Re: Attention assembly programmers...

[tgeer@pro-gumbo.cts.com (System Administrator)]

In <2B59CDAB.12197@news.service.uci.edu>
andrep@balboa.eng.uci.edu (Andre Prellwitz) writes:

>A while ago someone posted about how to read the joystick on a //gs in native
>mode.  They said that it was possible to read both paddles at once and there-
>fore get much more accurate readings.  I don't recall exactly how to do this,
>but I've been trying the following: strobe the analog paddle reset ($c070)
>and then read locations $c064 and $c065 and wait until both return to zero.
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
Only the high bit of these locations is valid.  When the high bit of either
location becomes 0 then the corresponding analog input has timed out.  You
will actually get more accurate results by reading them one after the other
with the accumulator set to 8 bits wide and the index registers used to hold
the counts (16 bits wide).  This allows for a much faster loop, giving better
resolution.  Assuming that this routine is called from full native mode, the
following code will do the trick:

strobe   equ   $C070       ; analog input timing reset
pdl0     equ   $C064       ; analog input 0
pdl1     equ   $C065       ; analog input 1

start    php               ; save processor status register
         phb               ; and data bank register
         sep   #%100000    ; make accumulator 8 bits wide
         lda   #0          ; make data bank = 0
         pha
         plb
         ldx   #0          ; initialize the counters
         txy
         lda   strobe      ; strobe the timing reset
loop1    inx               ; increment pdl0 count
         lda   pdl0        ; is high bit = 0?
         bmi   loop1       ; no, keep checking
         lda   strobe      ; yes, strobe the timing reset again
loop2    iny               ; increment pdl1 counter
         lda   pdl1        ; is high bit = 0?
         bmi   loop2       ; no, keep checking
         plb               ; yes, restore data bank
         plp               ; and processor status register
         rts               ; return to caller (could be RTL)

Notice that the actual counting loops are only 9 cycles long.  This gives the
best possible resolution.  You will need your counters to be 16 bits wide as
the results will easily overflow the capacity of an 8 bit counter.  Using
memory locations as counters will only serve to slow the counting loop down.
If X and Y contain valid data before entry, you will need to save them off to
the stack and pull them back in after interpreting the joystick results.
I have used this exact method to read the analog inputs on my Science Toolkit
box which connects to the joystick port.  The results have been extremely
accurate (much more than would be needed for a game which reads the joystick).


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