Commander X16 BASIC/KERNAL/DOS/GEOS ROM

This is the Commander X16 ROM containing BASIC, KERNAL, DOS and GEOS. BASIC and KERNAL are derived from the Commodore 64 versions. GEOS is derived from the C64/C128 version.

• BASIC is fully compatible with Commodore BASIC V2, with some additions.
• KERNAL
  • supports the complete $FF81+ API.
  • adds lots of new API, including joystick, mouse and bitmap graphics.
  • supports the same $0300-$0332 vectors as the C64.
  • does not support tape (device 1) or software RS-232 (device 2).
• GEOS is fully compatible with the C64 version.
• DOS
  • is compatible with Commodore DOS ($, SCRATCH, NEW, ...).
  • works on SD cards with FAT32 filesystems.
  • supports long filenames, timestamps.
  • supports partitions and subdirectories (CMD-style).

Releases and Building

Each release of the X16 emulator includes a compatible build of rom.bin. If you wish to build this yourself (perhaps because you're also building the emulator) see below.

WARNING: The emulator will currently work only with a contemporary version of rom.bin; earlier or later versions are likely to fail.

Building the ROM

Building this source code requires only GNU Make and the cc65 assembler. GNU Make is almost invariably available as a system package with any Linux distribution; cc65 less often so.

• Red Hat/CentOS: sudo yum install make cc65
• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install make cc65

On macOS, cc65 in homebrew, which must be installed before issuing the following command:

• macOS: brew install cc65

If cc65 is not available as a package on your system, you'll need to install or build/install it per the instructions below.

Once the prerequisites are available, type make to build rom.bin. To use that with the emulator, copy it to the same directory as the x16emu binary or use x16emu -rom .../path/to/rom.bin.

Additional Notes: For users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, you will need to have CodeReady builder repositories enabled, for CentOS, this is called PowerTools. Additionally, you will need Fedora EPEL installed as well as cc65 does not come usually within the official repositories.

Building/Installing cc65

Linux Builds from Source

You'll need the basic set of tools for building C programs:

• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install build-essential git

The cc65 source is on GitHub; clone and build it with:

git clone https://github.com/cc65/cc65.git
make -j4    # -j4 may be left off; it merely speeds the build

This will leave the binaries in the bin/ subdirectory; you may use thes directly by adding them to your path, or install them to a standard directory:

#   This assumes you have ~/.local/bin in your path.
make install PREFIX=~/.local

Building and Packages for Other Systems

Consult the Nesdev Wiki Installing CC65 page for some hints, including Windows installs. However, the Debian packages they suggest from trikaliotis.net appear to have signature errors.

New Features

• F-keys: F1: LIST F2: MONITOR F3: RUN F4: <switch 40/80> F5: LOAD F6: SAVE" F7: DOS"$ F8: DOS
• New BASIC instructions
  • MONITOR: see below.
  • DOS: no argument: read disk status. "8" or "9" as an argument: switch default drive. "$" as an argument: show directory. all other arguments: send DOS command
  • VPEEK(bank, offset), VPOKE bank, offset, value to access video memory. "offset" is 16 bits, "bank" is bits 16-19 of the linear address. Note that the tokens for the new BASIC commands have not been finalized yet, so loading a BASIC program that uses the new keywords in a future version of the ROM will break!
• Support for $ and % in BASIC expressions for hex and binary
• LOAD prints the start and end(+1) addresses
• Integrated Monitor derived from the Final Cartridge III.
  • O00..OFF to switch ROM and RAM banks
  • OV0..OV4 to switch to video address space
• FAT32-formatted SD card as drive 8 as a full IEEE-like (TALK/LISTEN & CBM DOS) compatible device
• Some new KERNAL APIs (to be documented)

Big TODOs

• BASIC needs more features.
• Commodore Serial Bus is not working.

ROM Map

Bank	Name	Description
0	KERNAL	KERNAL
1	KEYBD	Keyboard layout tables
2	CBDOS	The computer-based CBM-DOS for FAT32 SD cards
3	GEOS	GEOS KERNAL
4	BASIC	BASIC interpreter
5	MONITOR	Machine language monitor
6	CHARSET	PETSCII and ISO character sets (uploaded into VRAM)
7-31	–	[Currently unused]

RAM Map

• fixed RAM:
  • $0000-$0400 KERNAL/BASIC/DOS system variables
  • $0400-$0800 currently unused
  • $0800-$9F00 BASIC RAM
• banked RAM:
  • bank 0: KERNAL and DOS buffers and variables
  • banks 1-255: free for applications

Credits

• All new code, and additions to legacy code: ©2021 Michael Steil, www.pagetable.com; 2-clause BSD license
• FAT32 and SD card drivers: ©2018 Frank van den Hoef; 2-clause BSD license
• 6502/6522 i2c driver: ©2015 Dieter Hauer; 2-clause BSD license
• kernal/open-roms: ©2019 Paul Gardner-Stephen, 2019; GPLv3 license
• kernal/cbm: ©1983 Commodore Business Machines (CBM)
• basic: ©1977 Microsoft Corp.
• geos: ©1985 Berlekey Softworks

Release Notes

Release 38 ("Kyoto")

• KERNAL
  • new macptr API to receive multiple bytes from an IEEE device
  • load uses macptr for LOAD speeds from SD card of about 140 KB/sec
  • hacked (non-functional) Commodore Serial to not hang
  • LOAD on IEEE without fn defaults to ":*"; changed F5 key to "LOAD"
  • fixed screen_set_charset custom charset [Rebecca G. Bettencourt]
  • fixed stash to preserve A
  • entropy_get: better entropy
• FPLIB
  • optimized addition, multiplication and SQR [Michael Jørgensen]
  • ported over INT(.9+.1) = 0 fix from C128
• BASIC
  • updated power-on logo to match the real X16 logo better
  • like LOAD/SAVE, OPEN now also defaults to last IEEE device (or 8)
  • fixed STOP key when showing directory listing (DOS"$")
• CHARSET
  • changed PETSCII screen codes $65/$67 to PET 1/8th blocks
• DOS
  • switched to FAT32 library by Frank van den Hoef
  • rewrote most of DOS ("CMDR-DOS"), almost CMD FD/HD feature parity
    • write support
    • new "modify" mode ("M") that allows reading and writing
    • set-position support in PRG files (like sd2iec)
    • long filenames, full ISO-8859-15 translation
    • wildcards
    • subdirectories
    • partitions
    • timestamps
    • overwriting ("@:")
    • directory listing filter
    • partition listing
    • almost complete set of commands ("scratch", "rename", ...)
    • formatting a new filesystem ("new")
    • activity/error LED
    • detection of SD card presence, fallback to Commodore Serial
    • support for switching SD cards
    • details in the CMDR-DOS README
  • misc fixes [Mike Ketchen]

Release 37 ("Geneva")

• API features
  • console
    • new: console_put_image (inline images)
    • new: console_set_paging_message (to pause after a full screen)
    • now respects window insets
    • try "TEST1" and "TEST2" in BASIC!
  • new entropy_get API to get randomness, used by FPLIB/BASIC RND function
• KERNAL
  • support for VERA 0.9 register layout (Frank van den Hoef)
• BASIC
  • TI$ and DA$ (DATE$) are now connected to the new date/time API
  • TI is independent of TI$ and can be assigned
• DOS
  • enabled partition types 0x0b and 0x0c, should accept more image types
• Build
  • separated KERNAL code into core code and drivers
  • support for building KERNAL for C64
  • ROM banks are built independently
  • support to replace CBM channel and editor code with GPLed "open-roms" code by the MEGA65 project
• bug fixes
  • LOAD respects target address
  • FAT32 code no longer overwrites RAM
  • monitor is not as broken any more

Release 36 ("Berlin")

• API Features

  • added console API for text-based interfaces with proportional font and styles support: console_init, console_put_char, console_get_char
  • added memory API:
    • memory_fill
    • memory_copy
    • memory_crc
    • memory_decompress (LZSA2)
  • added sprite API: sprite_set_image, sprite_set_position
  • renamed GRAPH_LL to FB (framebuffer)
  • GRAPH_init takes an FB graphics driver as an argument

• KERNAL features

  • detect SD card on TALK and LISTEN, properly fall back to serial
  • joystick scanning is done automatically in VBLANK IRQ; no need to call it manually any more
  • added VERA UART driver (device 2)
  • bank 1 is now the default after startup; KERNAL won't touch it
  • sprites and layer 0 are cleared on RESET
  • changed F5 to LOAD":* (filename required for IEEE devices)
  • GRAPH_move_rect supports overlapping [gaekwad]

• BASIC

  • default LOAD/SAVE device is now 8
  • added RESET statement [Ingo Hinterding]
  • added CLS statement [Ingo Hinterding]

• CHARSET

  • fixed capital Ö [Ingo Hinterding]
  • Changed Û, î, ã to be more consistent [Ingo Hinterding]

• bug fixes

  • COLOR statement with two arguments
  • PEEK for ROM addresses
  • keyboard code no longer changes RAM bank
  • fixed clock update
  • fixed side effects of Ctrl+A and color control codes [codewar65]

• misc

  • added 3 more tests, start with "TEST1"/"TEST2"/"TEST3" in BASIC:
  • TEST0: existing misc graphics test
  • TEST1: console text rendering, character wrapping
  • TEST2: console text rendering, word wrapping
  • TEST3: console text input, echo

Release 35

• API Fetures

  • new KERNAL API: low-level and high-level 320x200@256c bitmap graphics
  • new KERNAL API: get mouse state
  • new KERNAL API: get joystick state
  • new KERNAL API: get/set date and time (old RDTIM call is now a 24 bit timer)
  • new floating point API, jump table at $FC00 on ROM bank 4 (BASIC)

• KERNAL Features

  • invert fg/bg color control code (Ctrl+A) [Daniel Mecklenburg Jr]

• BASIC

  • added COLOR <fg, bg> statement to set text color
  • added JOY(n) function (arg 1 for joy1, arg 2 for joy2)
  • added TEST statement to start graphics API unit test
  • CHAR statement supports PETSCII control codes (instead of GEOS control codes), including color codes

• misc

  • KERNAL variables for keyboard/mouse/clock drivers were moved from $0200-$02FF to RAM bank #0
  • $8F (set PETSCII-UC even if ISO) printed first after reset [Mikael O. Bonnier]

• bug fixes:

  • got rid of $2c partial instruction skip [Joshua Scholar]
  • fixed TI/TI$
  • fixed CBDOS infinite loop
  • zp address 0 is no longer overwritten by mouse code
  • mouse scanning is disabled if mouse is off
  • VERA state is correctly saved/restored by IRQ code

Release 34

• new layout for zero page and KERNAL/BASIC variables:
  • $00-$7F available to the user
  • ($02-$52 are used if using BASIC graphics commands)
  • $80-$A3 used by KERNAL and DOS
  • $A4-$A8 reserved for KERNAL/DOS/BASIC
  • $A9-$FF used by BASIC
• new BASIC statements:
  • SCREEN <mode> (0: 40x30, 2: 80x60, 128: graphics)
  • PSET <x>, <y>, <color>
  • LINE <x1>, <y1>, <x2>, <y2>, <color>
  • FRAME <x1>, <y1>, <x2>, <y2>, <color>
  • RECT <x1>, <y1>, <x2>, <y2>, <color>
  • CHAR <x>, <y>, <color>, <string>
  • MOUSE <n> (0: off, 1: on)
• new BASIC functions:
  • MX (mouse X coordinate)
  • MY (mouse Y coordinate)
  • MB (mouse button; 1: left, 2: right, 4: third)
• new KERNAL calls:
  • MOUSE: configure mouse
  • SCRMOD: set screen mode
• new PS/2 mouse driver
• charsets are uploaded to VERA on demand
• GEOS font rendering uses less slant for faux italics characters
• misc GEOS KERNAL improvements and optimizations

Release 33

• BASIC
  • additional LOAD syntax to load to a specific address LOAD [filename[,device[,bank,address]]]
  • LOAD into banked RAM will auto-wrap into successive banks
  • LOAD allows trailing garbage; great to just type LOAD into a directory line [John-Paul Gignac]
  • new BASIC statement: VLOAD to load into video RAM: VLOAD [filename[,device[,bank,address]]] [John-Paul Gignac]
  • complete jump table bridge
• KERNAL: memory size detection
• KERNAL: faster IRQ entry
• GEOS: converted graphics library to VERA 320x200@256c

Release 32

• correct ROM banking:
  • BASIC and KERNAL now live on separate 16 KB banks ($C000-$FFFF)
  • BASIC PEEK will always access KERNAL ROM
  • BASIC SYS will have BASIC ROM enabled
• added GEOS
• added OLD statement to recover deleted BASIC program after NEW or RESET
• removed software RS-232, will be replaced by VERA UART later
• Full ISO mode support in Monitor

Release 31

• switched to VERA 0.8 register layout; character ROM is uploaded on startup
• ISO mode: ISO-8859-15 character set, standard ASCII keyboard
• keyboard
  • completed US and UK keymaps so all C64 characters are reachable
  • support for AltGr
  • support for F9-F12
• allow hex and binary numbers in DATA statements [Frank Buss]
• switched SD card from VIA SPI to VERA SPI (works on real hardware!)
• fix: VPEEK overwriting POKER ($14/$15)
• fix: STOP sometimes not registering in BASIC programs

Release 30

• support for 13 keyboard layouts; cycle through them using F9
• GETJOY call will fall back to keyboard (cursor/Ctrl/Alt/Space/Return), see Programmer's Reference Guide on how to use it
• startup message now shows ROM revision
• $FF80 contains the prerelease revision (negated)
• the 60 Hz IRQ is now generated by VERA VSYNC
• fix: VPEEK tokenization
• fix: CBDOS was not correctly preserving the RAM bank
• fix: KERNAL no longer uses zero page $FC-$FE