fixed! Thanks Blurry!) -
Virtual II press
Ctrl-F12
to reset.
There are other emulators written in JavaScript but they are poor due to 2 reasons:
- Don't support paste -- you'll be forced to manually enter in the hex code. :-/ (Yeah, right!
- Don't emulate the half-pixel shift of real hardware at all -- not an issue, but you won't see the full effect for one section.
Some emulators that run in the browser:
-
Apple 2 js make sure you select:
-
Options, [x] Green Screen
Note: If you are using an emulator -- I've added "comments" in the lines of machine code you would paste by having a semi-colon and a description at the end of the line.
- You may want to mute your sound since the Apple will beep at the semi-colon "comments" as that part of the input is not tehcnically valid input. (The rest of the line WILL be processed, though.)
The Problem
When you are at the Applesoft ]
prompt type in (or paste) the following:
CALL-151
FC58G
400:41
We used the ASCII character A
which has a hex value 0x41. Hmm, OK, so we see an A
but why is it flashing??
**Note**: If you use AppleWin, select the lines, copy, switch back to the emulator, and press Shift-Insert to paste.
The 40x24 text screen of the Apple is "memory-mapped" -- that is by directly setting memory the Video Controller circuitry will read those contents and display that. In later computers this video ram
or VRAM
is not directly accessible by the CPU; all the CPU can do is set registers
of the GPU.
One of the quirks of the Apple is that it has support for Inverse, Flashing, and Normal characters. It technically uses High-Bit ASCII to show normal characters. This doesn't really concern us but just so you understand:
400:01 41 C1
The control characters show up in inverse
, ASCII characters show up flashing
, and our normal character requires the high bit to be set. 0x41 + 080 = 0xC1.
A slight fun diversion: If you are on an enhanced Apple //e or //c we can activate a 2nd character set called `Mouse Text`. This replaces all the flashing text with special drawing charactes:
C00F:1
You should see the flashing A
has been replaced with an open apple symbol.
To turn Mouse Text
off:
C00E:1
Anyways, back to drawing text.
If we switch to the HGR screen and tried to enter in 0x41 what would happen? (Ignore the beeping the emulator will make.)
F399G ; `TEXT`
F3E2G ; `HGR`
2000:41 ; A
Hmm, that doesn't look like an A
at all, only gibberish -- 2 dots. :-/ (If you see 2 magenta dots ignore the color for now.)
The Solution:
Hard-Coded: A
Enter in:
2000:4
2400:A
2800:11
2C00:11
3000:1F
3400:11
3800:11
Voila!
You should see an uppercase A appear in the top left of the HGR screen.
Magic? :-)
Nah, just Computer Science. :-)
The first question you probably have is "How did I know what bytes to use?" We'll get to that in a second.
Functions we want & will write
When we are done we will have 6502 assembly code that implements the equivalent of these C functions names:
void DrawChar();
void DrawCharCol( char c, int col );
void DrawCharColRow( char c, int col, int row );
void SetCursorRow( int row );
void SetCursorColRow3( int col, int row );
void SetCursorCol( int col );
void IncCursorCol();
void DrawHexByte( char c );
void DrawString( char *text );
void CopyTextToHGR();
void ScrollHgrUpPixel();
Quirks of the Apple HGR screen
There are couple of things we need to discuss first. The preceding example showed that the Apple's TEXT and HGR screen behaves a little "funky." The Apple's, shall we say, esoteric use of hardware, is one of the reasons us fans love (or hate) it. "There are 4 lights!" Er, There are 4 things that stand out:
Non-Linear Memory
First, we should notice that video memory is non-linear. :-( You'll want to get familiar with the HGR address for the various Y scanlines:
"Understanding the Apple II", page 5-14 has this table HGR Memory-mapped IO
:
With all the decimal cruft removed:
Table 1: HGR Y Address for every scanline
Y | Address | Y | Address | Y | Address | Screen Hole | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | $2000 | 64 | $2028 | 128 | $2050 | $2078..$207F | |||
1 | $2400 | 65 | $2428 | 129 | $2450 | $2478..$247F | |||
2 | $2800 | 66 | $2828 | 130 | $2850 | $2878..$287F | |||
3 | $2C00 | 67 | $2C28 | 131 | $2C50 | $2C78..$2C7F | |||
4 | $3000 | 68 | $3028 | 132 | $3050 | $3078..$307F | |||
5 | $3400 | 69 | $3428 | 133 | $3450 | $3478..$347F | |||
6 | $3800 | 70 | $3828 | 134 | $3850 | $3878..$387F | |||
7 | $3C00 | 71 | $3C28 | 135 | $3C50 | $3C78..$3C7F | |||
8 | $2080 | 72 | $20A8 | 136 | $20D0 | $20F8..$20FF | |||
9 | $2480 | 73 | $24A8 | 137 | $24D0 | $24F8..$24FF | |||
10 | $2880 | 74 | $28A8 | 138 | $28D0 | $28F8..$28FF | |||
11 | $2C80 | 75 | $2CA8 | 139 | $2CD0 | $2CF8..$2CFF | |||
12 | $3080 | 76 | $30A8 | 140 | $30D0 | $30F8..$30FF | |||
13 | $3480 | 77 | $34A8 | 141 | $34D0 | $34F8..$34FF | |||
14 | $3880 | 78 | $38A8 | 142 | $38D0 | $38F8..$38FF | |||
15 | $3C80 | 79 | $3CA8 | 143 | $3CD0 | $3CF8..$3CFF | |||
16 | $2100 | 80 | $2128 | 144 | $2150 | $2178..$217F | |||
17 | $2500 | 81 | $2528 | 145 | $2550 | $2578..$257F | |||
18 | $2900 | 82 | $2928 | 146 | $2950 | $2978..$297F | |||
19 | $2D00 | 83 | $2D28 | 147 | $2D50 | $2D78..$2D7F | |||
20 | $3100 | 84 | $3128 | 148 | $3150 | $3178..$317F | |||
21 | $3500 | 85 | $3528 | 149 | $3550 | $3578..$357F | |||
22 | $3900 | 86 | $3928 | 150 | $3950 | $3978..$397F | |||
23 | $3D00 | 87 | $3D28 | 151 | $3D50 | $3D78..$3D7F | |||
24 | $2180 | 88 | $21A8 | 152 | $21D0 | $21F8..$21FF | |||
25 | $2580 | 89 | $25A8 | 153 | $25D0 | $25F8..$25FF | |||
26 | $2980 | 90 | $29A8 | 154 | $29D0 | $29F8..$29FF | |||
27 | $2D80 | 91 | $2DA8 | 155 | $2DD0 | $2DF8..$2DFF | |||
28 | $3180 | 92 | $31A8 | 156 | $31D0 | $31F8..$31FF | |||
29 | $3580 | 93 | $35A8 | 157 | $35D0 | $35F8..$35FF | |||
30 | $3980 | 94 | $39A8 | 158 | $39D0 | $39F8..$39FF | |||
31 | $3D80 | 95 | $3DA8 | 159 | $3DD0 | $3DF8..$3DFF | |||
32 | $2200 | 96 | $2228 | 160 | $2250 | $2278..$227F | |||
33 | $2600 | 97 | $2628 | 161 | $2650 | $2678..$267F | |||
34 | $2A00 | 98 | $2A28 | 162 | $2A50 | $2A78..$2A7F | |||
35 | $2E00 | 99 | $2E28 | 163 | $2E50 | $2E78..$2E7F | |||
36 | $3200 | 100 | $3228 | 164 | $3250 | $3278..$327F | |||
37 | $3600 | 101 | $3628 | 165 | $3650 | $3678..$367F | |||
38 | $3A00 | 102 | $3A28 | 166 | $3A50 | $3A78..$3A7F | |||
39 | $3E00 | 103 | $3E28 | 167 | $3E50 | $3E78..$3E7F | |||
40 | $2280 | 104 | $22A8 | 168 | $22D0 | $22F8..$22FF | |||
41 | $2680 | 105 | $26A8 | 169 | $26D0 | $26F8..$26FF | |||
42 | $2A80 | 106 | $2AA8 | 170 | $2AD0 | $2AF8..$2AFF | |||
43 | $2E80 | 107 | $2EA8 | 171 | $2ED0 | $2EF8..$2EFF | |||
44 | $3280 | 108 | $32A8 | 172 | $32D0 | $32F8..$32FF | |||
45 | $3680 | 109 | $36A8 | 173 | $36D0 | $36F8..$36FF | |||
46 | $3A80 | 110 | $3AA8 | 174 | $3AD0 | $3AF8..$3AFF | |||
47 | $3E80 | 111 | $3EA8 | 175 | $3ED0 | $3EF8..$3EFF | |||
48 | $2300 | 112 | $2328 | 176 | $2350 | $2378..$237F | |||
49 | $2700 | 113 | $2728 | 177 | $2750 | $2778..$277F | |||
50 | $2B00 | 114 | $2B28 | 178 | $2B50 | $2B78..$2B7F | |||
51 | $2F00 | 115 | $2F28 | 179 | $2F50 | $2F78..$2F7F | |||
52 | $3300 | 116 | $3328 | 180 | $3350 | $3378..$337F | |||
53 | $3700 | 117 | $3728 | 181 | $3750 | $3778..$377F | |||
54 | $3B00 | 118 | $3B28 | 182 | $3B50 | $3B78..$3B7F | |||
55 | $3F00 | 119 | $3F28 | 183 | $3F50 | $3F78..$3F7F | |||
56 | $2380 | 120 | $23A8 | 184 | $23D0 | $23F8..$23FF | |||
57 | $2780 | 121 | $27A8 | 185 | $27D0 | $27F8..$27FF | |||
58 | $2B80 | 122 | $2BA8 | 186 | $2BD0 | $2BF8..$2BFF | |||
59 | $2F80 | 123 | $2FA8 | 187 | $2FD0 | $2FF8..$2FFF | |||
60 | $3380 | 124 | $33A8 | 188 | $33D0 | $33F8..$33FF | |||
61 | $3780 | 125 | $37A8 | 189 | $37D0 | $37F8..$37FF | |||
62 | $3B80 | 126 | $3BA8 | 190 | $3BD0 | $3BF8..$3BFF | |||
63 | $3F80 | 127 | $3FA8 | 191 | $3FD0 | $3FF8..$3FFF |
Don't worry if the address pattern makes no sense right now -- we'll reveal that later -- but if you're curiuous it is this line using integer math:
hgr[ y ] = 0x2000 + (y/64)*0x28 + (y%8)*0x400 + ((y/8)&7)*0x80;
Here's the JavaScript source code to generate a bare-bones table:
function int2pad( n, pad )
{
return (Array( pad+1 ).join(' ') + n).slice(-pad);
}
function word2hex$( w )
{
return "$" + (" " + w.toString(16).toUpperCase()).slice(-4);
}
var hgr = [];
for( var y = 0; y < 193; ++y ) // Intentional 1 scanline too many!
hgr[ y ] = 0x2000 + ((y/64)|0)*0x28 + ((y%8)|0)*0x400 + ((y/8)&7)*0x80;
var text = "", s = " | ";
for( y = 0; y < 64; ++y )
{
var a0 = hgr[ y + 0 ];
var a1 = hgr[ y + 64 ];
var a2 = hgr[ y + 128 ];
text += "| "
+ int2pad( y + 0, 3 ) + s + word2hex$( a0 ) + s
+ int2pad( y + 64, 3 ) + s + word2hex$( a1 ) + s
+ int2pad( y + 128, 3 ) + s + word2hex$( a2 ) + s
+ word2hex$( a2 + 40 ) + ".."
+ word2hex$( a2 + 47 ) + " |\n";
}
console.log( text );
No FONT data in ROM
Second, each glyph in the Apple font is in a 7x8 cell -- the leading line on the bottom is usually blank but we'll store that too so that we have a true "underline" and bottom descender on 'j', 'y', etc. How do we know this?
The TEXT
screen is 40x24 characters. The high resolution graphics HGR
screen is 280x192.
Char Width (px/character) = Screen Width (px) / Columns (characters) = 280/40 = 7
Char Height (px/character) = Screen Height (px) / Rows (characters) = 192/24 = 8
Unfortunately, the data for the TEXT ROM 25123 hardware chip is not accessible from the 6502 unlike say the IBM PC BIOS Character Sets. :-/ T his means you will need to manually enter in the 8 bytes/character. :-( The good news is that I've already done this so you can copy / paste. :-)
You can find a picture of the Apple ][ ROM text font on Page 8-9, Figure 8.4 of "Understanding the Apple ][":
We're actually going to use the Apple //e ROM text font since it has lower case and the famous "Mouse Text" glyphs. See Page 8-25, Figure 8.8 of "Understanding the Apple //e":
HGR bytes are reversed
Third, the video scanner for HGR mode scans bits in reverse. :-/ This means that we need to "flip" the bits in a byte if we want it to appear properly. Not hard, just inconvenient. We'll store the pre-flipped bits so we don't have to do this at run-time. :-)
For example, If we want these 4 scan-lines of \
:
X____
_X___
__X__
___X_
You would normally encode the pixels in binary as:
%1000_0000 = $80
%0100_0000 = $40
%0010_0000 = $20
%0001_0000 = $10
And if we tried entering in:
2100:80
2500:40
2900:20
2D00:10
We would only get:
- 3 scanlines instead of the expected 4 (see the next point), and
- the image would be flipped along the left-right (X axis) like this:
/
On the Apple we need to flip each byte:
%0000_0001 = $01
%0000_0010 = $02
%0000_0100 = $04
%0000_1000 = $08
Enter in:
2200:1
2600:2
2A00:4
2E00:8
And we see the correct: \
Half-pixel shift
Fourth, we mentioned above that when we entered in $80 that the Apple didn't display any pixels for this byte. This is because the Apple uses the high-bit as a flag to shift that group of 7 pixels over HALF a pixel. (Yes, half a pixel.) This means the monochrome effective resolution is a pseudo 560x192. We can't individually access every 560 pixels, only part of them so it is not a "true" 560 resolution. :-( What this means in practice is that we can use this half-pixel shift / byte to get very smooth slopes for Y, etc. :-)
For example this will give us a "sharp" Y
:
2300:22
2700:22
2B00:14
2F00:8
3300:8
3700:8
3B00:8
If we change the 2nd and 4th scan line to use this half-pixel shift we can't just set the high bit as we won't get quite the correct image:
Enter in: (Again, ignore the beeping.)
2302:22
2702:A2 ;
2B02:14
2F02:88 ;
3302:8
3702:8
3B02:8
We actually also need to move the right-edge pixel of these 2 scanlines over left by 1 pixel so it appears in the correct location when shifted.
Enter in:
2304:22
2704:92 ;
2B04:14
2F04:8C ;
3304:8
3704:8
3B04:8
Ah-ha! We've got a "smooth" Y
.
Note: The emulators Virtual ][
and Apple2js
are broken emulators. They do not emulate the half-pixel shift of real hardware at all. This is another reason we won't worry about it for now.
We're going to ignore the half-pixel shift since it is easy to touch up the font data later if we wish.
At the beginning we said to view the HGR screen in monochrome. Notice how the extra colors make the Hi-Res text much harder to read. If you are running on real hardware the Apple Color Composite Monitor had a push-button on the front to toggle the screen between color and monochrome. Now we know why!
Font Data
Alrighty then, let's get the font data!
Here is a picture of the Apple //e character set:
If we wanted only uppercase ASCII we could get away with 4 rows of 16 characters (symbols, numbers, letters) = 64 glyphs:
64 glyphs * 8 bytes/glyph = 512 bytes.
Since the font data chews up memory anyways we'll "splurge" and use the full 128 ASCII glyphs:
128 glyphs * 8 bytes/glyph = 1024 bytes = 1K of data.
Ouch! We're using 1K of our precious 64K. Now we know why all those font glyphs was in a ROM chip.
Raw Font Data
I've saved you the trouble of converting all the pixels to hex. :-)
Enter in (or download the raw binary font.bin and with AppleWin press F7
, type bload font.bin,6000
, press F7
):
6000:10 08 36 7F 3F 3F 7E 36 '@'^
6008:10 08 36 41 21 21 4A 36 'A'^
6010:00 00 02 06 0E 1E 36 42 'B'^
6018:7F 22 14 08 08 14 2A 7F 'C'^
6020:00 40 20 11 0A 04 04 00 'D'^
6028:7F 3F 5F 6C 75 7B 7B 7F 'E'^
6030:70 60 7E 31 79 30 3F 02 'F'^
6038:00 18 07 00 07 0C 08 70 'G'^
6040:08 04 02 7F 02 04 08 00 'H'^
6048:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 2A 'I'^
6050:08 08 08 08 49 2A 1C 08 'J'^
6058:08 1C 2A 49 08 08 08 08 'K'^
6060:7F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 'L'^
6068:40 40 40 44 46 7F 06 04 'M'^
6070:3F 3F 3F 3F 3F 3F 3F 3F 'N'^
6078:13 18 1C 7E 1C 18 10 6F 'O'^
6080:64 0C 1C 3F 1C 0C 04 7B 'P'^
6088:40 48 08 7F 3E 1C 48 40 'Q'^
6090:40 48 1C 3E 7E 08 48 40 'R'^
6098:00 00 00 7F 00 00 00 00 'S'^
60A0:01 01 01 01 01 01 01 7F 'T'^
60A8:08 10 20 7F 20 10 08 00 'U'^
60B0:2A 55 2A 55 2A 55 2A 55 'V'^
60B8:55 2A 55 2A 55 2A 55 2A 'W'^
60C0:00 3E 41 01 01 01 7F 00 'X'^
60C8:00 00 3F 40 40 40 7F 00 'Y'^
60D0:40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 'Z'^
60D8:08 1C 3E 7F 3E 1C 08 00 '['^
60E0:7F 00 00 00 00 00 00 7F '\'^
60E8:14 14 77 00 77 14 14 00 ']'^
60F0:7F 40 40 4C 4C 40 40 7F '^'^
60F8:01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 '_'^
6100:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 '
6108:08 08 08 08 08 00 08 00 '!
6110:14 14 14 00 00 00 00 00 '"
6118:14 14 3E 14 3E 14 14 00 '#
6120:08 3C 0A 1C 28 1E 08 00 '$
6128:06 26 10 08 04 32 30 00 '%
6130:04 0A 0A 04 2A 12 2C 00 '&
6138:08 08 08 00 00 00 00 00 ''
6140:08 04 02 02 02 04 08 00 '(
6148:08 10 20 20 20 10 08 00 ')
6150:08 2A 1C 08 1C 2A 08 00 '*
6158:00 08 08 3E 08 08 00 00 '+
6160:00 00 00 00 08 08 04 00 ',
6168:00 00 00 3E 00 00 00 00 '-
6170:00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 '.
6178:00 20 10 08 04 02 00 00 '/
6180:1C 22 32 2A 26 22 1C 00 '0
6188:08 0C 08 08 08 08 1C 00 '1
6190:1C 22 20 18 04 02 3E 00 '2
6198:3E 20 10 18 20 22 1C 00 '3
61A0:10 18 14 12 3E 10 10 00 '4
61A8:3E 02 1E 20 20 22 1C 00 '5
61B0:38 04 02 1E 22 22 1C 00 '6
61B8:3E 20 10 08 04 04 04 00 '7
61C0:1C 22 22 1C 22 22 1C 00 '8
61C8:1C 22 22 3C 20 10 0E 00 '9
61D0:00 00 08 00 08 00 00 00 ':
61D8:00 00 08 00 08 08 04 00 ';
61E0:10 08 04 02 04 08 10 00 '<
61E8:00 00 3E 00 3E 00 00 00 '=
61F0:04 08 10 20 10 08 04 00 '>
61F8:1C 22 10 08 08 00 08 00 '?
6200:1C 22 2A 3A 1A 02 3C 00 '@
6208:08 14 22 22 3E 22 22 00 'A
6210:1E 22 22 1E 22 22 1E 00 'B
6218:1C 22 02 02 02 22 1C 00 'C
6220:1E 22 22 22 22 22 1E 00 'D
6228:3E 02 02 1E 02 02 3E 00 'E
6230:3E 02 02 1E 02 02 02 00 'F
6238:3C 02 02 02 32 22 3C 00 'G
6240:22 22 22 3E 22 22 22 00 'H
6248:1C 08 08 08 08 08 1C 00 'I
6250:20 20 20 20 20 22 1C 00 'J
6258:22 12 0A 06 0A 12 22 00 'K
6260:02 02 02 02 02 02 3E 00 'L
6268:22 36 2A 2A 22 22 22 00 'M
6270:22 22 26 2A 32 22 22 00 'N
6278:1C 22 22 22 22 22 1C 00 'O
6280:1E 22 22 1E 02 02 02 00 'P
6288:1C 22 22 22 2A 12 2C 00 'Q
6290:1E 22 22 1E 0A 12 22 00 'R
6298:1C 22 02 1C 20 22 1C 00 'S
62A0:3E 08 08 08 08 08 08 00 'T
62A8:22 22 22 22 22 22 1C 00 'U
62B0:22 22 22 22 22 14 08 00 'V
62B8:22 22 22 2A 2A 36 22 00 'W
62C0:22 22 14 08 14 22 22 00 'X
62C8:22 22 14 08 08 08 08 00 'Y
62D0:3E 20 10 08 04 02 3E 00 'Z
62D8:3E 06 06 06 06 06 3E 00 '[
62E0:00 02 04 08 10 20 00 00 '\
62E8:3E 30 30 30 30 30 3E 00 ']
62F0:00 00 08 14 22 00 00 00 '^
62F8:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 7F '_
6300:04 08 10 00 00 00 00 00 '`
6308:00 00 1C 20 3C 22 3C 00 'a
6310:02 02 1E 22 22 22 1E 00 'b
6318:00 00 3C 02 02 02 3C 00 'c
6320:20 20 3C 22 22 22 3C 00 'd
6328:00 00 1C 22 3E 02 3C 00 'e
6330:18 24 04 1E 04 04 04 00 'f
6338:00 00 1C 22 22 3C 20 1C 'g
6340:02 02 1E 22 22 22 22 00 'h
6348:08 00 0C 08 08 08 1C 00 'i
6350:10 00 18 10 10 10 12 0C 'j
6358:02 02 22 12 0E 12 22 00 'k
6360:0C 08 08 08 08 08 1C 00 'l
6368:00 00 36 2A 2A 2A 22 00 'm
6370:00 00 1E 22 22 22 22 00 'n
6378:00 00 1C 22 22 22 1C 00 'o
6380:00 00 1E 22 22 1E 02 02 'p
6388:00 00 3C 22 22 3C 20 20 'q
6390:00 00 3A 06 02 02 02 00 'r
6398:00 00 3C 02 1C 20 1E 00 's
63A0:04 04 1E 04 04 24 18 00 't
63A8:00 00 22 22 22 32 2C 00 'u
63B0:00 00 22 22 22 14 08 00 'v
63B8:00 00 22 22 2A 2A 36 00 'w
63C0:00 00 22 14 08 14 22 00 'x
63C8:00 00 22 22 22 3C 20 1C 'y
63D0:00 00 3E 10 08 04 3E 00 'z
63D8:38 0C 0C 06 0C 0C 38 00 '{
63E0:08 08 08 08 08 08 08 08 '|
63E8:0E 18 18 30 18 18 0E 00 '}
63F0:2C 1A 00 00 00 00 00 00 '~
63F8:00 2A 14 2A 14 2A 00 00 '*
I also recommend "saving" a copy of this font higher in memory.
7000<6000.63FFM
(For the advanced user, you can save this: BSAVE FONT.BIN,A$6000,L$400
)
**AppleWin** users: We can save the state of the virutal machine via `F11`.
Image to Font Data (JavaScript)
If you were wondering how this data was generated, you see the great thing about computers is that they can automate all the tedious and boring crap, er, calculations for us. Here's a HTML + JavaScript program I wrote to convert the image to HEX:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<script>
function byte2hex$( byte )
{
return ("0" + byte.toString(16)).toUpperCase().substr(-2)
}
function OnLoad()
{
var image = document.getElementById( "Apple2eFont7x8" );
var canvas = document.createElement( "Canvas" );
var context = canvas.getContext( "2d" );
canvas.width = image.width;
canvas.height = image.height;
context.drawImage( image, 0, 0 );
var CW = 7, CH = 8; // Cell Width Height
var address = 0x6000, pixel, rgba, lines = "";
for( var ty = 0; ty < image.height/CH; ++ty )
{
for( var tx = 0; tx < image.width/CW; ++tx )
{
var text = "";
for( var y = 0; y < CH; ++y )
{
var hex = 0, mask = 0x1;
for( var x = 0; x < CW; ++x, mask <<= 1 )
{
pixel = context.getImageData( tx*CW+x, ty*CH+y, 1, 1 );
rgba = pixel.data;
hex += rgba[0] ? mask : 0; // assume R=G=B
}
text += byte2hex$( hex ) + " ";
}
var c = (16*ty)+tx, d = String.fromCharCode( c );
if (c < 32) d = "^" + String.fromCharCode( c + 0x40 );
text += "; " + d + "\n";
lines += "" + address.toString(16).toUpperCase() + ":" + text;
address += 8;
}
}
console.log( lines );
var pre = document.getElementById( "hexdump" );
pre.innerHTML = lines;
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="OnLoad()">
<img id="Apple2eFont7x8" src="Apple2eFont7x8.png">
<hr>
<pre id="hexdump"></pre>IncCursorCol
</body>
</html>
Note: If you get a retarded Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to execute 'getImageData' on 'CanvasRenderingContext2D': The canvas has been tainted by cross-origin data.
with Chrome you need to start it with the command line:
--allow-file-access-from-files
Another solution is to use a web browser that isn't "broken" such as Firefox, etc. when trying to read local files.
DrawChar()
Font -> Screen Memory Trace
OK, so now that we have the font data how the the heck do we actually draw a character "on screen" ?
We need to transfer 8 consecutive bytes (1 byte / scanline) to 8 different scanlines scattered all over memory.
Assuming we want to draw the A
glyph at the top-left of the screen we would need to transfer bytes from the (source) font glyph memory locations to these (destination) HGR screen memory locations:
($6208) -> $2000
($6209) -> $2400
($620A) -> $2800
($620B) -> $2C00
($620C) -> $3000
($620D) -> $3400
($620E) -> $3800
($620F) -> $3C00
For simplicity, we're going to "quantize" our destination Y so that we render font glyphs only on the start of every 8 rows and every 7 pixel columns. (See Table 2 down below in section Y Cursor Position
). If we then had the starting address we simply could move to the next scan line by successively adding $0400 to our destination screen pointer.
How did I know to use $0400 when going to the next line? One quirk of the HGR screen is that every 8 successive scan lines start this many bytes away. Refer back to the HGR Memory-mapped IO
table listed above.
DrawChar() version 1
Before we can start a simple DrawChar(char c)
function, we also first need to assign some zero page memory locations for our static and temporary variables, our 16-bit address of where want to draw to. Since we also have our font data, we need a symbol for that too.
HgrLo EQU $E5 ; Low byte Pointer to screen destination
HgrHi EQU $E6 ; High byte Pointer to screen destination
TmpLo EQU $F5 ; Low byte Working pointer to screen byte
TmpHi EQU $F6 ; High byte Working pointer to screen byte
Font EQU $6000
Here's the disassembly of our (hard-coded) DrawChar() program:
Listing Demo 1:
; FUNC: PrintChar()
; NOTES: A, X, Y is destroyed
ORG $0900
0900: PrintChar
0900:20 0A 09 JSR HgrToTmpPtr
0903:A9 00 LDA #00 ; glyph 'c' to draw (not used yet)
0905:A0 00 LDY #00 ; Y = column to draw at (hard-coded)
0907:4C 10 03 JMP DrawChar
; FUNC: HgrToTmpPtr()
090A: HgrToTmpPtr
090A:A5 E5 LDA HgrLo ; Copy initial screen
090C:85 F5 STA TmpLo ; destination pointer
090E:A5 E6 LDA HgrHi ; to working pointer
0910:85 F6 STA TmpHi
0912:60 RTS
Listing 1:
; FUNC: DrawChar()
; PARAM: A = glyph to draw
; PARAM: Y = column to draw at; $0 .. $27 (Columns 0 .. 39) (not modified)
; INPUT : $F5,$F6 pointer to the destination screen scanline
; Must start at every 8 scanlines.
; OUTPUT: The Y-Register (cursor column) is automatically incremented.
ORG $0310
0310: DrawChar
0310:4C 50 03 JMP _DrawChar
ORG $0350
0350: _DrawChar
0350:A2 00 LDX #0
0352: _LoadFont ; A = font[ offset ]
0352:BD 00 62 LDA Font+$200,X
0355:91 F5 STA (TmpLo),Y ; screen[col] = A
0357:18 CLC
0358:A5 F6 LDA TmpHi
035A:69 04 ADC #4 ; screen += 0x400
035C:85 F6 STA TmpHi
035E:E8 INX
035F:E0 08 CPX #8
0361:D0 EF BNE _LoadFont
0363:60 RTS
Enter in:
900:20 0A 09 A9 00 A0 00 4C 10 03
90A:A5 E5 85 F5 A5 E6 85 F6 60
310:4C 50 03
350:A2 00 BD 00 62 91 F5 18
358:A5 F6 69 04 85 F6 E8 E0
360:08 D0 EF 60
We're almost ready to run this! We just need to initialize one variable -- where to draw the glyph at:
E5:00 20
900G
And with any luck you should see the at sign @
in the top-left.
**AppleWin** users: You can enter these symbols into the debugger to make the disassembly more readable. Press `F7`, then type in (paste with `Ctrl-V`):
sym HgrLo = E5
sym HgrHi = E6
sym TmpLo = F5
sym TmpHi = F6
sym PrintChar = 0900
sym HgrToTmpPtr = 090A
sym DrawChar = 0310
sym _DrawChar = 0350
sym _LoadFont = 0352
sym Font = 6000
350L
When you are done with the debugger, press F7
to return to the emulator.
(Screenshot of debugger forthcoming)
X Cursor Position
If we wanted to draw in columns 1 and 2 instead of column 0 then we need to set the Y register which controls which "column" we'll draw at.
Enter in:
906:1
900G
906:2
900G
By changing the Y register value we can control the column of where to draw the cursor. This works because we are using the 6502 Indirect Zero-Page Y addressing mode to store the destination pixels with the STA
instruction. Since the Y-register must always be used in this addressing mode -- we (effectively) get a column offset "for free." :-)
0355:91 F5 STA (TmpLo),Y ; screen[col] = A
Here's the C pseudo-code of the assembly code:
char c = '@'; // 0x40;
int col = 0;
char FONT[] = { ... }; // our font data glyphs starting at 0x6000
char *screen = 0x2000 + col; // destination
char *font = 0x6200; // eventually want: &FONT[ c*8 ]
for( y = 0; y < 8; y++, screen += 0x400 )
*screen = *font++;
CursorCol( col )
Since the Y-register controls the column we can inline this function and have the caller take care of setting the Y-Register before calling DrawChar().
LDY #column
After drawing a character with DrawChar()
it is handy if we can advance both:
- the column of the cursor
- the pointer to the screen where the next glyph will be drawn
Notice how after 8 scan lines we end up with and Tmp
address of $4xxx (or $6xxx if we were drawing to HGR page 2.) This means we need to subtract off $20 from the top byte of the 16-bit address to the temp destination screen pointer.
Listing 2a:
; FUNC: IncCursorCol1()
; OUTPUT: Y-Register (column) is incremented
; Increment the cursor column and move the destination screen pointer back
; up 8 scan lines previously to what it was when DrawChar() was called.
; Version 1
ORG $0364
0364: IncCursorCol1
0364:C8 INY
0365:18 CLC ; Note:
0366:A5 F6 LDA TmpHi ; (To the astute reader)
0368:E9 1F SBC #$1F ; <-- ??? Shouldn't this be #$20 ?!
036A:85 F6 STA TmpHi
036C:60 RTS
Introduction to Optimization
One tip for beginner 6502 assembly programmers. It is tempting just to always clear the carry flag CLC
before doing any addition or subtraction. Unfortunately, for subtraction we'll have an off-by-one bug (fence-post error) so we need to subtract ONE less then the value. This makes reading the code a little unintuitive. Is there a way to remedy this? Yes.
Op | Carry | Opcode |
---|---|---|
+ | Clear | CLC |
- | Set | SEC |
We change the carry flag state before we do the operation depending on whether we are adding
or subtracting
. The Rule of Thumb
is CLC before ADD
and SEC before SUB
. A mnemonic to help you remember is that both SEC
and SUB
start with S
.
Listing 2b:
; FUNC: IncCursorCol2()
; OUTPUT: Y-Register (column) is incremented
; Increment the cursor column and move the destination screen pointer back
; up 8 scan lines previously to what it was when DrawChar() was called.
; Version 2
ORG $0364
0364: IncCursorCol2
0364:C8 INY
0365:38 SEC ; CLC SBC #1F
0366:A5 F6 LDA TmpHi ; was not obvious that we really
0368:E9 20 SBC #$20 ; meant: TmpHi = A - #$20 !!
036A:85 F6 STA TmpHi
036C:60 RTS
One thing when writing 6502 assembly is to pay attention to all optimization opportunities due to the slow ~1 MHz of the 6502. Since we only need to modify the upper few bits instead of doing a bulky subtraction SEC SBC
we might be tempted to see if there is a faster and/or smaller alternative. We just need to be careful that our optimization is "shuffling" the bits around behaves in the exact same way at the end of the day. i.e. "The Right Place at the Right Time."
The problem is we want to see if we can simply the transform of TmpHi after 8 scanlines (basically reset the cursor back to the original scanline before we drew all 8 scanlines of the glyph):
Tmp = Hgr + (8 * $0400)
Since we only care about the high byte:
TmpHi = HgrHi + (8 * $04)
= HgrHi + $20
Legend:
Initial = destination HGR address before we draw the glyph
TmpHi = destination HGR address after drawing all 8 lines
Final = destination HGR address set back to initial value
Y | Initial | TmpHi | Final | (TmpHi and $1F) | (TmpHi and $1F) or $20 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | $2000 | $40 | $20 | $00 | $20 |
8 | $2080 | $40 | $20 | $00 | $20 |
16 | $2100 | $41 | $21 | $01 | $21 |
24 | $2180 | $41 | $21 | $01 | $21 |
32 | $2200 | $42 | $22 | $02 | $22 |
40 | $2280 | $42 | $22 | $02 | $22 |
48 | $2300 | $43 | $23 | $03 | $23 |
56 | $2380 | $43 | $23 | $03 | $23 |
64 | $2028 | $40 | $20 | $00 | $20 |
72 | $20A8 | $40 | $20 | $00 | $20 |
80 | $2128 | $41 | $21 | $01 | $21 |
88 | $21A8 | $41 | $21 | $01 | $21 |
96 | $2228 | $42 | $22 | $02 | $22 |
104 | $22A8 | $42 | $22 | $02 | $22 |
112 | $2328 | $43 | $23 | $03 | $23 |
120 | $23A8 | $43 | $23 | $03 | $23 |
128 | $2050 | $40 | $20 | $00 | $20 |
136 | $20D0 | $40 | $20 | $00 | $20 |
144 | $2150 | $41 | $21 | $01 | $21 |
152 | $21D0 | $41 | $21 | $01 | $21 |
160 | $2250 | $42 | $22 | $02 | $22 |
168 | $22D0 | $42 | $22 | $02 | $22 |
176 | $2350 | $43 | $23 | $03 | $23 |
184 | $23D0 | $43 | $23 | $03 | $23 |
Hmm, we would need to replace SEC SBC
with AND OR
which we might think would be a littler faster and takes less code to boot but let's verify our assumption:
Listing 3a:
; FUNC: IncCursorCol3()
; OUTPUT: Y-Register (column) is incremented
; Increment the cursor column and move the destination screen pointer back
; up 8 scan lines previously to what it was when DrawChar() was called.
; Version 3a
ORG $0364
0364: IncCursorCol3
0364:C8 INY
0365:A5 F6 LDA TmpHi
0367:29 1F AND #%00011111 ; Requires an extra OR
0369:09 20 ORA #$20 ; Hard-code to HGR page 1 (high byte)
036B:85 F6 STA TmpHi
036D:60 RTS
Hmm, so the code isn't any smaller on a 6502 CPU. It might be on other CPUs.
Second, is it any faster?
SEC ; 2 cycles
SBC #n ; 2 cycles
vs
AND #n ; 2 cycles
ORA #m ; 2 cycles
Nope. Bummer. :-(
We probably should remove that hard-coded HGR page 1.
Listing 3b:
; FUNC: IncCursorCol3()
; OUTPUT: Y-Register (column) is incremented
; Increment the cursor column and move the destination screen pointer back
; up 8 scan lines previously to what it was when DrawChar() was called.
; Version 3b
ORG $0364
0364: IncCursorCol3
0364:C8 INY
0365:A5 F6 LDA TmpHi
0367:29 1F AND #%00011111 ; Requires an extra OR
0369:05 E6 ORA HgrHi ; user specified Page 1 or Page 2
036B:85 F6 STA TmpHi
036D:60 RTS
At least the timing for ORA HgrHi
is still 2 clock cycles. :-)
The lessons?
- Verify our assumptions and Profile!
- Even though we "failed" this time, we shouldn't be afraid to experiment with "out-the-box" thinking using the 6502 instructions; sometimes there are clear "wins" but you won't know unless you try! Also, it isn't always obvious if we should optimize to minimize space (with the potential to run slower) or to optimize for higher performance (at the cost of more code.) The "proper" solution depends on the context of your needs. With 8-bit CPU's we tend to focus on
code density
-- cram as much code in as little space as possible. Graphics / Rendering unfortunately "needs" to run as fast as possible so this means unrolling loops, etc., to run "flat out" even though we lose valuable memory.
We'll briefly touch upon this topic of optimization again with bit-shifts
and memcpy()
.
Wait, you say! There IS a way to solve this problem -- and it doesn't take lateral thinking. What we really are doing is just restoring TmpHi back to its previous value! We need to save TmpHi when we set the rows to draw
to 0, and restore it after drawing 8 rows.
Listing 4a:
TopHi EQU $FD
ORG $034C
034C: _DrawChar1
034C:A6 F6 LDX TmpHi
034E:86 FD STX TopHi
; === _DrawChar begin ===
; ORG $0350
;350: _DrawChar
;...:
;35F:E0 08 CPX #8
;361:D0 EF BNE _LoadFont
;363:60 RTS
; === DrawChar end ===
; FUNC: IncCursorCol()
ORG $0363 ; intentional extend _DrawChar by
0363: IncCursorCol ; over-writing RTS
0363:C8 INY
0364:A6 FD LDX TopHi ; Move cursor back to top of scanline
0366:86 F6 STX TmpHi
0368:60 RTS
We just need to touch up our entry point PrintChar
at $0310 instead of calling _DrawChar
($0350) we need to call our new _DrawChar1
($034C):
Listing 4b:
ORG $0310
0310: DrawChar
0310:4C 4C 03 JMP _DrawChar1 ; NEW entry point
Listing Demo 2:
ORG $0A00
0A00: DemoDraw3Char
0A00:20 00 09 JSR PrintChar
0A03:20 10 03 JSR DrawChar
0A06:20 10 03 JMP DrawChar
0A09:60 RTS
Enter in:
310:4C 4C 03
34C:A6 F6 86 FD
363:C8 A6 FD 86 F6 60
Let's try it out:
A00: 20 00 09 20 10 03 20 10 03 60
A00G
We are one step closer to printing a string. We have a total of 5 @
because we didn't change our initial column from above. We are only printing 3 chars, the previous 2 are "left over" from the previous demo.
(Screenshot showing 5 @
forthcoming)
**AppleWin** users: Press `F7`, copy & paste the below, press `F7` when done.
SYM TopHgr = FD
SYM _DrawChar1 = 34C
SYM IncCursorCol = 363
34CL
Recap - Listing 5
Here is what our render glyph code looks like so far:
HgrLo = $E5 ; Low byte Pointer to screen destination
HgrHi = $E6 ; High byte Pointer to screen destination
TmpLo = $F5 ; Low byte Working pointer to screen byte
TmpHi = $F6 ; High byte Working pointer to screen byte
Font = $6000
.ORG $310
DrawChar:
JMP _DrawChar1
.ORG $34C
_DrawChar1
LDX TmpHi
STX TopHi
_DrawChar:
LDX #0
_LoadFont: ; A = font[ offset ]
LDA Font+$200,X
STA (TmpLo),Y ; screen[col] = A
CLC
LDA TmpHi ;
ADC #4 ; screen += 0x400
STA TmpHi
INX
CPX #8
BNE _LoadFont
IncCursorCol:
INY
LDX TopHi ; Move cursor back to top of scanline
STX TmpHi
RTS
DrawChar() version 2
The glyph to draw is currently hard-coded to $40 (@
). The pointer to the start of this glyph is located at:
source = $6000 + ($40*8) = $6000 + $200 = $6200
If we wanted to draw a different glyph, say D
we would need to modify the source pointer of the font glyph data.
Recall that our font has this memory layout:
Char | Index | Address |
---|---|---|
^@ | $00 | $6000 |
^A | $01 | $6008 |
^B | $02 | $6010 |
^C | $03 | $6018 |
: | : | |
Spc | $20 | $6100 |
! | $21 | $6108 |
: | : | |
0 | $30 | $6180 |
1 | $31 | $6188 |
2 | $32 | $6190 |
3 | $33 | $6198 |
: | : | |
? | $3F | $61F8 |
@ | $40 | $6200 |
A | $41 | $6208 |
B | $42 | $6210 |
C | $43 | $6218 |
D | $44 | $6220 |
: | : | : |
_ | $5F | $62F8 |
: | : | : |
~ | $7E | $63F0 |
$7F | $63F8 |
The 6502 stores and loads 16-bit addresses in Little-Endian
format so for glyph D
we need to store the bytes of the address $6220
in reverse order.
Enter in:
353:20 62
And to draw the new glyph, enter in:
900G
We should see the third character of @
change to D
.
DrawChar() version 3
Let's remove the hard-coded printing of the glyph and use the character data we really want to draw. This means we need to "fix-up" the temporary source pointer to the font glyph data. Since we have 8 bytes/glyph we need to manually calculate the array offset.
Our array offset for the source glyph data is:
address = $6000 + (glyph * 8)
Technically the C pseudo-code would be the more elegant:
char* GetGlyphAddress( char c )
{
static char FONT[] = { ... }; // our font data glyphs starting at 0x6000
return &FONT[ c * 8 ];
}
A more equivalent 6502 version would be:
int GetAddress( char c )
{
int offset = c * 8;
static char FONT[] = { ... }; // our font data glyphs starting at 0x6000
int address = 0x6000 + offset;
return address;
}
Since we are dealing with a 16-bit address offset it is simpler to break this down into a low-byte and high-byte calculation for the 6502 since it can't natively do 16-bit offsets. Every 32 characters we need to offset 256 bytes.
int AddressHi = FontAddressHi + (c / 32)
But since the 6502 doesn't have a division instruction we need to use bit-shifts instead. The calculation c / 32
= c / 2^5
= c / (1 << 5)
== c >> 5
.
char c = 'D'; // 0x44
int Font = 0x6000;
int FontHi = (Font >> 8) & 0xFF;
int FontLo = (Font >> 0) & 0xFF;
int AddressHi = FontHi + ((c >> 5) & 0x07);
int AddressLo = FontLo + ((c << 3) & 0xF8);
We'll assign unique letters to each bit of c
:
+-------------------------------+
| P | Q | R | s | t | u | v | w | glyph to draw
+-------------------------------+
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 bit position
You see what I did there? :-) I put the low bits in lowercase
and the High bits in Uppercase
as a visual mnemonic to help remember which bits belong to which part of the address.
IF this is confusing, remember, we are calculating a 16-bit offset:
Offset = %PQRstuvw * 8
Offset = %PQRstuvw * 2^3;
Offset = %PRQstuvw << 3
Offset = |%00000PQR|stuvw000|
|High Byte|Low Byte|
A naive 6502 glyph/32 calculation would be to use 5 shift right bit-shifts:
48 PHA ; save c
-- -- ; calc low byte offset
68 PLA ; pop c = %PQRstuvw to draw
4A LSR ; c / 2 = %0PQRstuv C=w
4A LSR ; c / 4 = %w0PQRstu C=V
4A LSR ; c / 8 = %wv0PQRst C=u
4A LSR ; c / 16 = %uvw0PQRs C=t
4A LSR ; c / 32 = %tUvw0PQR C=s
29 07 AND #07 ; = %00000PQR
18 CLC ;
We can optimize the CLC
out by clearing the bottom bits and then doing the shift:
48 PHA ; save c
-- -- ; calc low byte offset
68 PLA ; pop c = %PQRstuvw to draw
29 E0 AND #E0 ; = %PQR00000 s=0, Optimization: implicit CLC
4A LSR ; c / 2 = %0PQR0000
4A LSR ; c / 4 = %00PQR000
4A LSR ; c / 8 = %000PQR00
4A LSR ; c / 16 = %0000PQR0
4A LSR ; c / 32 = %00000PQR
However we can save one instruction (and 2 cycles) if we optimize c/32
to use the counter-intuitive 6502's ROL
instruction -- which only requires 4 instructions instead:
48 PHA ; save c
-- -- ; calc low byte offset
68 PLA ; pop c = %PQRstuvw to draw
29 E0 AND #E0 ; = %PQR00000 s=0, Optimization: implicit CLC
2A ROL ; = %QR000000 C=P
2A ROL ; = %R000000P C=Q
2A ROL ; = %000000PQ C=R
2A ROL ; c / 32 = %00000PQR C=0
Our prefix code to setup the source address becomes:
Listing 6:
; FUNC: _DrawChar2a( c, col )
; PARAM: A = glyph to draw
; PARAM: Y = column to draw at; $0 .. $27 (Columns 0 .. 39) (not modified)
; NOTES: X is destroyed
ORG $0335
0335: _DrawChar2a
0335:48 PHA ; push c = %PQRstuvw to draw
0336:29 1F AND #1F ; = %000stuvw R=0, implicit CLC
0338:0A ASL ; c * 2 %00stuvw0
0339:0A ASL ; c * 4 %0stuvw00
033A:0A ASL ; c * 8 %stuvw000
033B:69 00 ADC #<Font ; += FontLo; Carry = 0 since R=0 from above
033D:8D 53 03 STA _LoadFont+1 ; AddressLo = FontLo + (c*8)
0340:68 PLA ; pop c = %PQRstuvw to draw
0341:29 E0 AND #E0 ; = %PQR00000 s=0, implicit CLC
0343:2A ROL ; = %QR000000 C=P
0344:2A ROL ; = %R000000P C=Q
0345:2A ROL ; = %000000PQ C=R need one more
0346:2A ROL ; c / 32 = %00000PQR C=0 shift to get R
0347:69 60 ADC #>Font ; += FontHi; Carry = 0 since S=0 from above
0349:8D 54 03 STA _LoadFont+2; AddressHi = FontHi + (c/32)
; intentional fall into _DrawChar1
034C: _DrawChar1
034C:A6 F6 LDX TmpHi
034E:86 FD STX TopHi
0350: _DrawChar
0350:A2 00 LDX #0 ; Note: next instruction is self-modified !
0352: _LoadFont ; A = font[ offset ]
0352:BD 00 60 LDA Font,X
Did you catch that note ? One popular trick on the 6502 was self-modifying code
. Instead of wasting memory with yet-another-variable we directly change the load/store instructions themselves! This actually has 2 advantages:
- It lets us avoid an expensive indirection pointer access, and
- It is the fastest way to load/store/copy an array. The 6502 addressing mode is
LDA address,X
orLDA address,Y
.
However, there are still 2 more optimizations we can make:
1. If we assume our font is "page aligned", that is, starts at a multiple of 256 bytes -- we could remove the redundant AddressLo += (FontLo + (c*8))
and replace with the direct AddressLo = (c*8)
. Technically, in C you would keep only the bottom 8-bits by masking off the the other bits with & 0xFF
but since the 6502 registers are only 8-bit and we're storing a byte the & 0xFF
is not needed.
2. It is "funny" how we end up shifting and rotating in the same direction: Left! :-) It would nice to leverage this work for both the high and low byte address calculation. That is the technical term for "Don't do dumb (redundant) work" or in the immortal words of Back to the Future: "Think, McFly!" :-)
Given: glyph c in binary is: %PQRstuvw
The 16-bit address in binary is: %PQRstuvw000
Glyph | AddressHi | AddressLo |
---|---|---|
%PQRstuvw | 00000PQR | stuvw000 |
Our original glyph fits in one byte. Our 16-bit address offset technically could also fit in one byte -- we just have shifted it over 3 bits with zeroes.
If we had the byte: stuvwPQR
that would be extremely convenient as it would be trivial to calculate the offset:
PHA ; push A = %stuvwPQR% initial glyph
AND #$F8 ; A = %stuvw000
STA AddressLo
PLA ; pop A = %stuvwPQR
AND #$07 ; A = %00000PQR
CLC
ADC FontHi
STA AddressHi
Let us trace the rotate left ROL
instruction 4 times paying attention to the Carry register C
and the Accumulator A
:
ROL C A Comment
0 ? PQRstuvw initial glyph to draw
1 P QRstuvw?
2 Q Rstuvw?P
3 R stuvw?PQ
Hmm, that is suspiciously close to what we want! Is there any way we can end up with?
ROL C A
? ? stuvwPQR
We would need to start with the carry pre-loaded with P, and the QR already shifted over one to the left:
ROL C A
n-3 P QR?stuvw
n-2 Q R?stuvwP
n-1 R ?stuvwPQ
n ? stuvwPQR
That might look like something like this:
PHA ; push c
AND #$E0
TAX ; save %PQR00000
PLA ; pop c
AND #$1F
STA Temp ; save %000stuvw
TXA ; A=PQR00000
ASL ; C=P A=QR000000 <- stuvw not taking advantage of shift :-(
OR Temp ; C=P A=QR0stuvw
ROL ; C=Q A=R0stuvwP
ROL ; C=R A=0stuvwPQ
ROL ; C=0 A=stuvwPQR
PHA
AND #1F ; = %000stuvw
STA _LoadFont+1 ; AddressLo = FontLo + (c*8)
PLA
AND #E0
CLC
ADC AddressHi
STA _LoadFont+2
Hmm, that seems like an awful lot of work just for some bit-shuffling
!! For one thing we're doing a shift and stuvw
is not taking advantage of it. Can we not we make use of the fact that we will eventually be doing AND #1F
-> AND #F8
and AND #E0
-> AND #07
?
The lateral thinking is to use partial results.
ROL C A = glyph to draw
0 ? PQRstuvw
1 P QRstuvw?
2 Q Rstuvw?P
3 R stuvw?PQ
--push A--
stuvw000 <- A & #F8
--store low byte offset--
--pop A--
4 s tuvw?PQR
00000PQR <- A & #07
--CLC--
--add FontHi to A
--store high byte offset--
Let's code this up:
Listing 7:
; FUNC: DrawCharCol( c, col ) alias _DrawChar2
; PARAM: A = glyph to draw
; PARAM: Y = column to draw at; $0 .. $27 (Columns 0 .. 39) (not modified)
; NOTES: X is destroyed
ORG $033A
033A: DrawCharCol ; A=%PQRstuvw
033A:2A ROL ; C=P A=%QRstuvw?
033B:2A ROL ; C=Q A=%Rstuvw?P
033C:2A ROL ; C=R A=%stuvw?PQ
033D:AA TAX ; X=%stuvw?PQ push glyph
033E:29 F8 AND #F8 ; A=%stuvw000
0340:8D 53 03 STA _LoadFont+1 ; AddressLo = (c*8)
0343:8A TXA ; A=%stuvw?PQ pop glyph
0344:29 03 AND #3 ; Optimization: s=0 implicit CLC !
0346:2A ROL ; C=s A=%00000PQR and 1 last ROL to get R
0347:69 60 ADC #>Font ; += FontHi; Carry=0 since s=0 from above
0349:8D 54 03 STA _LoadFont+2 ; AddressHi = FontHi + (c/32)
; intentional fall into _DrawChar1 @ $034C
Since we'll re-use our existing font drawing code _DrawChar1
at $034C it is always a good idea to document why there is no RTS
at the end.
Here is a comparison between the original and final version (clock cycle timings are the #'s):
ORG $0335 (old) ORG $033A (new)
3 PHA 2 ROL
2 AND #1F 2 ROL
2 ASL 2 ROL
2 ASL 2 TAX
2 ASL 2 AND #F8
2 ADC #<Font 4 STA _LoadFont+1
4 STA _LoadFont+1 2 TXA
4 PLA 2 AND #3
2 AND #E0 2 ROL
2 ROL 3 ADC #>Font
2 ROL 4 STA _LoadFont+2
2 ROL -
2 ROL -
2 ADC #>Font -
4 STA _LoadFont+2 -
Original Final
Bytes 23 18
Cycles 37 27
Much better!!!
We need to (again) touch up our DrawChar
entry point at $0310 calling _DrawChar2
($034C) to call DrawCharCol
($033A):
310:4C 3A 03 JMP DrawCharCol
Enter in:
B00:20 0A 09 A9 00 A0 00 4C 10 03
310:4C 3A 03
33A:2A 2A 2A AA 29 F8
340:8D 53 03 8A 29 03 2A 69
348:60 8D 54 03
B00G
We should now see an closed apple glyph!
To change which glyph is printed:
B04:41
B00G
And we should see an A
printed.
We now have the ability to print any of the 128 ASCII characters!
**AppleWin** users: Press `F7`, copy & paste the below, press `F7` when done.
SYM DrawCharCol = 33A
33AL
(Debugger screenshot forthcoming.)
Character Inspector
Let's verify this by writing a character inspector. We'll use the arrow keys to select the glyph and ESC to exit.
Listing Demo 3a:
; FUNC: DemoCharInspect()
HgrLo EQU $F5
HgrHi EQU $F6
glyph EQU $FE
KEYBOARD EQU $C000
KEYSTROBE EQU $C010
ORG $1000
1000: DemoCharInspect
1000:A9 00 LDA #0 ; glyph=0
1002:85 FE STA glyph ; save which glyph to draw
1004:A9 00 .1 LDA #0 ; screen = 0x2000
1006:85 F5 STA HgrLo ;
1008:A9 20 LDA #20 ;
100A:85 F6 STA HgrHi ;
100C:A5 FE LDA glyph ; A = glyph
100E:A0 00 LDY #00 ; Y = col
1010:20 10 03 JSR PrintChar
1013:AD 00 C0 .2 LDA KEYBOARD ; read A=key
1016:10 FB BMI .2 ; no key?
1018:8D 10 C0 STA KEYSTROBE ; debounce key
101B:C9 88 CMP #88 ; key == <-- ?
101D:D0 0A BNE .4 ;
101F:C6 FE DEC glyph ; yes, --glyph
1021:A5 FE .3 LDA glyph ; glyph &= 0x7F
1023:29 7F AND #7F ;
1025:85 FE STA glyph ;
1027:10 DB BPL .1 ; always branch, draw prev char
1029:C9 95 .4 CMP #95 ; key == --> ?
102B:D0 05 BNE .5 ;
102D:E6 FE INC glyph ; yes, ++glyph
102F:18 CLC ; always branch
1030:90 EF BCC .3 ; draw prev char
1032:C9 9B .5 CMP #9B ; key == ESC ?
1034:D0 DD BNE .2 ;
1036:60 RTS ; yes, exit
Enter in this code:
1000:A9 00 85 FE A9 00 85 F5
1008:A9 20 85 F6 A5 FE A0 00
1010:20 10 03 AD 00 C0 10 FB
1018:8D 10 C0 C9 88 D0 0A C6
1020:FE A5 FE 29 7F 85 FE 10
1028:DB C9 95 D0 05 E6 FE 18
1030:90 EF C9 9B D0 DD 60
1000G
We now have an ASCII char inspector!
**AppleWin** users: Press `F7`, copy & paste the below, press `F7` when done.
SYM glyph = FE
1000L
Character Inspector version 2
Let's fix it up to print the hex value of the current character we are inspecting:
Listing Demo 3b:
ORG $1010
1010:20 3C 10 JSR Patch1
ORG $1037
103C: Patch1
103C:48 PHA ; save c
103D:20 10 03 JSR DrawChar
1040:68 PLA ; restore c so we can print it in hex
1041:4C 01 03 JMP DrawHexByte
Listing 8:
ORG $0303
; FUNC: DrawHexByte( c ) = $0301
; PARAM: A = byte to print in hex
0301: DrawHexByte
0301:48 PHA ; save low nibble
0302:6A ROR ; shift high nibble
0303:6A ROR ; to low nibble
0304:6A ROR ;
0305:6A ROR ;
0306:20 0A 03 JSR DrawHexNib ; print high nib in hex
0309:68 PLA ; pritn low nib in hex
; FUNC: DrawHexNib() = $030C
; PARAM: A = nibble to print as hex char
030A: DrawHexNib
030A:29 0F AND #F ; base 16
030C:AA TAX ;
030D:BD 90 03 LDA NIB2HEX,X ; nibble to ASCII
; intentional fall into PrintChar
ORG $0390
0390:30 31 32 33 NIB2HEX ASC "0123456789ABCDEF"
0394:34 35 36 37
0398:38 39 41 42
039C:43 44 45 46
Q. Can you see a way to make DrawHexNib smaller?
Enter in the changes:
1010:20 3C 10
103C:48 20 10 03 68 4C 01 03
0301: 48 6A 6A 6A 6A 20 0A
0308:03 68 29 0F AA BD 90 03
0390:30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
0398:38 39 41 42 43 44 45 46
1000G
And now we have our own DrawHexByte() function.
**AppleWin** users: Press `F7`, copy & paste the below, press `F7` when done.
sym patch1 = 103C
sym DrawHexByte = 0301
sym DrawHexNib = 030A
db Nib2HeX 390:39F
1000L
Character Inspector version 3
Let's add a space after the character but before the hex value to improve readability of the output. The new code is:
Listing Demo 3c:
ORG $1010
1010:20 37 10 JSR Patch2
ORG $1037
1037: Patch2
1037:48 PHA ; save c
1038:20 10 03 JSR PrintChar
103B:A9 20 LDA #' ' ; Draw whitespace
Enter in these changes:
1010:20 37 10
1037:48 20 10 03 A9 20
1000G
Our final version is:
1000:A9 00 85 FE A9 00 85 F5
1008:A9 20 85 F6 A5 FE A0 00
1010:20 37 10 AD 00 C0 10 FB
1018:8D 10 C0 C9 88 D0 0A C6
1020:FE A5 FE 29 7F 85 FE 10
1028:DB C9 95 D0 05 E6 FE 18
1030:90 EF C9 9B D0 DD 60 48
1038:20 10 03 A9 20 20 10 03
1040:68 4C 01 03
1000G
(To save this, BSAVE CHAR_INSPECT3.BIN,A$1000,L$68
)
**AppleWin** users: Press `F7`, copy & paste the below, press `F7` when done.
sym patch2 = 1037
Y Cursor Position
Right now the line we "print" to is hard-coded since we are using a screen address of $2000 with the pointer at $E5, $E6.
We're going to digress slightly before we fix this.
The secret to getting high speed graphics rendering on the Apple is to use a look-up table. We're going to have a 16-bit address lookup table for Y=0, Y=8, Y=16, .. Y = 184
The HGR screen address is broken up a triad. Every 64 scan lines the offset change by $28.
Table 2: HGR Y Address for every 8 scanlines
Y | Address | Hi | Lo |
---|---|---|---|
0 | $2000 | $20 | $00 |
8 | $2080 | $20 | $80 |
16 | $2100 | $21 | $00 |
24 | $2180 | $21 | $80 |
32 | $2200 | $22 | $00 |
40 | $2280 | $22 | $80 |
48 | $2300 | $23 | $00 |
56 | $2380 | $23 | $80 |
- | ----- | - | - |
64 | $2028 | $20 | $28 |
72 | $20A8 | $20 | $A8 |
80 | $2128 | $21 | $28 |
88 | $21A8 | $21 | $A8 |
96 | $2228 | $22 | $28 |
104 | $22A8 | $22 | $A8 |
112 | $2328 | $23 | $28 |
120 | $23A8 | $23 | $A8 |
- | ----- | - | - |
128 | $2050 | $20 | $50 |
136 | $20D0 | $20 | $D0 |
144 | $2150 | $21 | $50 |
152 | $21D0 | $21 | $D0 |
160 | $2250 | $22 | $50 |
168 | $22D0 | $22 | $D0 |
176 | $2350 | $23 | $50 |
184 | $23D0 | $23 | $D0 |
We'll split this table of 16-bit addresses into Low and High bytes for easier access. We'll also subtract off the hard-coded graphics page 1 high byte = $20 and instead use relative offsets to make it work with either graphics page 1 or 2.
This is our mini HGR Y Address look-up table. "Funny" that it has 24 entries -- the same height as our text screen. :-)
Listing 9a:
ORG $03A0
HgrLoY
DFB $00,$80,$00,$80,$00,$80,$00,$80
DFB $28,$A8,$28,$A8,$28,$A8,$28,$A8
DFB $50,$D0,$50,$D0,$50,$D0,$50,$D0
HgrHiY
DFB $00,$00,$01,$01,$02,$02,$03,$03
DFB $00,$00,$01,$01,$02,$02,$03,$03
DFB $00,$00,$01,$01,$02,$02,$03,$03
Enter these bytes (or download hgrtable.bin and BLOAD HGRTABLE.BIN,3A0
):
Our HgrLoY
table:
03A0:00 80 00 80 00 80 00 80
03A8:28 A8 28 A8 28 A8 28 A8
03B0:50 D0 50 D0 50 D0 50 D0
Our HgrHiY
table:
03B8:00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03
03C0:00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03
03C8:00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03
**AppleWin** users: To save this press `F7`, at the debugger console `bsave "hgrtable.bin",3A0:3CF`, press `F7`.
DB HgrLoY 3A0:3B7
DB HgrHiY 3B8:3CF
To select which row to draw at we'll pass that in the X register to our DrawCharColRow() routine:
Listing 9b:
; FUNC: SetCursorRow( row )
; PARAM: X = row to draw at; $0 .. $17 (Rows 0 .. 23) (not modified)
; INPUT : $E5,$E6 initial pointer to the destination screen scanline
; Note: Must start at every 8 scanlines.
; OUTPUT: $F5,$F5 working pointer to the destination screen scanline
ORG $0313
0313: SetCursorRow
0313:BD A0 03 LDA HgrLoY,X ; HgrLoY[ row ]
0316:85 F5 STA TmpLo
0318:BD B8 03 LDA HgrHiY,X ; HgrHiY[ row ]
031B:18 CLC
031C:65 E6 ADC HgrHi
031E:85 F6 STA TmpHi
0320:60 RTS
; FUNC: DrawCharColRow()
; PARAM: A = glyph to draw
; PARAM: Y = column to draw at ; $0 .. $27 (Columns 0 .. 39) (not modified)
; PARAM: X = row to draw at ; $0 .. $17 (Rows 0 .. 23) (destroyed)
ORG $0335
0335: DrawCharColRow
0335:48 PHA
0336:20 13 03 JSR SetCursorRow
0339:68 PLA
; intentional fall into _DrawChar2
Enter in:
313: BD A0 03 85 F5
318:BD B8 03 18 65 E6 85 F6
320:60
335:48 20 13 03 68
Now we can print a char at any location:
Listing Demo 4:
ORG $1100
1100: PrintAYX
1100:A9 41 LDA #41 ; A-register = char
1102:A0 01 LDY #1 ; Y-register = col 1 (2nd column)
1104:A2 02 LDX #2 ; X-register = row 2 (3rd row)
1106:4C 35 03 JMP DrawCharColRow
Enter in:
1100:A9 41 A0 01 A2 02 4C 35 03
1100G
**AppleWin** users: You know the drill ...
SYM SetCursorRow = 313
SYM DrawCharColRow = 335
Natural Params SetCursorColRow()
Unfortunately, our usage of the X and Y registers are not intuitive. This is due to the limited addressing modes of the 6502. :-/ If the 6502 had a symmetrical indirect zero-page X addressing mode:
LDA ($ZP),X
We could map the X-register to the natural column (x-axis), and the Y-register to the natural row (y-axis). Alas, we're stuck with the X=row and Y=col unless we wanted to add extra code to "swap" the two.
Listing 10:
; FUNC: SetCursorColRowYX()
; PARAM: Y = col
; PARAM: X = row
ORG $0369
369: SetCursorColRowYX
369:20 13 03 JSR SetCursorRow
36C:18 CLC
36D:98 TYA
36E:65 F5 ADC TmpLo
371:85 F5 STA TmpLo
373:60 RTS
Or are we stuck? Since we're using a function to calculate the destination address let's fix the order.
We'll need to change the X
offset in SetCursorColRowXY() to Y
;
; FUNC: SetCursorColRow2a( row )
; PARAM: Y = row
; NOTES: Version 2a !
0928: ORG $0928
0928: SetCursorColRow2a
0928:B9 A0 03 LDA HgrLoY,Y ; changed from: ,X
092B:18 CLC
092C:65 E5 ADC HgrLo
092E:85 F5 STA TmpLo
0930:B9 B8 03 LDA HgrHiY,Y ; changed from: ,X
0933:18 CLC
0934:65 E6 ADC HgrHi
0936:85 F6 STA TmpHi
0938:60 RTS
And change the low byte to add X
instead:
; FUNC: SetCursorColRow2b( col, row ) = $0379
; PARAM: X = col
; PARAM: Y = row
; NOTES: Version 2b !
ORG $0979
979: SetCursorColRow2b
979:20 13 03 JSR SetCursorRow
97C:18 CLC
37D:88 TXA ; changed from: TYA
97E:65 F5 ADC TmpLo
981:85 F5 STA TmpLo
983:60
This is a little clunky but it is progress. Let's write the new SetCursorColRow() version with the SetCursorRow() inlined so we don't have to use a JSR.
Listing 11:
; FUNC: SetCursorColRow( col, row )
; PARAM: X = column to draw at; $0 .. $27 (Columns 0 .. 39) (not modified)
; PARAM: Y = row to draw at; $0 .. $17 (Rows 0 .. 23) (not modified)
; NOTES: Version 3! X and Y is swapped from earlier version!
; [$F5] = HgrLoY[ Y ] + ScreenLo + X
ORG $0321
0321: SetCursorColRow
0321:86 F5 STX TmpLo
0323:B9 A0 03 LDA HgrLoY,Y ; HgrLoY[ row ]
0326:18 CLC
0327:65 F5 ADC TmpLo ; add column
0329:85 F5 STA TmpLo
032B:B9 B8 03 LDA HgrHiY,Y ; HgrHiY[ row ]
032E:18 CLC ; \ could optimize this into
032F:65 E6 ADC HgrHi ; / single ORA HgrHi
0331:85 F6 STA TmpHi
0333:60 RTS
0334:EA NOP ; pad
Enter in:
321: 86 F5 B9 A0 03 18 65
328:F5 85 F5 B9 B8 03 18 65
330:E6 85 F6 60
DrawString()
Now that we have the basic print char working lets extend it to print a C-style string (one that is zero terminated.)
Listing 12:
String EQU $F0
; FUNC: DrawString( *text )
; PARAM: X = High byte of string address
; PARAM: Y = Low byte of string address
037E: ORG $037E
037E: DrawString
037E:84 F0 STY String+0
0380:86 F1 STX String+1
0382:A0 00 LDY #0
0384:B1 F0 .1 LDA (String),Y
0386:F0 07 BEQ .2 ; null byte? Done
0388:20 10 03 JSR DrawChar ; or DrawCharCol for speed
038B:C0 28 CPY #40 ; col < 40?
038D:90 F5 BCC .1
038F:60 .2 RTS
**AppleWin**:
SYM SetCursorColRow = 321
SYM DrawString = 37E
ASC Msg 120E:1219
And our example to verify that it works:
Listing Demo 5:
; FUNC: DemoDrawString()
ORG $1200
1200: DemoDrawString
1200:A2 03 LDX #3 ; col = 3
1202:A0 02 LDY #2 ; row = 2
1204:20 21 03 JSR SetCursorColRow
1207:A2 12 LDX #>Tx ; High
1209:A0 0E LDY #<Tx ; Low
120B:4C 7E 03 JMP DrawString
120E: Tx ASC "Hello World",0
120E:48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 57 6F 72 6C 64 00
Enter in:
37E:84 F0 86 F1 A0 00 B1 F0
386:F0 07 20 10 03 C0 28 90 F5 60
1200:A2 03 A0 02 20 21 03
1207:A2 12 A0 0E 4C 7E 03
120E:48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 57 6F 72 6C 64 00
1200G
Note: An easy way to get the hex bytes for a string is to use this tiny JavaScript snippet to convert a text string to hex:
var txt = "Hello World";
for( var i=0; i < txt.length; ++i )
console.log( txt.charCodeAt(i).toString(16) );
Copy text screen to HGR
For our final trick we are going to copy the characters off the text screen onto the HGR screen. More magic? Nah, just bit-shuffling.
The text screen, like the HGR screen, is also non-linear, and also broken up into a triad:
Row | Text Address | HGR Address | HGR Scanline |
---|---|---|---|
0 | $400 | $2000 | 0 |
1 | $480 | $2080 | 8 |
2 | $500 | $2100 | 16 |
3 | $580 | $2180 | 24 |
4 | $600 | $2200 | 32 |
5 | $600 | $2280 | 40 |
6 | $700 | $2300 | 48 |
7 | $780 | $2380 | 56 |
- | ---- | ----- | --- |
8 | $428 | $2028 | 64 |
9 | $4A8 | $20A8 | 72 |
10 | $528 | $2128 | 80 |
11 | $5A8 | $21A8 | 88 |
12 | $628 | $2228 | 96 |
13 | $6A8 | $22A8 | 104 |
14 | $728 | $2328 | 112 |
15 | $7A8 | $23A8 | 120 |
- | ---- | ----- | --- |
16 | $450 | $2050 | 128 |
17 | $4D0 | $20D0 | 136 |
18 | $550 | $2150 | 144 |
19 | $5D0 | $21D0 | 152 |
20 | $650 | $2250 | 160 |
21 | $6D0 | $22D0 | 168 |
22 | $750 | $2350 | 176 |
23 | $7D0 | $23D0 | 184 |
While the Apple's memory layout seems esoteric it has beautiful symmetry. For any given text row notice that:
- the low byte of the text address is the same low byte of the corresponding HGR scanline address, and
- the high byte of the text address is 0x1C less then the high byte of the HGR address
Technically, to convert the HGR high byte address to a Text high byte address, we only need to map these 4 high bytes:
HGR High Byte | Text High Byte |
---|---|
$20 = %0010_0000 | $4 = %0000_0100 |
$21 = %0010_0001 | $5 = %0000_0101 |
$22 = %0010_0010 | $6 = %0000_0110 |
$23 = %0010_0011 | $7 = %0000_0111 |
Which we could do via:
LDA HgrHiY, Y ; Y is row
AND #7 ; strip off top 6 bits
OR #4 ; Set text page 1 = $0400
But we'll save a byte and use the normal subtraction instead:
LDA HgrHiY, Y ; Y is row
SEC ; Convert HgrHiY to TextHiY byte
SBC #$1C ; A -= 0x1C
If we care about absolute speed we could see which one takes the fewer clock cycles.
There is also the reverse conversion -- to convert a Text address to a HGR address which could be done with the same AND #3, OR #20
, but since we don't have a Text Y table address and already have a HGR 16-bit address table we will re-use that.
Here's the Pseudo-code to copy the text screen to the HGR Screen:
for( row = 0; row < 24; row++ )
{
SrcTextLo = HgrLoY[ row ];
SrcTextHi = HgrHiY[ row ] - 0x1C;
// SetCursorColRow( 0, row ) which does:
DstHgrLo = HgrLoY[ row ]
DstHgrHi = HgrHiY[ row ]
for( col = 0; col < 40; col++ )
{
c = SrcText[ col ]
DrawCharCol( c );
}
}
And here is the assembly:
; FUNC: CopyTextToHGR()
; DATA:
; $6000.$63FF Font 7x8 Data
; $6400.$642F HgrLoY, HgrHiY table for every 8 scanlines
1300: Txt EQU $F7
ORG $1300
1300: CopyTextToHgr
1300:A9 00 LDA #0
1302:85 F3 STA row
1304:85 E5 STA $E5
1306:A9 20 LDA #$20 ; Dest = HGR1 = $2000
1308:85 E6 STA $E6
130A:A4 F3 .1 LDY row ; Y = row
130C:C0 18 CPY #24 ; 24 rows is #$18
130E:B0 22 BCS .3 ; Y >= 24
1310:A2 00 LDX #0
1312:86 F2 STX col ; X = col
1314:20 21 03 JSR SetCursorColRow
1317:38 SEC ; A = HgrHiY[ row ]
1318:E9 1C SBC #$1C ; Convert HgrHiY to TextHiY byte
131A:85 F8 STA Txt+1 ; A -= 0x1C -> TxtHi
131C:B9 A0 03 LDA HgrLoY, Y ; A = HgrLoY[ row ]
131F:85 F7 STA Txt+0 ; -> TxtLo
1321:A4 F2 LDY col
1323:B1 F7 .2 LDA (Txt),Y
1325:29 7F AND #$7F
1327:20 3A 03 JSR DrawCharCol
132A:C0 28 CPY #$28 ; 40 cols is #$28
132C:90 F5 BCC .2 ; Y < 40
132E:E6 F3 INC row
1330:D0 D8 BNE .1 ; always
1332:60 .3 RTS
**AppleWin** users:
sym Txt2Hgr.1 = 130A
sym Txt2Hgr.2 = 1323
sym Txt2Hgr.3 = 1332
Enter in:
1300:A9 00 85 F3 85 E5 A9 20
1308:85 E6 A4 F3 C0 18 B0 22
1310:A2 00 86 F2 20 21 03 38
1318:E9 1C 85 F8 B9 A0 03 85
1320:F7 A4 F2 B1 F7 29 7F 20
1328:3A 03 C0 28 90 F5 E6 F3
1330:D0 D8 60
And now for the moment of truth! Don't worry if you can't see what you are typing.
FC58G
1300L
1300G
Voila!
In case you were wondering why I turned 50% scanlines on
this is how the HGR screen would normally look like in color:
That's why I turned 50% scanlines on, for better readability:
Using one of the newer emulators with NTSC emulation, unfortunately, doesn't help with readability: :-/
- NTSC Alpha (with tweaked Palette):
- NTSC Sheldon -- which unfortunately has WAY too much ghosting: :-(
And just to prove that it copied the bottom 4 text rows as well:
C052
And to restore the bottom 4 text rows
C053
Exercises
Exercise 1: ScrollHgrUpPixel()
Hey! Homework? Yes, the only (true) way to demonstrate you understand the theory is with implementation:
Write a function to "scroll" the HGR screen up:
* one "text line" (8 pixels), and
Hint: This is basically a gloried and specialized `memcpy()`.
Exercise 2: ScrollHgrUpLine()
Write a function to "scroll" the HGR screen up:
* one scan line (1 pixel)
Hint: For scrolling up one pixel we can spot the pattern if we inspect
the memory flow of how pixels get shuffled around:
40 bytes from $2400.$2427 -> $2000.$2027
40 bytes from $2800.$2827 -> $2400.$2427
etc
Don't forget that you only need to copy 191 rows, not 192, since the
very bottom scanline should be "blank."
Recap - Font Draw
Here are all the (core) font rendering routines we've entered in so far:
0301: 48 6A 6A 6A 6A 20 0A
0308:03 68 29 0F AA BD 90 03
0310:4C 3A 03 BD A0 03 85 F5
0318:BD B8 03 18 65 E6 85 F6
0320:60 86 F5 B9 A0 03 18 65
0328:F5 85 F5 B9 B8 03 18 65
0330:E6 85 F6 60 EA 48 20 13
0338:03 68 2A 2A 2A AA 29 F8
0340:8D 53 03 8A 29 03 2A 69
0348:60 8D 54 03 A6 F6 86 FD
0350:A2 00 BD 00 00 91 F5 18
0358:A5 F6 69 04 85 F6 E8 E0
0360:08 D0 EF C8 A6 FD 86 F6
0368:60
0390:30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
0398:38 39 41 42 43 44 45 46
03A0:00 80 00 80 00 80 00 80
03A8:28 A8 28 A8 28 A8 28 A8
03B0:50 D0 50 D0 50 D0 50 D0
03B8:00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03
03C0:00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03
03C8:00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03
(To save this: BSAVE FONTDRAW.BIN,A$300,L$D0
)
Other Fonts
Fat Stroke Fonts
Moon Patrol on the Apple 2 used what I call a "Fat Stroke Font" -- each stroke was 2 pixels when possible.
A similiar font is the one used by "Beautiful Boot". Let's examine it.
Beautiful Boot
Here is the font used by Beautiful Boot
6100:80 80 80 80 80 80 80 80 '
6108:80 87 87 80 87 87 87 87 '!
6110:80 80 80 80 B6 A4 B6 B6 '"
6118:80 9E 9E BF 9E BF 9E 9E '#
6120:80 8C 9F B0 9E 83 BE 8C '$
6128:80 BB BB 86 8C 98 B7 B7 '%
6130:80 AE 9B BB 8F 86 8F 86 '&
6138:80 80 80 80 8C 88 8C 8C ''
6140:80 B8 9C 8E 8E 8E 9C B8 '(
6148:80 87 8E 9C 9C 9C 8E 87 ')
6150:80 88 AA 9C BE 9C AA 88 '*
6158:80 80 8C 8C BF BF 8C 8C '+
6160:83 86 87 80 80 80 80 80 ',
6168:80 80 80 80 BE BE 80 80 '-
6170:80 87 87 80 80 80 80 80 '.
6178:80 83 87 8E 9C B8 F0 E0 '/
6180:80 9E B3 B3 B3 B3 B3 9E '0
6188:80 BF 8C 8C 8C 8F 8E 8C '1
6190:80 BF BF 8E B8 B3 BF 9E '2
6198:80 9E BF B0 BE B0 BF 9E '3
61A0:80 B0 B0 BF B3 B6 BC B8 '4
61A8:80 9E BF B0 9F 83 BF BF '5
61B0:80 9E BF B3 9F 83 BF 9E '6
61B8:80 8C 8C 8C 98 B0 BF BF '7
61C0:80 9E BF B3 9E B3 BF 9E '8
61C8:80 9E BF B0 BE B3 BF 9E '9
61D0:80 9C 9C 80 80 9C 9C 80 ':
61D8:83 86 87 80 80 87 87 80 ';
61E0:80 F0 B8 9C 8E 9C B8 F0 '<
61E8:80 80 80 BE 80 BE 80 80 '=
61F0:80 87 8E 9C B8 9C 8E 87 '>
61F8:80 8C 80 8C 98 B3 BF 9E '?
6200:80 BE 83 BB BB B3 B3 9E '@
6208:80 B3 B3 BF BF B3 BF 9E 'A
6210:80 9F BF B3 9F B3 BF 9F 'B
6218:80 9E BF B3 83 B3 BF 9E 'C
6220:80 9F BF B3 B3 B3 BF 9F 'D
6228:80 BF BF 83 9F 83 BF BF 'E
6230:80 83 83 9F 9F 83 BF BF 'F
6238:80 9E BF B3 BB 83 BF 9E 'G
6240:80 B3 B3 BF BF B3 B3 B3 'H
6248:80 BF BF 8C 8C 8C BF BF 'I
6250:80 9E BF B3 B0 B0 B0 B0 'J
6258:80 B3 BB 9F 8F 9F BB B3 'K
6260:80 BF BF 83 83 83 83 83 'L
6268:80 B3 B3 B3 B3 B3 BF B3 'M
6270:80 B3 B3 BB BF B7 B3 B3 'N
6278:80 9E BF B3 B3 B3 BF 9E 'O
6280:80 83 83 9F BF B3 BF 9F 'P
6288:80 AE 93 AB A3 A3 BF 9E 'Q
6290:80 B3 BB 9F BF B3 BF 9F 'R
6298:80 9E B3 B0 9E 83 B3 9E 'S
62A0:80 8C 8C 8C 8C 8C BF BF 'T
62A8:80 9E BF B3 B3 B3 B3 B3 'U
62B0:80 8C 9E B3 B3 B3 B3 B3 'V
62B8:80 B3 BF B3 B3 B3 B3 B3 'W
62C0:80 B3 B3 9E 8C 9E B3 B3 'X
62C8:80 8C 8C 8C 9E B3 B3 B3 'Y
62D0:80 BF BF 86 8C 98 BF BF 'Z
62D8:80 BC BC 8C 8C 8C BC BC '[
62E0:80 E0 F0 B8 9C 8E 87 83 '\
62E8:80 8F 8F 8C 8C 8C 8F 8F ']
62F0:80 80 80 80 80 BF 9E 8C '^
62F8:80 FF FF 80 80 80 80 80 '_
6300:80 80 80 80 80 98 8C 86 '`
6308:80 BE B3 BE B0 9E 80 80 'a
6310:80 9F B3 B3 B3 9F 83 83 'b
6318:80 9E B3 83 B3 9E 80 80 'c
6320:80 BE B3 B3 B3 BE B0 B0 'd
6328:80 9E 83 9F B3 9E 80 80 'e
6330:80 86 86 86 9F 86 B6 9C 'f
6338:9E B0 BE B3 B3 9E 80 80 'g
6340:80 B3 B3 B3 B3 9F 83 83 'h
6348:80 8C 8C 8C 8C 80 8C 80 'i
6350:9E B3 B3 B0 B0 B0 80 B0 'j
6358:80 B3 9B 8F 9B B3 83 83 'k
6360:80 9E 8C 8C 8C 8C 8C 8E 'l
6368:80 B3 B3 B3 BF B3 80 80 'm
6370:80 B3 B3 B3 B3 9F 80 80 'n
6378:80 9E B3 B3 B3 9E 80 80 'o
6380:83 83 9F B3 B3 9F 80 80 'p
6388:B0 B0 BE B3 B3 BE 80 80 'q
6390:80 83 83 83 B3 9F 80 80 'r
6398:80 9E B0 9E 83 9E 80 80 's
63A0:80 9C B6 86 86 9F 86 86 't
63A8:80 BE B3 B3 B3 B3 80 80 'u
63B0:80 8C 9E B3 B3 B3 80 80 'v
63B8:80 B3 BF B3 B3 B3 80 80 'w
63C0:80 B3 9E 8C 9E B3 80 80 'x
63C8:9E B0 BE B3 B3 B3 80 80 'y
63D0:80 BF 86 8C 98 BF 80 80 'z
63D8:80 9C 9E 86 87 86 9E 9C '{
63E0:8C 8C 8C 8C 8C 8C 8C 8C '|
63E8:80 8E 9E 98 B8 98 9E 8E '}
63F0:80 80 80 80 80 98 BF 86 '~
63F8:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 '#
Again copy this to higher memory
8000<6000.63FFM
Fire up our ASCII Character Inspector. Recall:
1000:A9 00 85 FE A9 00 85 F5
1008:A9 20 85 F6 A5 FE A0 00
1010:20 37 10 AD 00 C0 10 FB
1018:8D 10 C0 C9 88 D0 0A C6
1020:FE A5 FE 29 7F 85 FE 10
1028:DB C9 95 D0 05 E6 FE 18
1030:90 EF C9 9B D0 DD 60 48
1038:20 10 03 A9 20 20 10 03
1040:68 4C 01 03
1000G
Press ESC
when done viewing.
Argh, those glyphs are upside down!
Here's our 5 byte patch to fix our rendering code.
0350: _DrawChar
0350:A2 07 LDX #7 ; <- #0
:
035E:CA DEX ; <- INX
035F:EA EA NOP NOP ; <- CPX #8
0361:10 EF BPL _LoadFont ; <- BNE _LoadFont
Enter in:
351:7
35E:CA EA EA 10
Hmm, some of those glyphs are badly designed (inconsistent.) :-/ That's the biggest problem amateur artists have; they haven't yet internalized a "consistent style" -- their's is all over the place. This comes with experience of knowing:
- When to follow the "rules", and
- When to bend/break the "rules".
Let's write a program to view all the ASCII characters.
ORG $1050
; <<Forthcoming!>>
Here is a table of all the glyphs that we'll eventually fix:
Glyph |
---|
2 |
7 |
M |
Q |
S |
W |
Y |
X |
^ |
j |
m |
s |
Alrighty then.
The first glyph that stands out is the S
. Our rule is:
- Horizontal and Vertical lines are 2 pixels when possible.
Change the S
= $53 @ 6298
:
From:
6298:80 9E B3 B0 9E 83 B3 9E 'S
To:
6298:80 9E BF B8 9E 87 BF 9E 'S
While that matches the style of 5
it doesn't match the style of A
.
Let's fix the and bottom rows.
6298:80 9F BF B8 9E 87 BF BE 'S
There we go!
Q. How did I know what bits/bytes to use?
A. The "Beautiful Boot" font is 7x8, with the last pixel being a spacer. This makes each glyph effectively by 6x8. The font also sets the high bit so we'll need to preserve that. Why? (Answer below.)
a) Remember, bits are reversed on the HGR screen:
Bits | HGR | Hex |
---|---|---|
0000 | $0 | $0 |
1000 | $8 | $1 |
0100 | $4 | $2 |
1100 | $C | $3 |
0010 | $2 | $4 |
1010 | $A | $5 |
0110 | $6 | $6 |
1110 | $E | $7 |
0001 | $1 | $8 |
1001 | $9 | $9 |
0101 | $5 | $A |
1101 | $D | $B |
0011 | $3 | $C |
1011 | $B | $D |
0111 | $7 | $E |
1111 | $F | $F |
Let's sort that table by HGR hex value:
Bits | HGR | Hex |
---|---|---|
0000 | $0 | $0 |
0001 | $1 | $8 |
0010 | $2 | $4 |
0011 | $3 | $C |
0100 | $4 | $2 |
0101 | $5 | $A |
0110 | $6 | $6 |
0111 | $7 | $E |
1000 | $8 | $1 |
1001 | $9 | $9 |
1010 | $A | $5 |
1011 | $B | $D |
1100 | $C | $3 |
1101 | $D | $B |
1110 | $E | $7 |
1111 | $F | $F |
With our "flip bits table" we can list the old
and new
bytes:
HGR Bits | HGR | Hex | Row |
---|---|---|---|
0111_1001 | $79 | $9E | 0 |
0111_1101 | $7D | $BE | 0 |
- | -- | -- | - |
1100_1101 | $CD | $B3 | 1 |
1111_1101 | $CF | $BF | 1 |
- | -- | -- | - |
0000_0110 | $C1 | $83 | 2 |
0000_1110 | $E1 | $87 | 2 |
- | -- | -- | - |
0000_1101 | $0D | $B0 | 4 |
0001_1101 | $1D | $B8 | 4 |
- | -- | -- | - |
0111_1001 | $79 | $9E | 0 |
1111_1001 | $F9 | $9F | 0 |
b) Did I manually enter in those hex values?
<<Forthcoming!>>
What's next?
What's left? Quite a few things actually:
- Copy the 80-Column text screen to DHGR (Double High Resolution)
- Hook into the COUT so all text appears onto the HGR or DHGR screen
- Other 7x8 fonts
- Other non-7x8 fonts
Conclusion
Hope this HGR font tutorial helped you understand the inner workings of a font blitter!
Happy (Apple ][ //e //c) Hacking!
Michael "AppleWin Debug Dev"
Solutions
Solution 1: ScrollHgrUpLine()
Figure it out ! You have all the tools and knowledge.
Seriously though, start with the data flow. Let's look at the HGR "text" lines we need to copy from/to:
Src Dst
1 0
2 1
3 2
4 3
5 4
6 5
7 6
8 7
9 8
10 9
11 10
12 11
13 12
14 13
15 14
16 15
17 16
18 17
19 18
20 19
21 20
22 21
23 22
-- 23
We need to copy 23 HGR "text" lines to the one above; we also need to clear the bottom row. Pseudo-code would be:
for( int line = 0; line < 24-1; line++
copy_line( line+1, line );
clear_line( 23 );
Each HGR "text" line takes up 40 columns
for( int row = 0; row < 23; row++
char *src = HGRAddressY[ row + 1 ]
char *dst = HGRAddressY[ row + 0 ]
for( int col = 0; col < 40; col++ )
*dst++ = *src++;
clear_line( 23 );
However each HGR "text" line takes 8 scanlines (since our font cell is 7x8).
for( row = 0; row < 23; row++
char *src = HGRAddressY[ row + 1 ]
char *dst = HGRAddressY[ row + 0 ]
for( line = 0; line < 8; line++ )
{
for( col = 0; col < 40; col++ )
*dst++ = *src++;
src += 0x400;
dst += 0x400;
}
We could code this up as:
Src EQU $F8
Dst EQU $FA
Tmp EQU $FC
; NOTE: Requires $E6 to be initialized with $20 or $40 for graphics page
ORG $1900
1900: ScrollHgrUpLine
1900:A2 00 LDX #0 ; row
; Copy Top 184 rows
1902:BD A0 03 .1 LDA HgrLoY,X
1905:85 FA STA Dst+0
1907:BD B8 03 LDA HgrHiY,X
190A:05 E6 ORA $E6
190C:85 FB STA Dst+1
190E:E8 INX
190F:BD A0 03 LDA HgrLoY,X
1912:85 F8 STA Src+0
1914:BD B8 03 LDA HgrHiY,X
1917:05 E6 ORA $E6
1919:85 F9 STA Src+1
191B:A9 07 LDA #7 ; 8 scanlines/text line
191D:85 FC STA Tmp
191F:A0 27 .2 LDY #40-1 ; 40 columns to copy
1921:B1 F8 .3 LDA (Src),Y
1923:91 FA STA (Dst),Y
1925:88 DEY
1926:10 F9 BPL .3 ; while (y-- > 0)
1928:18 CLC
1929:A5 F9 LDA Src+1
192B:69 04 ADC #4
192D:85 F9 STA Src+1
192F:18 CLC
1930:A5 FB LDA Dst+1
1932:69 04 ADC #4
1934:85 FB STA Dst+1
1936:C6 FC DEC Tmp
1938:10 E5 BPL .2
193A:E0 17 CPX #23 ; 24 rows is #$18
193C:90 C4 BCC .1 ; Y >= 23
; Zero Bottom 8 scanlines ; $F8,$F9 = $D0,$43
193E:A2 08 LDX #8 ; bottom 8 scanlines
1940:38 CLC
1941:A5 F9 LDA Src+1
1943:E9 20 SBC #20
1945:85 F9 STA Src+1
1947:A9 00 .4 LDA #00 ; color = black
1949:A0 27 LDY #40-1 ; 40 columns to copy
194B:91 F8 .5 STA (Src),Y
194D:88 DEY
194E:10 FB BPL .5 ; while (y-- > 0)
1950:18 CLC
1951:A5 F9 LDA Src+1
1953:69 04 ADC #4
1955:85 F9 STA Src+1
1957:CA DEX
1958:D0 ED BNE .4 ; BNZ ; Try this fun bug: D0 EF
195A:60 RTS
Enter in:
1900:A2 00 BD A0 03 85 FA BD
1908:B8 03 05 E6 85 FB E8 BD
1910:A0 03 85 F8 BD B8 03 05
1918:E6 85 F9 A9 07 85 FC A0
1920:27 B1 F8 91 FA 88 10 F9
1928:18 A5 F9 69 04 85 F9 18
1930:A5 FB 69 04 85 FB C6 FC
1938:10 E5 E0 17 90 C4 A2 08
1940:38 A5 F9 E9 20 85 F9 A9
1948:00 A0 27 91 F8 88 10 FB
1950:18 A5 F9 69 04 85 F9 CA
1958:D0 ED 60
Excellent.
Solution 2: ScrollHgrUpPixel()
There are many different ways to solve this depending if we want to prioritize space or speed.
We could manually unroll every loop such as this monstrosity (we trade space for speed):
Enter this (or download hgr_scroll_up.bin or BRUN HGR_SCROLL_UP
):
1400:A2 27
1402:BD 00 24 9D 00 20
1408:BD 00 28 9D 00 24
140E:BD 00 2C 9D 00 28
1414:BD 00 30 9D 00 2C
141A:BD 00 34 9D 00 30
1420:BD 00 38 9D 00 34
1426:BD 00 3C 9D 00 38
142C:BD 80 20 9D 00 3C
1432:BD 80 24 9D 80 20
1438:BD 80 28 9D 80 24
143E:BD 80 2C 9D 80 28
1444:BD 80 30 9D 80 2C
144A:BD 80 34 9D 80 30
1450:BD 80 38 9D 80 34
1456:BD 80 3C 9D 80 38
145C:BD 00 21 9D 80 3C
1462:BD 00 25 9D 00 21
1468:BD 00 29 9D 00 25
146E:BD 00 2D 9D 00 29
1474:BD 00 31 9D 00 2D
147A:BD 00 35 9D 00 31
1480:BD 00 39 9D 00 35
1486:BD 00 3D 9D 00 39
148C:BD 80 21 9D 00 3D
1492:BD 80 25 9D 80 21
1498:BD 80 29 9D 80 25
149E:BD 80 2D 9D 80 29
14A4:BD 80 31 9D 80 2D
14AA:BD 80 35 9D 80 31
14B0:BD 80 39 9D 80 35
14B6:BD 80 3D 9D 80 39
14BC:BD 00 22 9D 80 3D
14C2:BD 00 26 9D 00 22
14C8:BD 00 2A 9D 00 26
14CE:BD 00 2E 9D 00 2A
14D4:BD 00 32 9D 00 2E
14DA:BD 00 36 9D 00 32
14E0:BD 00 3A 9D 00 36
14E6:BD 00 3E 9D 00 3A
14EC:BD 80 22 9D 00 3E
14F2:BD 80 26 9D 80 22
14F8:BD 80 2A 9D 80 26
14FE:BD 80 2E 9D 80 2A
1504:BD 80 32 9D 80 2E
150A:BD 80 36 9D 80 32
1510:BD 80 3A 9D 80 36
1516:BD 80 3E 9D 80 3A
151C:BD 00 23 9D 80 3E
1522:BD 00 27 9D 00 23
1528:BD 00 2B 9D 00 27
152E:BD 00 2F 9D 00 2B
1534:BD 00 33 9D 00 2F
153A:BD 00 37 9D 00 33
1540:BD 00 3B 9D 00 37
1546:BD 00 3F 9D 00 3B
154C:BD 80 23 9D 00 3F
1552:BD 80 27 9D 80 23
1558:BD 80 2B 9D 80 27
155E:BD 80 2F 9D 80 2B
1564:BD 80 33 9D 80 2F
156A:BD 80 37 9D 80 33
1570:BD 80 3B 9D 80 37
1576:BD 80 3F 9D 80 3B
157C:BD 28 20 9D 80 3F
1582:BD 28 24 9D 28 20
1588:BD 28 28 9D 28 24
158E:BD 28 2C 9D 28 28
1594:BD 28 30 9D 28 2C
159A:BD 28 34 9D 28 30
15A0:BD 28 38 9D 28 34
15A6:BD 28 3C 9D 28 38
15AC:BD A8 20 9D 28 3C
15B2:BD A8 24 9D A8 20
15B8:BD A8 28 9D A8 24
15BE:BD A8 2C 9D A8 28
15C4:BD A8 30 9D A8 2C
15CA:BD A8 34 9D A8 30
15D0:BD A8 38 9D A8 34
15D6:BD A8 3C 9D A8 38
15DC:BD 28 21 9D A8 3C
15E2:BD 28 25 9D 28 21
15E8:BD 28 29 9D 28 25
15EE:BD 28 2D 9D 28 29
15F4:BD 28 31 9D 28 2D
15FA:BD 28 35 9D 28 31
1600:BD 28 39 9D 28 35
1606:BD 28 3D 9D 28 39
160C:BD A8 21 9D 28 3D
1612:BD A8 25 9D A8 21
1618:BD A8 29 9D A8 25
161E:BD A8 2D 9D A8 29
1624:BD A8 31 9D A8 2D
162A:BD A8 35 9D A8 31
1630:BD A8 39 9D A8 35
1636:BD A8 3D 9D A8 39
163C:BD 28 22 9D A8 3D
1642:BD 28 26 9D 28 22
1648:BD 28 2A 9D 28 26
164E:BD 28 2E 9D 28 2A
1654:BD 28 32 9D 28 2E
165A:BD 28 36 9D 28 32
1660:BD 28 3A 9D 28 36
1666:BD 28 3E 9D 28 3A
166C:BD A8 22 9D 28 3E
1672:BD A8 26 9D A8 22
1678:BD A8 2A 9D A8 26
167E:BD A8 2E 9D A8 2A
1684:BD A8 32 9D A8 2E
168A:BD A8 36 9D A8 32
1690:BD A8 3A 9D A8 36
1696:BD A8 3E 9D A8 3A
169C:BD 28 23 9D A8 3E
16A2:BD 28 27 9D 28 23
16A8:BD 28 2B 9D 28 27
16AE:BD 28 2F 9D 28 2B
16B4:BD 28 33 9D 28 2F
16BA:BD 28 37 9D 28 33
16C0:BD 28 3B 9D 28 37
16C6:BD 28 3F 9D 28 3B
16CC:BD A8 23 9D 28 3F
16D2:BD A8 27 9D A8 23
16D8:BD A8 2B 9D A8 27
16DE:BD A8 2F 9D A8 2B
16E4:BD A8 33 9D A8 2F
16EA:BD A8 37 9D A8 33
16F0:BD A8 3B 9D A8 37
16F6:BD A8 3F 9D A8 3B
16FC:BD 50 20 9D A8 3F
1702:BD 50 24 9D 50 20
1708:BD 50 28 9D 50 24
170E:BD 50 2C 9D 50 28
1714:BD 50 30 9D 50 2C
171A:BD 50 34 9D 50 30
1720:BD 50 38 9D 50 34
1726:BD 50 3C 9D 50 38
172C:BD D0 20 9D 50 3C
1732:BD D0 24 9D D0 20
1738:BD D0 28 9D D0 24
173E:BD D0 2C 9D D0 28
1744:BD D0 30 9D D0 2C
174A:BD D0 34 9D D0 30
1750:BD D0 38 9D D0 34
1756:BD D0 3C 9D D0 38
175C:BD 50 21 9D D0 3C
1762:BD 50 25 9D 50 21
1768:BD 50 29 9D 50 25
176E:BD 50 2D 9D 50 29
1774:BD 50 31 9D 50 2D
177A:BD 50 35 9D 50 31
1780:BD 50 39 9D 50 35
1786:BD 50 3D 9D 50 39
178C:BD D0 21 9D 50 3D
1792:BD D0 25 9D D0 21
1798:BD D0 29 9D D0 25
179E:BD D0 2D 9D D0 29
17A4:BD D0 31 9D D0 2D
17AA:BD D0 35 9D D0 31
17B0:BD D0 39 9D D0 35
17B6:BD D0 3D 9D D0 39
17BC:BD 50 22 9D D0 3D
17C2:BD 50 26 9D 50 22
17C8:BD 50 2A 9D 50 26
17CE:BD 50 2E 9D 50 2A
17D4:BD 50 32 9D 50 2E
17DA:BD 50 36 9D 50 32
17E0:BD 50 3A 9D 50 36
17E6:BD 50 3E 9D 50 3A
17EC:BD D0 22 9D 50 3E
17F2:BD D0 26 9D D0 22
17F8:BD D0 2A 9D D0 26
17FE:BD D0 2E 9D D0 2A
1804:BD D0 32 9D D0 2E
180A:BD D0 36 9D D0 32
1810:BD D0 3A 9D D0 36
1816:BD D0 3E 9D D0 3A
181C:BD 50 23 9D D0 3E
1822:BD 50 27 9D 50 23
1828:BD 50 2B 9D 50 27
182E:BD 50 2F 9D 50 2B
1834:BD 50 33 9D 50 2F
183A:BD 50 37 9D 50 33
1840:BD 50 3B 9D 50 37
1846:BD 50 3F 9D 50 3B
184C:BD D0 23 9D 50 3F
1852:BD D0 27 9D D0 23
1858:BD D0 2B 9D D0 27
185E:BD D0 2F 9D D0 2B
1864:BD D0 33 9D D0 2F
186A:BD D0 37 9D D0 33
1870:BD D0 3B 9D D0 37
1876:BD D0 3F 9D D0 3B
187C:A9 00 9D D0 3F
1881:CA 30 03 4C 02 14
1887:60
And let's write a little demo ...
13F7:A0 C0 LDY #C0
13F9:20 00 14 .1 JSR ScrollHgrUpPixel
13FC:88 DEY
13FD:D0 FA BNE .1
13FF:60 RTS
Enter in:
13F7:A0 C0 20 00 14 88 D0 FA 60
(To save to disk type BSAVE HGR_SCROLL_UP.BIN,A$13F7,L$490
)
And let's try it out:
1300L
1300G
1400G
1400G
1400G
And for the grand finale:
13F7G
Sweet !
Here's the (non-standard) assembly to scroll the HGR screen up one pixel: (I'm using the non-conventional :
as an assembler end-of-statement sepearator to logically group the byte copies together.)
; FUNC: ScrollHgrUpPixel()
ORG $1400
1400: LDX #27 ; 39 columns ; Src Y Dst Y
1402: .1 LDA $2400,X : STA $2000,X ; [ 1] -> [ 0]
1408: LDA $2800,X : STA $2400,X ; [ 2] -> [ 1]
140E: LDA $2C00,X : STA $2800,X ; [ 3] -> [ 2]
1414: LDA $3000,X : STA $2C00,X ; [ 4] -> [ 3]
141A: LDA $3400,X : STA $3000,X ; [ 5] -> [ 4]
1420: LDA $3800,X : STA $3400,X ; [ 6] -> [ 5]
1426: LDA $3C00,X : STA $3800,X ; [ 7] -> [ 6]
142C: LDA $2080,X : STA $3C00,X ; [ 8] -> [ 7]
1432: LDA $2480,X : STA $2080,X ; [ 9] -> [ 8]
1438: LDA $2880,X : STA $2480,X ; [ 10] -> [ 9]
143E: LDA $2C80,X : STA $2880,X ; [ 11] -> [ 10]
1444: LDA $3080,X : STA $2C80,X ; [ 12] -> [ 11]
144A: LDA $3480,X : STA $3080,X ; [ 13] -> [ 12]
1450: LDA $3880,X : STA $3480,X ; [ 14] -> [ 13]
1456: LDA $3C80,X : STA $3880,X ; [ 15] -> [ 14]
145C: LDA $2100,X : STA $3C80,X ; [ 16] -> [ 15]
1462: LDA $2500,X : STA $2100,X ; [ 17] -> [ 16]
1468: LDA $2900,X : STA $2500,X ; [ 18] -> [ 17]
146E: LDA $2D00,X : STA $2900,X ; [ 19] -> [ 18]
1474: LDA $3100,X : STA $2D00,X ; [ 20] -> [ 19]
147A: LDA $3500,X : STA $3100,X ; [ 21] -> [ 20]
1480: LDA $3900,X : STA $3500,X ; [ 22] -> [ 21]
1486: LDA $3D00,X : STA $3900,X ; [ 23] -> [ 22]
148C: LDA $2180,X : STA $3D00,X ; [ 24] -> [ 23]
1492: LDA $2580,X : STA $2180,X ; [ 25] -> [ 24]
1498: LDA $2980,X : STA $2580,X ; [ 26] -> [ 25]
149E: LDA $2D80,X : STA $2980,X ; [ 27] -> [ 26]
14A4: LDA $3180,X : STA $2D80,X ; [ 28] -> [ 27]
14AA: LDA $3580,X : STA $3180,X ; [ 29] -> [ 28]
14B0: LDA $3980,X : STA $3580,X ; [ 30] -> [ 29]
14B6: LDA $3D80,X : STA $3980,X ; [ 31] -> [ 30]
14BC: LDA $2200,X : STA $3D80,X ; [ 32] -> [ 31]
14C2: LDA $2600,X : STA $2200,X ; [ 33] -> [ 32]
14C8: LDA $2A00,X : STA $2600,X ; [ 34] -> [ 33]
14CE: LDA $2E00,X : STA $2A00,X ; [ 35] -> [ 34]
14D4: LDA $3200,X : STA $2E00,X ; [ 36] -> [ 35]
14DA: LDA $3600,X : STA $3200,X ; [ 37] -> [ 36]
14E0: LDA $3A00,X : STA $3600,X ; [ 38] -> [ 37]
14E6: LDA $3E00,X : STA $3A00,X ; [ 39] -> [ 38]
14EC: LDA $2280,X : STA $3E00,X ; [ 40] -> [ 39]
14F2: LDA $2680,X : STA $2280,X ; [ 41] -> [ 40]
14F8: LDA $2A80,X : STA $2680,X ; [ 42] -> [ 41]
14FE: LDA $2E80,X : STA $2A80,X ; [ 43] -> [ 42]
1504: LDA $3280,X : STA $2E80,X ; [ 44] -> [ 43]
150A: LDA $3680,X : STA $3280,X ; [ 45] -> [ 44]
1510: LDA $3A80,X : STA $3680,X ; [ 46] -> [ 45]
1516: LDA $3E80,X : STA $3A80,X ; [ 47] -> [ 46]
151C: LDA $2300,X : STA $3E80,X ; [ 48] -> [ 47]
1522: LDA $2700,X : STA $2300,X ; [ 49] -> [ 48]
1528: LDA $2B00,X : STA $2700,X ; [ 50] -> [ 49]
152E: LDA $2F00,X : STA $2B00,X ; [ 51] -> [ 50]
1534: LDA $3300,X : STA $2F00,X ; [ 52] -> [ 51]
153A: LDA $3700,X : STA $3300,X ; [ 53] -> [ 52]
1540: LDA $3B00,X : STA $3700,X ; [ 54] -> [ 53]
1546: LDA $3F00,X : STA $3B00,X ; [ 55] -> [ 54]
154C: LDA $2380,X : STA $3F00,X ; [ 56] -> [ 55]
1552: LDA $2780,X : STA $2380,X ; [ 57] -> [ 56]
1558: LDA $2B80,X : STA $2780,X ; [ 58] -> [ 57]
155E: LDA $2F80,X : STA $2B80,X ; [ 59] -> [ 58]
1564: LDA $3380,X : STA $2F80,X ; [ 60] -> [ 59]
156A: LDA $3780,X : STA $3380,X ; [ 61] -> [ 60]
1570: LDA $3B80,X : STA $3780,X ; [ 62] -> [ 61]
1576: LDA $3F80,X : STA $3B80,X ; [ 63] -> [ 62]
157C: LDA $2028,X : STA $3F80,X ; [ 64] -> [ 63]
1582: LDA $2428,X : STA $2028,X ; [ 65] -> [ 64]
1588: LDA $2828,X : STA $2428,X ; [ 66] -> [ 65]
158E: LDA $2C28,X : STA $2828,X ; [ 67] -> [ 66]
1594: LDA $3028,X : STA $2C28,X ; [ 68] -> [ 67]
159A: LDA $3428,X : STA $3028,X ; [ 69] -> [ 68]
15A0: LDA $3828,X : STA $3428,X ; [ 70] -> [ 69]
15A6: LDA $3C28,X : STA $3828,X ; [ 71] -> [ 70]
15AC: LDA $20A8,X : STA $3C28,X ; [ 72] -> [ 71]
15B2: LDA $24A8,X : STA $20A8,X ; [ 73] -> [ 72]
15B8: LDA $28A8,X : STA $24A8,X ; [ 74] -> [ 73]
15BE: LDA $2CA8,X : STA $28A8,X ; [ 75] -> [ 74]
15C4: LDA $30A8,X : STA $2CA8,X ; [ 76] -> [ 75]
15CA: LDA $34A8,X : STA $30A8,X ; [ 77] -> [ 76]
15D0: LDA $38A8,X : STA $34A8,X ; [ 78] -> [ 77]
15D6: LDA $3CA8,X : STA $38A8,X ; [ 79] -> [ 78]
15DC: LDA $2128,X : STA $3CA8,X ; [ 80] -> [ 79]
15E2: LDA $2528,X : STA $2128,X ; [ 81] -> [ 80]
15E8: LDA $2928,X : STA $2528,X ; [ 82] -> [ 81]
15EE: LDA $2D28,X : STA $2928,X ; [ 83] -> [ 82]
15F4: LDA $3128,X : STA $2D28,X ; [ 84] -> [ 83]
15FA: LDA $3528,X : STA $3128,X ; [ 85] -> [ 84]
1600: LDA $3928,X : STA $3528,X ; [ 86] -> [ 85]
1606: LDA $3D28,X : STA $3928,X ; [ 87] -> [ 86]
160C: LDA $21A8,X : STA $3D28,X ; [ 88] -> [ 87]
1612: LDA $25A8,X : STA $21A8,X ; [ 89] -> [ 88]
1618: LDA $29A8,X : STA $25A8,X ; [ 90] -> [ 89]
161E: LDA $2DA8,X : STA $29A8,X ; [ 91] -> [ 90]
1624: LDA $31A8,X : STA $2DA8,X ; [ 92] -> [ 91]
162A: LDA $35A8,X : STA $31A8,X ; [ 93] -> [ 92]
1630: LDA $39A8,X : STA $35A8,X ; [ 94] -> [ 93]
1636: LDA $3DA8,X : STA $39A8,X ; [ 95] -> [ 94]
163C: LDA $2228,X : STA $3DA8,X ; [ 96] -> [ 95]
1642: LDA $2628,X : STA $2228,X ; [ 97] -> [ 96]
1648: LDA $2A28,X : STA $2628,X ; [ 98] -> [ 97]
164E: LDA $2E28,X : STA $2A28,X ; [ 99] -> [ 98]
1654: LDA $3228,X : STA $2E28,X ; [100] -> [ 99]
165A: LDA $3628,X : STA $3228,X ; [101] -> [100]
1660: LDA $3A28,X : STA $3628,X ; [102] -> [101]
1666: LDA $3E28,X : STA $3A28,X ; [103] -> [102]
166C: LDA $22A8,X : STA $3E28,X ; [104] -> [103]
1672: LDA $26A8,X : STA $22A8,X ; [105] -> [104]
1678: LDA $2AA8,X : STA $26A8,X ; [106] -> [105]
167E: LDA $2EA8,X : STA $2AA8,X ; [107] -> [106]
1684: LDA $32A8,X : STA $2EA8,X ; [108] -> [107]
168A: LDA $36A8,X : STA $32A8,X ; [109] -> [108]
1690: LDA $3AA8,X : STA $36A8,X ; [110] -> [109]
1696: LDA $3EA8,X : STA $3AA8,X ; [111] -> [110]
169C: LDA $2328,X : STA $3EA8,X ; [112] -> [111]
16A2: LDA $2728,X : STA $2328,X ; [113] -> [112]
16A8: LDA $2B28,X : STA $2728,X ; [114] -> [113]
16AE: LDA $2F28,X : STA $2B28,X ; [115] -> [114]
16B4: LDA $3328,X : STA $2F28,X ; [116] -> [115]
16BA: LDA $3728,X : STA $3328,X ; [117] -> [116]
16C0: LDA $3B28,X : STA $3728,X ; [118] -> [117]
16C6: LDA $3F28,X : STA $3B28,X ; [119] -> [118]
16CC: LDA $23A8,X : STA $3F28,X ; [120] -> [119]
16D2: LDA $27A8,X : STA $23A8,X ; [121] -> [120]
16D8: LDA $2BA8,X : STA $27A8,X ; [122] -> [121]
16DE: LDA $2FA8,X : STA $2BA8,X ; [123] -> [122]
16E4: LDA $33A8,X : STA $2FA8,X ; [124] -> [123]
16EA: LDA $37A8,X : STA $33A8,X ; [125] -> [124]
16F0: LDA $3BA8,X : STA $37A8,X ; [126] -> [125]
16F6: LDA $3FA8,X : STA $3BA8,X ; [127] -> [126]
16FC: LDA $2050,X : STA $3FA8,X ; [128] -> [127]
1702: LDA $2450,X : STA $2050,X ; [129] -> [128]
1708: LDA $2850,X : STA $2450,X ; [130] -> [129]
170E: LDA $2C50,X : STA $2850,X ; [131] -> [130]
1714: LDA $3050,X : STA $2C50,X ; [132] -> [131]
171A: LDA $3450,X : STA $3050,X ; [133] -> [132]
1720: LDA $3850,X : STA $3450,X ; [134] -> [133]
1726: LDA $3C50,X : STA $3850,X ; [135] -> [134]
172C: LDA $20D0,X : STA $3C50,X ; [136] -> [135]
1732: LDA $24D0,X : STA $20D0,X ; [137] -> [136]
1738: LDA $28D0,X : STA $24D0,X ; [138] -> [137]
173E: LDA $2CD0,X : STA $28D0,X ; [139] -> [138]
1744: LDA $30D0,X : STA $2CD0,X ; [140] -> [139]
174A: LDA $34D0,X : STA $30D0,X ; [141] -> [140]
1750: LDA $38D0,X : STA $34D0,X ; [142] -> [141]
1756: LDA $3CD0,X : STA $38D0,X ; [143] -> [142]
175C: LDA $2150,X : STA $3CD0,X ; [144] -> [143]
1762: LDA $2550,X : STA $2150,X ; [145] -> [144]
1768: LDA $2950,X : STA $2550,X ; [146] -> [145]
176E: LDA $2D50,X : STA $2950,X ; [147] -> [146]
1774: LDA $3150,X : STA $2D50,X ; [148] -> [147]
177A: LDA $3550,X : STA $3150,X ; [149] -> [148]
1780: LDA $3950,X : STA $3550,X ; [150] -> [149]
1786: LDA $3D50,X : STA $3950,X ; [151] -> [150]
178C: LDA $21D0,X : STA $3D50,X ; [152] -> [151]
1792: LDA $25D0,X : STA $21D0,X ; [153] -> [152]
1798: LDA $29D0,X : STA $25D0,X ; [154] -> [153]
179E: LDA $2DD0,X : STA $29D0,X ; [155] -> [154]
17A4: LDA $31D0,X : STA $2DD0,X ; [156] -> [155]
17AA: LDA $35D0,X : STA $31D0,X ; [157] -> [156]
17B0: LDA $39D0,X : STA $35D0,X ; [158] -> [157]
17B6: LDA $3DD0,X : STA $39D0,X ; [159] -> [158]
17BC: LDA $2250,X : STA $3DD0,X ; [160] -> [159]
17C2: LDA $2650,X : STA $2250,X ; [161] -> [160]
17C8: LDA $2A50,X : STA $2650,X ; [162] -> [161]
17CE: LDA $2E50,X : STA $2A50,X ; [163] -> [162]
17D4: LDA $3250,X : STA $2E50,X ; [164] -> [163]
17DA: LDA $3650,X : STA $3250,X ; [165] -> [164]
17E0: LDA $3A50,X : STA $3650,X ; [166] -> [165]
17E6: LDA $3E50,X : STA $3A50,X ; [167] -> [166]
17EC: LDA $22D0,X : STA $3E50,X ; [168] -> [167]
17F2: LDA $26D0,X : STA $22D0,X ; [169] -> [168]
17F8: LDA $2AD0,X : STA $26D0,X ; [170] -> [169]
17FE: LDA $2ED0,X : STA $2AD0,X ; [171] -> [170]
1804: LDA $32D0,X : STA $2ED0,X ; [172] -> [171]
180A: LDA $36D0,X : STA $32D0,X ; [173] -> [172]
1810: LDA $3AD0,X : STA $36D0,X ; [174] -> [173]
1816: LDA $3ED0,X : STA $3AD0,X ; [175] -> [174]
181C: LDA $2350,X : STA $3ED0,X ; [176] -> [175]
1822: LDA $2750,X : STA $2350,X ; [177] -> [176]
1828: LDA $2B50,X : STA $2750,X ; [178] -> [177]
182E: LDA $2F50,X : STA $2B50,X ; [179] -> [178]
1834: LDA $3350,X : STA $2F50,X ; [180] -> [179]
183A: LDA $3750,X : STA $3350,X ; [181] -> [180]
1840: LDA $3B50,X : STA $3750,X ; [182] -> [181]
1846: LDA $3F50,X : STA $3B50,X ; [183] -> [182]
184C: LDA $23D0,X : STA $3F50,X ; [184] -> [183]
1852: LDA $27D0,X : STA $23D0,X ; [185] -> [184]
1858: LDA $2BD0,X : STA $27D0,X ; [186] -> [185]
185E: LDA $2FD0,X : STA $2BD0,X ; [187] -> [186]
1864: LDA $33D0,X : STA $2FD0,X ; [188] -> [187]
186A: LDA $37D0,X : STA $33D0,X ; [189] -> [188]
1870: LDA $3BD0,X : STA $37D0,X ; [190] -> [189]
1876: LDA $3FD0,X : STA $3BD0,X ; [191] -> [190]
187C: LDA #00 : STA $3FD0,X ; zero -> [191]
1881: DEX
1882: BMI .2 ; x < 0 ?
1884: JMP .1
1887: .2 RTS
The bulk of the ScrollHgrUpPixel() was generated with this JavaScript program scroll_hgr_up_pixel.html:
var hgr = [];
for( var y = 0; y < 193; ++y ) // Intentional 1 scanline too many!
hgr[ y ] = 0x2000 + ((y/64)|0)*0x28 + ((y%8)|0)*0x400 + ((y/8)&7)*0x80;
for( var y = 0; y < 192; ++y )
console.log( "[" + y + "]: " + hgr[y].toString(16).toUpperCase() );
function byte2hex$( byte )
{
return ("0" + byte.toString(16)).toUpperCase().substr(-2)
}
var address = 0x1402, out = "";
for( var y = 0; y < 192/8; ++y )
for( var x = 0; x < 8; ++x )
{
var row = y*8 + x; // Assumes hgr[] has a dummy 193rd scanline!
var src = hgr[ row + 1 ];
var dst = hgr[ row + 0 ];
var mem = "BD "
+ byte2hex$( (src >> 0) & 0xFF ) + " "
+ byte2hex$( (src >> 8) & 0xFF ) + " "
+ "9D "
+ byte2hex$( (dst >> 0) & 0xFF ) + " "
+ byte2hex$( (dst >> 8) & 0xFF ) + " ";
var txt = " "
+ " LDA $" + src.toString(16).toUpperCase() + ",Y "
+ ": STA $" + dst.toString(16).toUpperCase() + ",Y "
+ " ; [" + (" " + (row+1)).substr(-3)
+ "] -> [" + (" " + (row )).substr(-3) + "]" + "\n";
if (row != 191)
out += address.toString(16).toUpperCase() + ":" + mem + txt;
address += 6; // 6 bytes per line
}
console.log( out );
And who said JavaScript was a useless language? :-)
That's all folks! Now go write some cool font blitter code.
References
- https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/6502_Assembly
- http://www.6502.org/tutorials/compare_instructions.html
- http://www.6502.org/tutorials/6502opcodes.html
- https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/
Misc. Utilities and Files
- Convert font image to C array
- Convert C array to binary font
- Raw Binary Font Within AppleWin's debugger:
bload font.bin,6000
TODO:
- Screenshots!
- Cleanup all assembly for consistent indentation and alignment
- Count cycles of old and new DrawCharCol Address Calculation
- Alternative
Beautiful Boot
Font - Binary code for 300.bin and 1000.bin so you can load it directly into the emulator (In progress)
- Disk image:
HGR_FONT.DSK
(In progress) - Alternative fonts
- Re-engineer Codepage 437 Font to 7x8 cells: (In progress)
- Double Hi-Res
- PDF of this document (As a work-around use Chrome and Print to PDF)