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Programming Games with Two Monitors on a C128

I

idflyfish

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2010
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61
Location
Boise Idaho
I read somewhere that you can hook up two monitors to your commodore 128. It made it sound like it is possible to code in 80 column mode and then when you run the program it shows up on the other monitor in 40 column mode. Is this correct? If so it would be super handy for programming games.

Thanks
 
It is possible to use both modes at once, as they're produced by separate video chips on separate connectors; I'm not sure that having both an editor/assembler and a whole project program loaded into memory at once and switching between is especially feasible, though.
 
Good point on the memory constraints. I'd really like to try my had at developing on real hardware. Any suggestions on how to keep the feedback loop tight so I am not spending most of my time loading and switching video modes?
 
Wouldn't a C128 give enough memory to make a 64K game while working in a 64K development environment ?
 
I don't remember if there was any development software that took advantage of multiple monitors, but at the very least you could use whichever display your program doesn't use to output status and debugging messages. Both displays are active regardless of which chip your program is actively writing to.

In Basic, GRAPHIC 0 enables the 40-column text mode and GRAPHIC 5 enables 80-column text mode. In assembly, rather than using JSR $FFD2, you'll want to trace the kernel routine to see what call writes directly to which chip.
 
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