Subj : Re: Day 6 of Advent of Code in Commodore 128 Basic
To   : Lawrence Woodman
From : ArcadeAge
Date : Fri Dec 14 2018 10:30:59

On Friday, December 14, 2018 at 6:53:16 PM UTC+1, Lawrence Woodman wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 05:21:40 -0800, ArcadeAge wrote:
>
> > On Friday, December 14, 2018 at 12:30:49 PM UTC+1, ArcadeAge wrote:
> >> On Friday, December 14, 2018 at 8:21:52 AM UTC+1, Lawrence Woodman wrote:
> >> > Hello Commodore fans,
> >> >
> >> > You may have heard of the Advent of Code challenge.  For a bit of fun I
> >> > decided to do day 6 of the challenge on the Commodore 128 using its 
built
> >> > in Basic.  It took days to calculate but it was great to be able to
> >> > complete it on this machine.
> >> >
> >> > I had to use Vice though as my real machine has a memory fault which I
> >> > need to get around to solving.  The advantage of Vice was that
> >> > I could easily transfer the code between the emulator and my Linux box 
to
> >> > put it in a github repo and on my website.
> >> >
> >> > If you're interested here it is:
> >> > https://techtinkering.com/articles/advent-of-code-2018-25-days-25-languages/#day6
> >> >
> >> I copied the code you published into VICE and was disappointed to get 
nothing but an OUT OF DATA ERROR IN 6050.
> >> Trying to figure out what's missing, I realized that the site you linked 
to merely gives a tiny example that's already solved in place.
> >> So I guess they give the additional problem data only to those who 
register (which I won't).
> >> Does the challenge consist in writing a fully general solution to the 
mathematical problem? Or are they content if your program can solve the given 
major problem?
> >> Would it be a lot of work to devise a problem instance that is too hard to 
solve by hand but still can be solved by a standard Commodore 128 within a few 
minutes?
> >
> > Ok, there are enough data, but line numbers are re-used, overwriting 
previously entered code. Easy to fix.
> > VICE running at ~4000% -- faster than any SuperCPU, I guess.
>
> I'm glad you noticed that.  I never noticed because I used petcat to
> create the .PRG so it wasn't a problem.  I have just gone back and
> changed the code.  Thanks.
>
> 4000% wow, my machine must be getting old, the most I've managed on
> vice is about 480%.
>
> Lorry
>
> ---
> https://techtinkering.com - Retro Computers, Programming and General
> Technical Tinkering

More likely you're running VICE with all the bells & whistles on.
Switch off sound and true drive emulation (and anything else that's expensive 
to emulate).
As I had to learn today, percentages are (of course) relative. The program runs 
even faster in 80 column fast mode, although the percentage is then only 2500 
-- relative to 2 MHz, that is.

Are any VICE developers reading this? We need a feature to pause warp mode once 
the interpreter is ready again (or waiting for keyboard input, or has printed a 
specified number of lines, or ... it's Christmas soon, isn't it?).

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