Interrupting my debugging with CocoSDC

Firstly, more experimentation suggests the problems are related to interrupts, but still no solution atm.

Another thing I did was add code to change the palette within the two ISRs, to see how much time was being spent inside them; most of the code is actually running in either or the other. Turns out the Coco isn't even breaking a sweat on Space Invaders. The VBORD (VBLANK) interrupt is finished even before the raster gets to the 1st active line of the display (I only started to see it when I extended it with ballast code), and the TIMER (mid-screen) interrupt varies between about 7 and 15% of the frame. So no chance of missing interrupts and both sound and colour are looking good right now!

Of course, there's the minor issue of the game not running.

One observation I've made is that things move way too quickly in one half (the top half) of the screen, which suggests that perhaps the VBORD interrupt is running more often than it should - which could happen if it isn't acknowledged properly.

Anyway, erasing and burning EPROMs is simply way too painful when debugging code, so I finally bit the bullet and assembled my CocoSDC (bought the case in Nov 2014, the PCB in Nov 2015). And I'm happy to say that the disk version of Space Invaders runs as expected. As does Lode Runner and Knight Lore, with the exception of a glitch on the text-mode splash screens which, oddly, isn't present on the cartridge version.

The CocoSDC is one cool piece of kit!