iFrodo is dead, long live iC64

The Obituary

To whom it may concern:

After repeated gaming accidents, it is with sincere regret that iFrodo is no longer.  A team of 1 and countless hours spent operating in the debugger simply could not save it.

And for all that you, iFrodo have taught me about the iPhone SDK, I am forever in your debt.

The Diagnosis

During routine exercises (testing), iFrodo was consistently passing out.  The first occurrences were running Wizball and Fist II, which caused iFrodo to report an invalid opcode.  In an attempt to eliminate any genetic issues, I decided to check family history, which included WinFrodo and their .NET cousin, sharp-64; however, they showed almost identical symptoms.

Next, to eliminate the possibility the D64 images were corrupt, I tested the offending games using iFrodo's distant relatives, CCS64 (PC), WinVICE (PC), VICE (OSX) and Power64 (OSX) all of which had no issues.

I spent many hours and explored many avenues, but could not come up with the elusive fix.

The Future

I have completed a port of VICE to the iPhone, iC64.  Any suggestions for an alternative name for the 'product' are welcome.  More importantly, all functionality that was present in iFrodo is available in iC64, with the exception of the previously mentioned bugs.

A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a lot more:

Update: Video now plays the emulator sound.  Forgive the voice-over, as it is a little quite when the sound is on.

iFrodo - Keyboard mania

I've now successfully hooked the keyboard up to iFrodo.  Without a doubt, the experience is much better.

I've uploaded a short video to youtube to demonstrate the new functionality in action. Forgive the green text over the video implying 'please register me, you bad, bad individual' - I will buy a copy of the software and redo the video.

iFrodo Keyboard: Working

I've now completed the keyboard to the point where I can load and run programs via the emulator, including support for multiple layouts.

I will add the Fn keys next and then hook it all up to the emulator, removing the clunky NSTextField and built-in keyboard. I short video will follow with this milestone.

A longer term usability goal is to show the actual 'drawing' keys when the shift or C= key is pressed, but gathering all the images of the keys is a lot of work for a rainy day.

The default layout:

The number and glyph layout (Fn keys will go here):

iFrodo - More keyboard features

A lot of 'under the hood' changes have been made to the keyboard, including support for left, centre and right snap regions (note the shift and del keys), sticky keys (like the shift or the Commodore key) and multiple layouts. Multiple layouts will lead to support for switching between the QWERTY or number layout.

I will be pretty close to hooking the basic keyboard up to the Frodo emulator.