Have you ever considered making a command line assembler instead of your current GUI in Unity? (It looks like Unity libraries, strange choice for development) Or documenting the communication with the device so other people can help you with supporting tools?
I believe that the people buying Vetus Pars are going to be very techie people anyway and I find the current GUI really more of a hindrance. People who just want to test chips would buy a BackBit Chip Tester or a Retro Chip Tester Pro and they would be very frustrated with the Vetus Pars.
A python assembler would satisfy Linux/Mac/Windows users, and simple scripts would make the process very easy to use.
A simple cheat sheet online for each of your GUI buttons Like "READ PIN: [pin#] [outreg] [n/a]" would be a nice reference so we won't have to scroll up and down so much, combined with a command line compiler and the user's favourite text editor would be perfect.
This is just constructive criticism, I'm not knocking down your project at all, so please don't take what I'm saying the wrong way.
I think you've done some amazing work and I have a lot of respect for what you have accomplished.
I am documenting the USB comms for people that want to make whatever they want for controls. I just need to get it done. I agree that for those who want to just upload and update a CLI would be much better for them. I already started the documentation but it's not done yet.
No pressure! I'll always be honest and let you know how it's going. First impressions have been frustrating...
For example I'll write the chip file in Sublime Text, load it, push it to the unit. Make a couple of changes in the GUI editor (which has some weird quirks like cursor disappearing or typing on a line above or below) and then save it from the GUI. Next time I load it in the GUI I need to remove the extra 0x0 values it automatically added on the DIM statements. Stuff like that...
Someday this is going to be one of my favourite tools. Not today though, lol.
That's a unity thing. I really don't like the textbox but Unity was the best way to get it out to each platform. for me anyway. I started with C and it was fine but it is so much slower. I will most likely do each one in native language for each OS but I'm not at that luxurious of a stage right now. I work on Macs so I assume that will be the first one to get native code but it has definitely been on my list of to dos.
@nivbot Well I've got an M4 Mac, Debian Linux and Windows 11 dev systems so I'd be happy to test all your GUI versions for you.
I might get started on that assembler I was mentioning. I develop all day at work and hardly touch the mouse which is probably why I don't like the GUI much. I don't use icons or anything on my desktop and spend most of my time in Sublime Text or Intellij IDEA. Old habits die hard... lol.
I wrote a basic two pass assembler for proof of concept this evening. It works like "vp-asm 74LS00.chip 74LS00.chipout" to create a binary file that matches the opcodes I see in code view on the unit. I don't know what to do with the meta or strings section yet but for now it pulls the code section and makes the opcode file.
When I find some more time I'll have to figure out how DIM, LOOP and FUNC work. Eventually it will become a real assembler.
I work with Typescript, PHP and C# most days so it's fun to play with python for a change.
@rbourque The actual code is very much text parsing and just converting to bytes and sending command and data packets. I worked on it more today and I think I should be able to get the docs out by the end of the weekend.