So, being a geek interested in retro gaming, I've always fancied trying my hand at coding an old 8-bit game. The idea that you can create a piece of entertainment with such limited resources always made me want to try it. I consider myself a fairly bright chap, but the idea of coding in assembly or machine guide just beguiles me, and even basic seemed to be a bit of a leap. Still, If I'm going to try anything, I may as well start with some Basic.

So I dusted off my old spectrum and try to type in my first ever program that I learned to code:

10 PRINT "HELLO FROM JAMES"
20 GO TO 10
RUN

Christ, that was hard work. Have you ever tried to type in one of these?


It's nigh on impossible. Those little spongy keys that, while iconic and retro looking, are just utter rubbish to type on.

But hey, there are emulators, let's try that. There are emulators for the Mac such as Fuse (

) and even JavaScript-based ones like JssSpeccy (

) that you can try on, but then I realised that even then, editing a spectrum Basic screen and trying to save it through some clunky tape recording was going to be hard work too. I thought to myself, there has to be a better way!

And there is! We can use a VS Code combination to save basic *.bas files. We even have a plugin called ZX Basic (

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jsjlogin.zxbasic

), which is an extension that helps us format and check the basic file format. Ok, so far so good. But how do we get a bas file from a pc onto the spectrum? The secret sauce is the Boriel ZX Basic compiler (

https://www.boriel.com/pages/the-zx-basic-compiler.html

) which is based in Python. It can turn a basic *.bas file into a spectrum tape, all compiled and read to go as a bin, tzx or tap file and in machine code. Yes, it can take that slow-as-heck basic and turn it into something fast and wondrous. OK, there is more to being a spectrum programmer than writing in basic, but needless to say, I'm excited about what I can achieve.

The great thing about using the ZX Basic extension for vs code is that not only do you get code syntax highlighting and auto-complete, but also it has support for the Boriel extended basic language so that you can actually do a lot more with basic code than you can do with ordinally basic. This means I can possibly hook into more powerful commands and really leverage that machine code power! Or at least that's the theory.

So far, I have created this example hosted in Vercel (

https://github.com/jayjaybeeuk/spectrum-game

). I'm hoping to add some more interesting games to this stack, but for 30 mins to set up a quick pipeline it was relatively easy. In my next article, I'll go into more detail about how I set up the pipeline.

https://richhewlett.com/2021/06/12/coding-in-spectrum-basic-again/

) which led me down this path of discovery!

Coding with a ZX Spectrum with VS Code - Part 1

So now I have a smattering of components that have cost me less than a tenner, the question is what I can do with them in the form of a project. Immediately I go searching the internet for massive and complex projects, such as weather systems and security keypads, but it is only right that I start somewhere simple. You can get much simpler than a blinking light, so this is the way I go.

Of course, it would help to know much more about how electronics work. While I feel I already have a rudimentary understanding of electronics, it never hurts to have a recap. I’ll be paraphrasing some of my findings as i go along, but 

Intructables have a great blog post here to get anyone started

The Arduino site has a wealth of tutorials, so I’ll be following the 

first of these tutorials, which is the ‘blink’ lesson

. The only difference is that I am using a breadboard and extra leads to make the process a little more clear and easier.

To make a blinking LED, you don’t even need anything other than the Arduino itself, as the Arduino has a number of LED status light that can be controlled. However, as I wanted to create my own closed circuit, I opted to get this code working with an external LED.

To make a closed circuit, I attach a lead to the ground port of the Arduino to position a1 of my breadboard. The LED is straddled across position b1 and b2, with the resister straddled across position c2 and c15. Another lead is put in position c15 and put into pin 13 of the Arduino board. The setup looks like this:


What this means now is that we have a closed circuit from the Arduino, linking the resistor and the led in the process, to pin 13. We can then use a small program to program pin 13 and therefore control the circuit.

/*
Blink
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.

Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control. On the Uno and
Leonardo, it is attached to digital pin 13. If you’re unsure what
pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino model, check
the documentation at http://www.arduino.cc

This example code is in the public domain.

modified 8 May 2014
by Scott Fitzgerald
*/

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin 13 as an output.
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(13, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000); // wait for a second
}

My first Arduino project

So, not that anyone cared or noticed, but I decided to purge my old blog post and start anew with updated content and more relevant topics. Mainly, I am doing this for myself as a means to document and track all the geeky things I have done. However, I am also doing this as it is a pretty sad case when a self confession geek and gadget lover can’t even be bothered maintaining his own blog.

Of all the things I could cover, I will try to at least keep the topics of this blog on track. I have friend who have blogs or social feeds that I am, admittedly, quite jealous of, and i look at them with an increased sense of frustration that I cannot do something similar. I am only going to get busier as the months progress, what with expecting another child into the family. Therefore, I shall attempt to limit my wittering to:

OK, so it will be more than that, but I am notoriously lazy, so it might be i just use this blog as a personal bookmark to that I can keep track of the various things I give up half-way through.

Watch this space for my first fumblings with electronics since my secondary school days.

Blog.

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Coding with a ZX Spectrum with VS Code - Part 1

My first Arduino project