XeO3: Front End..

So after a couple of days squeezing the front end down as much as I can, I've now spent today putting much of it back in - bugger. I got a logo from Luca to try and tart the front end up a bit, and it means I have to start double buffering the front end a bit. Since the logo itself takes up almost 1K, it also means I'll have to try and free up even more space. Its worth it though as it does help make the front end a bit nicer. I hope to finish this up tomorrow, and then I can take stock of the damage its done to the memory. At least if we do need to trim it, theres at the very worst we could just reduce its size.... It also means my nice and simple 3 layer starfield isn't nice and simple anymore. I now need to double buffer that as well so I dont need to redraw the logo all the time! Its never easy.....

I've had to redo my C64 parallel cable as I got the pins backwards! Doh. Idiot. All the diagrams I found to tell me the pins never actually got around to telling me that it was describing the back of the computer, and not the cable itself. I had assumed that it was descibing the cable, since thats what everyone wants to know! But no... wrong again. Anyway, I've built my own cable rather than the PC64 one, and once I manage to get the PA2 line working, I'll be able to download a whole byte at a time, rather than a nibble which all the other cables seem to do. Not sure why... it might be to do with old parallel ports not being bi-directional or something, but I don't really know. If I can't get the PA2 line working, then I'll have to drop down to a nibble and use some of the datalines as handshaking - which I'd rather not do; although if Im desprate, I could do 7 bit.... but thats horrible!

Edit: Oh! And after finding the old instructions to my SID card, I've discovered it has an adjustable volume! FAB!! I can now balance out the TED and SID music without having to turn TED music down to virtually nothing! Hurrah!!