Conway's Game of Life for the PDP-8
14-April-2019: Added OS/8 support
9-April-2019: Added fast raster mode, statistics, and TTY RLE parser.
8-April-2019: Added VC8E support for both storage and non-storage 'scopes
Requires 8k of memory at the moment; one field for the program, and one field for the bitmap. Will use 32k of memory if fast raster is used; this is still buggy and is not recommended. OS/8 support is basic at the moment; supports CTRL-C to exit. Also, CTRL-U will now restart the program from the top.
VC8E is supported for both storage and non-storage oscilloscopes. In storage mode, the screen is updated during computation of the current playing field. In non-storage mode, the playing field is displayed as a raster for some number of frames at the end of the playing field update.
Assembles fine with palbart and should assemble fine with PAL8.
Starting address is 0200, and if you're not using the VC8E output, be sure
you're using a video terminal with the font set very small (and a square
font cell if possible).
Several assemble-time options are available, including many initial conditions from gliders to guns to fillers and more. The initial conditions are all based on the standard RLE format, so adding more is very easy. You can also assemble with a flag to take RLE input from the TTY.