This past saturday, the 19th of October, marked the tenth anniversary of AiO Softworks. It's definitely a bit surreal to think I've managed to keep this going for so long!
When I started my website back in 2014, I was still in middle school and was using a default Google Sites template. I've been through four server hosts and five different computers hosting under my own control.
Sadly, activity for AiO has gradually become less and less as life moves on and all of us got into different, real careers, and most days it seems I'm the only one who even cares that this ever happened.
However, I digress. On Sunday, the 20th, I held a small get together with good friends and original staff members for the first time in a long while. This was the first "AiO Company meeting" I had held since at least 2018. We also got a first, in the form of actual embroidered uniforms. I felt the occasion was special enough to at least warrant that.
Sadly, not everyone could join us for this event, but I still keep in touch with Biopulse37 and Gamemaster3k to this day. Perhaps at the 15 year mark, they will all be able to join us. Click for full size
From left to right, those are: TheArkAngel, Dorkrai, SkipperDMudkipz, and myself.
My apologies for the lack of news updates lately, I have been very busy with a new job and have not done much software development since I last updated the site. The biggest new change around here has been the development of the Disk Museum and the assocaited YouTube channel.
The listing in the Disk Museum landing page is actually a complete list of every model drive currently in my possession, but that is subject to change. I plan to make the gallery page the landing, with the master list becoming a reference from it. I think the gallery page is more visually appealing and easier to navigate. Very little of it works at this time, but I hope to have some more of that done in the next few months.
Thanks for everything,
~VCSMaster
Update: 8/19/2023 A16 emulator 0.07w and AASM 0.86
Today I've brought some mostly minor updates to two pieces of software I've spent a lot of time in recently: the A16 emulator and the AASM.
Version 0.07w of the A16 emulator receives primarily a scrollable live memory viewer, along with several minor bugfixes that were annoying me.
Version 0.86 of the A16 assembler is *only* bugfixes, although useful ones of course.
You can read a full changelog of both on the software archive page located here.
Both of these tools are becoming rather mature, and it's a nice enough environment now that I'm hoping to get a real operating system written for the A16. I'm about 2/3rds of the way there, with an existing simple monitor already. I'll probably release that soon, when the disassembler is done.
I hope to add some peripherals to the emulator soon, and when the monitor is finished I will probably build it into the emulator completely as a boot ROM. Following that, the next big step will be RAM bank switcihng and disk drive support, followed by graphics and sound, at which point the real fun begins.
I think this is also a pretty good update to two modestly useful tools, and I hope to have more updates available sooner rather than later, though if you've been following any of this for any amount of time, you'll know that won't happen. I can hope, right?
'till next time.
~VCSMaster
Update: 6/3/2023 AASM 0.85
I suppose this page is destined to be barren most of the time, since I rarely get around to updating it. However, today it is not!
I bring you the latest update to the A16 Assembler, AASM. Version 0.85 includes some fairly major changes, which I will outline below. The same information and more are available in the documentation available here.
-Symbol imports: You can now import symbols from an existing piece of software to reference during assembly. This makes multi-file software much easier to write!
-Symbol exports: Related to above, you can now export symbols from your software to allow another assembly to reference it, in addition to soon being used for disassembly and debugging in the A16 emulator
-Breakpoints: To assist in debugging via the emulator, breakpoints can now be generated! However, they are not supported in raw binaries nor in the aging CROM format. The emulator will be updated soon to reflect this change.
-ASCII conversion: Singular ASCII characters are now accepted as values for the generation of constants and as operands for instructions. Prefix is a single apostrophe.
-Made comments show up in the logs: They always should have, really. The rest of your comment line now also appears in the resulting log file.
-Fixed the nowarn bug: The nowarn directive now affects all warnings properly instead of just the unused symbol warnings.
-Deprecated PROMPT/PAUSE: Prompt never worked anyways and pause was implemented poorly. To save myself the headache, I've removed both.
-Updated documentation: This includes adding the full instruction set with cycle times and affected flags, all new errors and warnings, file format documentation, and all new directives. It is strongly recommended to read this.
I think this is a pretty large update, and hopefully is compelling enough that the two dropped features (which barely worked to begin with) will not affect anyone who uses it.
Hopefully soon I will come back with an update to the A16 emulator patching a number of small bugs I've found and adding support for symbol-based disassembly, breakpoints, and a new ROM format. I hope to also have disk support working at some point.
In other news, the Disk Museum is still in the works, and I am collecting information and good quality photograpgs for it's release soon.
Thanks for reading, I hope this is a big enough update that it was worth the wait.
~VCSMaster
Update: 1/23/2023 Content update
The missing C++ files for the original builds of Phantasma have been found and added. In addition, I've added TextEngine to the Completed section where it belongs, all four versions that still exist.
This will be all for now. More to come on the Disk Museum soon.
~VCSMaster
Update: 1/13/2023 Server Migration
Long time no see! Again. In mid-August of 2022, the site went down once more. Believe it or not, I was having the carpet in my house replaced. Afterwards, I never set the machine back up. Oops.
Nevertheless, I (obviously) did manage to once again get the entire site back up, and on fancy new hardware too!
This Ryzen 7 1700X with 32GB of RAM and an SSD is a lot faster to start up and certainly feels a lot snappier in use than my previous machine, an FX-8320 with 16GB and a dying Seagate 80GB hard disk. Most of my server computers are built from hand-me-down parts, but this latest machine actually had a small budget going towards it. It's a nice upgrade!
In other news, the two of you who have kept up in the Discord or the few dozen of you who keep up with the YouTube channel may have seen a few of my other projects in the works. Feel free to check those out here if you so desire.
In addition to that, however, I have started a new channel to broadcast one of my other hobbies, in this case a little more professioanlly than before. You can see that channel here.
There is not much to look at right now, as I am in the process of clearing out a spare closet to be used as a small recording studio, complete with sound deadening panels and a nice microphone. I will be fully documenting to the best of my abilities every storage device currently in my posession. These range from totally bland CompactFlash cards and WD400s to the vintage Segatae ST-506 and ST-412 all the way to the rare and elusive drives in my collection, such as the Kalok P3 cartridge system, or the Daeyoung DX-3120A. I will also be uploading more information, including service manuals, repair information, my personal thoughts on each drive, outlinks to other information and more in my Disk Drive Museum which is hosted right here!
If you also have an interest in storage devices, subscribe, join the server, or keep this page in your bookmarks bar!
Apologies for the delays, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and kicked off the new year the right way.
~VCSMaster
Release: 5/14/2022 A16 Emulator 0.06w
Greetings again! So soon, of course. Did some more work on the A16 emulator today, because I managed to find a serious bug in the built-in software terminal. Was severe enough to warrant immediate patching, since it will sometimes crash the emulator (Pointer out of bounds!) and would almost always corrupt the contents of the screen buffer memory. 100% fixed now as far as my testing shows. Please let me know if you find any other issues with it.
While I was already in there patching things, I figured since I had a bit of time that I'd do some other easy work I could think of before releasing this update.
Here's another quick 'n' dirty changelog:
-Fixed terminal being horrendously broken
-Implemented a live trace mode, which you can see here
-Interrupts are now logged when CPU logging is enabled
-Fixed some outdated internal documentation
-Preparations to add new terminal emulation modes including VT100/ANSI and possibly output to a real RS-232 serial port
-Preparations for disk drive support
-Preparations for save state support
-Made all views at least show an error message instead of blanking the screen
-Made key press detection rate less sensitive to ease typing
If it wasn't obvious, I actually found these bugs and made these improvements during current development of porting Wizard's Quest over. Hopefully you'll have that soon as well!
Hopefully I don't find any more major bugs,
~VCSMaster
Release: 5/11/2022 A16 Emulator 0.05w
Hello! Got some major work done on the A16 emulator package today and figured that I'd drop by to give the update.
You can download it on the software page now. I know it's a little bit late, but I've been changing jobs.
Quick and dirty changelog:
-Fixed all input "jank"
-Fixed terminal input and interrupts
-Fixed timer interrupts
-Fixed software interrupts
-Fixed the built in monitor
-Added hotkeys
-Added a new page to the About screen
-Updated contact links in About screen
-Soon to come: possible games & an operating system!
I'm sure that I forgot something I updated. Hopefully you all enjoy my new favorite update. There are still some bugs, but this is a huge step in the right direction!
Here's to more good updates,
~VCSMaster
Short: 4/14/2022 Outages & Updates
Greetings once again. I come to you now from a brand new computer!
Yes, after many years, I've finally upgraded to something reasonably modern, and of course it's been a real project to get it working the way I want. Thanks for bearing with me on the wait. Now that everything is working (correctly), I will be able to resume actual work!
You may have noticed a few minor outages of both the site and our Minecraft server (whose IP you can find in the Discord server). This has been due to local power outages as spring storms pass through. I do not have a working UPS yet to keep either server going, though I hope to get one soon. Hope I can rely on some patience through this.
Other than that, there is no major software news to report right now. I hope to get the next version of the emulator out soon, maybe with some interesting software to boot? Thinking of translating Wizard's Quest over to it.
Maybe now I can actually get something done,
~VCSMaster
News: 3/28/2022 Website & Future projects
Hey all! The website is completely migrated, and only just over a week behind schedule at that!
Apologies for the extended delay. It was only slightly intentional.
I have been working double time to get another special project out the door and ready for a first release! It's a modernization of a previous project (whose original documents are for download in the archives)
If I can get everything working the way I'd like it to, it'll be up here in no time. Things have been going well so far. I don't expect release to take very long, but I'm still in the testing phase for this new technology and don't want to release something totally unfinished.
All that said, I will give you all a nice hint at what it will include: A fully modular tile-based 2D map system!Here's an early screenshot.
I'm very excited and can't wait to release both the engine and the game to you all!
Yes, you heard right, this is the first game engine project release since TextEngine 1.43A all the way back in 2015!
In other news, TextEngine has been totally dropped for support. WordEngine still has a planned release date of "Eventually," but this new system, which I have dubbed the "DIM2" engine, will be launched for sure by the end of April!
Hope it's been worth the wait and that you're looking forward to this new release as much as I am,
~VCSMaster
Release: 3/18/2022 PythonMon 0.0.7A
SkipperDMudkipz just released the full version of the latest update to PythonMon (version PreAlpha 0.0.7) in the Discord today!
The latest version is available for download in the software section.
Some of the updates include the completion of the data restructure as well as setting up to use a GUI later on.
A full changelog can be found there as well as on the archives page.
Finally, he announced a few planned bits for the next update, including:
-Fixing save files
-Complete the movepool database
-Complete the experience database
This may take a while, he reports, and not to expect any word of updates until at least April.
Apologies for the downtime earlier today, thanks for sticking with us,
~VCSMaster
News & Releases: 3/14/2022 Almost done & Software updates
Finally entered all of the links for the software archive and built a main software hub! Everything is uploaded (Except a few larger things which I will wait until later to complete. Namely TextEngine, couple harder to find pieces of software, the A16 Emulator archives, and related ROM software) and linked to both the software and archive pages!
Next up on the list is to make a better homepage (For now I've just slapped a quickie news feed looking thing that looks terrible, I'd like to make it more hub-like in the future, though) and to fill in the hardware pages.
I've also filled in the contact page completely, and created a space for the upcoming "History" document which you can find here.
In other news, I did a nice little update to AASM which I'm quite happy with, which auto-generates vectors for the CPU. This can be disabled completely or force overridden, but is on by default and makes things a lot easier. It also adds a small warning when you try to assemble in address space reserved for RAM, though it will still let you do it.
Skippy also shared some press on the status of PythonMon and some quick updates today, as well as a preliminary release of the next major version of the software in our Discord server today.
I've added both the prior patch notes and software versions to the archive and added the latest version to the software section. Hopefully this will get his project a bit more traffic, this data restructure has been nearly a year in the coming now!
Oh, and I finally officially released Phantasma 0.20D, which has been in the works since, well... The last update!
That last update, 0.18, was released on April 11, 2018! This has been a long time coming.
So long, in fact, that I forgot all of what it entails and have nothing to say. Haven't worked on it in a while (Other projects & life in general) but I figured since I was working on the website anyways, I'd dump the latest version here for all to see. Maybe more updates coming soon? Who knows!
Check it out in the software section here.
To finish off, I'd like to say that I hope to have the website completely done and mostly finalized by the end of this week (March 19, 2022), and I also hope to have enough time after that to finish writing the next version of the CPU emulator, which will fix a bunch of annoying bugs, increase base memory, maybe increase speed, and give a whole bunch of other fun UI updates to make things look pretty!
Hope you enjoy my friends,
~VCSMaster
News: 3/12/2022 Software transition
The software archives are complete! All that's left is to upload the files and fill in changelogs where possible.
Beyond that, the currently desolate homepage needs to be properly set up, and I need to move over all of the hardware pages as well. The contact page could also use some help.
I plan to write a short company history page as well, which will be linked in the contact page or here when it's complete.
If you didn't know, I'm doing this entirely by hand in my off time. Did you know making over a hundred items fit on a table makes your soul hurt? I didn't until just now! Can't believe I did this for the last one too. Such is the cost of dedication, I suppose.
Almost to the finish line,
~VCSMaster
News: 3/10/2022 Still working on it
As said before, this site is still very much a work in progress, and I am working hard (alone) to transition all applicable content to the new format as fast as I can.
I am also looking for people to help with transitioning content or creating icons for the new page! I do not want it to be flashy but I do want to beautify it a bit more than the plain text we had before on Google Sites.
With the news and comments archives moved, the next big hurdle will be adding all of the software library back in. I have also taken the liberty of manually adding our page to Google's database in hopes of search indexing.
This transition is going as well as I had initially expected, and it has stopped me from software development for the time being, but hopefully we will be back to normal operation shortly!
Stay safe and happy browsing,
~VCSMaster
News: 3/7/2022 Welcome to the new site!
This site is a work in progress, as we are currently in the process of transitioning from Google Sites after the Classic Sites setup closed down.
That said, the new host gives us a great deal more flexibility in both page design and file hosting! No longer will files and documents need to be referenced to external servers, oh no! We have our own on-site file storage now!
I'm sure you've noticed that there is now a logo and a new navigation bar along the top of the page, as well as a favicon! All features this new setup brings us!
Hopefully this will turn out to be a reliable service and much kinder to us than Google was.
Whether you're coming here from the old setup or if you're a newcomer, please take a moment to look around the site!
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to hop in our brand new Discord Server or us an eMail message sharing your thoughts with us! We are always more than happy to have visitors.
Good seeing you all again, may more updates come your way soon,
~VCSMaster
You've reached the beginning of the news. Click HERE for the archived news page!
Last update: 8/19/2023 @ 8:13AM by VCSMaster Copyright 2014-2023 AiO Softworks
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