The Apple II podcast, “Open Apple”, interviewed me about the “FastLED6502” project for Apple II, and the interview is now up (link below). The interview is about half an hour, but the podcast goes on much longer; apparently, there’s a whole lot of Apple II news!
This post is half-off-topic for the FastLED group, but I figured I’d post the link in case there are any (other) crazy Apple II hackers lurking here who might be interested. If so, you people are nuts, and it’s nice to be here together.
http://www.open-apple.net/2015/03/28/show-045-mark-kriegsman-fastled-transwarp-gs-clone-and-newsapalooza/
Yes, very interesting indeed. I learned about your FastLED library on the podcast. I was thinking about ordering a strip and trying out your 6502 code. Question, what assembler would I need to create object code? Thanks!
Hi and welcome!
I used xa65 for this project, but it should be easy to port to other assemblers. Nothing too terribly tool-specific, and I’m totally open to making it more portable to other tool chains.
As for LEDs, you’re going to want APA102’s, I would say. Adafruit sells them under the name “DotStars”. (This project will definitely not work with “Neopixels” aka WS2811/WS2812 LEDs; the timing is too far off to work at all.)
Let us know how it goes for you, and let me know if I can help out!
Thanks for the rapid response! I’ve got xa65 installed and copies of your code. I’ll be working on the cable while waiting for my LED strip(s) to arrive. Thinking this could be a neat way to get the kids interested in 8 bit programming.