Epic! 8-bitguy uses 1 weird trick to detroy rare prototypes!

[AmpleApricots]

As for the CMM2's source, the dude that designed the Maximite series is quite critical about where open source is in the current year, which would explain why he insists that people contact him for a copy.

I didn't do my research that deeply, looks like he got burned. Well that's more understandable then. I guess a computer like this does have it's commercial value, even if that value lies into selling it to retro hipsters. (Apparently though BASIC seems to show up in quite a bit of embedded programming too, a fact he mentioned in there, huh wouldn't have thought in this day and age) Guess you'd actually have to make that request to see what he's willing to share and under which conditions, then. Still doesn't sit entirely well with me.

BTW it's funny you should mention bootstrapping a Z80 on a breadboard... this video came up in my feed yesterday. This guy makes it looks so simple that even I could probably manage it (eventually).

It looks that simple because it really kinda is. Lots of CPUs of that time basically just need an external clock and off they go looking for something to do as soon as power is applied. You can even visualize this with LEDs on the pins if you'd like to. Any connected ROM to CPUs like this you have to imagine as an .exe file in physical form the processor reads as soon as it starts/is reset. It doesn't have to be even that complicated though. You could easily set up a bunch of switches (yes physical switches you set in a specific order) and put in the opcodes of your program manually that way, one by one, if you want. I once did this with an 68k. You don't even need RAM. We used to program computers like that. It's of course not practical to use such a CPU that way but it can teach you some basics. The problems aren't often in the theory as the theory with hardware of this vintage is actually kinda straightforward, the devil is usually in the detail and actually putting that theory into the physical world. Things don't always work like you think they should or are supposed to, the analog world often manages to screw your digital plan up and that's where the problems that consume all your time usually lie.

Usually where all these computer kits run into trouble is periphery and turning this simple system setup into a full blown, stand-alone computer with modern input and output. This is also coincidentally what made these old machines like the Amiga or C64 so special. Their CPUs weren't anything to write home about, even the 68k was on the cheap and lower end by 1987, it's all the custom circuity and software programming in the OS that made the magic happen and there's way too little focus in many of the projects on this, as this is actually the hard part. Input/An OS complicated enough to process the input and do something interesting with it/give Output in the form of at least VGA compatible graphics and optionally sound, that's what you want today. Then you optionally want your custom chips to be a bit clever and do some things on their own so your slow CPU doesn't get taxed so much. (Projects could take boring shortcuts here by turning the CPU into a performance monster, in a FPGA for example) Things start to grow complicated then by quite a bit. I've built a very simple Z180 (which is basically a Z80 SoC with many important parts already onboard+MMU+also a lot faster than your usual Z80) System on which I basically planned to use Forth as the OS and my biggest problem was to add an appropriate graphics controller which I also could connect to anything. I chose the TMS9918 because it was cheap to get and I could find a lot of documentation for it but I ran into a few snags and then saw somebody else solve it for the rc2014 platform which somehow put a damper on my own efforts although again, that's the wrong attitude to have. The output of that chip is very poor to begin with quality-wise. (just composite and not very clean, although using a Framemeister helped) I was also playing with the thought to use some graphics chip from one of the early VGA graphics cards I have lying around but that didn't feel right and also was more complicated than I wanted it to be. Then I got bored/distracted. An optimal solution would be something custom and CPLD/FPGA based but again, the complexity of it all. I want to make another attempt for my computerized writing machine, but maybe with more modern hardware. It's not that old hardware is impossible it's just all a bit tedious. There's also the possibility to hook it up to an actual computer and do VT100 style terminal emulation on the computer and get pixel-perfect HDMI output and there are even projects for things like the Pi Zero for that, but it feels weird to use a comparative super computer as a dumb terminal for something more primitive than the circuity in my optical mouse, makes the entire thing feel kinda pointless.

Anyways, all these projects don't pop up because they're so incredibly hard to do, they just need the effort and doing your own really is not that hard. That's also why so many of them go hopelessly overbroad and then somehow end up erroneously thinking they sit on the next computer revolution. Let's just say there's still quite a bit of way to go from an FPGA graphics chip for your pet 8/16-bit computer to a RTX 3060.

 

[awoo]

@AmpleApricots for some strange reason the quote button on your post is missing on my end.

To be educational on an engineering level they have to be kinda simple and well laid out/open/explained like the Cerberus or the various Z80/Z180 computers that float around. A "black box" like the Color Maximite 2 (I researched that one and found out you can "ask the creator via mail for the source code" now how likely is it you get an actual productive answer and really the full source code? I might be cynical but I have my doubts, gatekeeping at that stage usually just doesn't bode well) isn't really going to teach you much, nor are proprietary FPGA implementations. If they run BASIC or a similar abstract high-level language really really fast (often with no way to inject assembler or bitbang hardware because it's just not that simple under the hood) well.. what is that going to teach you you can't learn on your PC? I can run BASIC on my 6 core AMD too, but why would I want to learn how to write simple BASIC programs in 2021? Also the creative thinking often comes with the limitations. If your computer can just bruteforce your way through your code you will be too lazy to optimize.

It can also be a good experience to start from zero, a Z80 is not hard to bootstrap. You can do it on a breadboard with a few ICs. I think many people get discouraged to try anything by themselves because they google around and then see the fancy finished products other people have made and then wonder why they should even bother with their own stumbling and bumbling attempts, but I think that's the wrong attitude. Also if you build something from the ground up, you have a whole other connection to it as if you just check out the design of somebody else and then solder a fancy kit together.

I think calculator programming is a good way to learn assembly on a reasonable CPU (Z80) with widely accessible hardware (overpriced TI calculators). I wrote a little BASIC on my calculator like a decade ago when I still used it for classes (undergrad courses don't require a calculator) as my first introduction to programming (actually not very good for learning to write clean code), but this winter break I plan on going through the classic z80 calculator programming tutorial. My background and major is soy coding like python, but I've done enough with assembly and C unix system programming and building low level logic stuff to probably be able to do it (with constant help from manuals and others in the calculator community so I don't spend years reverse engineering everything)

 

[AmpleApricots]

@AmpleApricots for some strange reason the quote button on your post is missing on my end.

I think it's because they were so long.

If you need the touch of real hardware. The easiest and cheapest way is probably an emulator for one of the countless Z80 systems out there, because you get (emulated) periphery to play around with too and can see results without leaving the comfort of your PC and modern UI. You can even inspect the memory of the emulated machine to see what's happening without awkward serial debugging and other such old school tech. Emulators these days are incredibly accurate. It's also usually very easy to cross-develop. (That's how modern software for these old systems is usually made) All these fancy C64 demos the demo scene produces these days? Written on a boring PC.

The Z80 is a good CPU to do assembler with, the 6502 which is the other popular CPU usually coming up in these experiments is a bit more feature-less but is generally faster because amongst other things it can access memory faster. (important, we are cooking with no caches here - always fetching - actually it's also kind of a misnomer, it's just that Z80s memory access cycle is really slow) In reality, this makes actually less a difference than you think it should *if* you use the Z80 and all it's registers to the biggest extend and try to minimize memory access. With code optimized to it's strengths, a fast 6502 can't be beat by any other 8 bitter though. That does require some wizardry and programming for the Z80 is just that much easier, especially somewhat more complex programs. A fast Z180 with 18 or even 33 Mhz will be hard to reason as "not being enough", it has enough speed and is just that much more convenient. (Although there are modern 65C02 with up to 14 Mhz... no idea how these compare but it stands to reason they're not slower) I'm excluding the modern 8 bit microcontrollers who are all technically much faster because their architecture doesn't really lend itself to build proper computers.

If anyone reading this is ever interested in building his own computer out of these CPUs, beware of fakes from China. there are a lot and nothing will be more frustrating than finding out that the IC you got is just some other IC reprinted and not behaving like the datasheet. It'll throw you off, especially if you lack the experience to tell.

If all the Amiga crazies haven't bought them all up yet, the 68k is a good step up when you're ready for the added complexity of 16-bit. Assembly on the 68k is dangerously close to creeping up to a difficulty level that stops being a fun side project for the beginner though.

Generally, remember to not build a too cpu-centric design as these are limited with these CPUs anyways. In many of these classic computers, the CPU wasn't really the central part. There's a lot of exciting and cheap periphery on the market these days that doesn't mind being controlled by an 8-bitter and could do the heavy lifting.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

@AmpleApricots for some strange reason the quote button on your post is missing on my end.



I think calculator programming is a good way to learn assembly on a reasonable CPU (Z80) with widely accessible hardware (overpriced TI calculators). I wrote a little BASIC on my calculator like a decade ago when I still used it for classes (undergrad courses don't require a calculator) as my first introduction to programming (actually not very good for learning to write clean code), but this winter break I plan on going through the classic z80 calculator programming tutorial. My background and major is soy coding like python, but I've done enough with assembly and C unix system programming and building low level logic stuff to probably be able to do it (with constant help from manuals and others in the calculator community so I don't spend years reverse engineering everything)

Inline code is far from the best way to learn assembly but I still think it's useful as an introduction that teaches you how to translate concepts you already know in a higher level language into lower level instructions. If you go down that route and ever decide to do something in entirely assembler then you will be lopsided like one of those tiny arm wrestling guys that are 40% right arm by weight, but hey, it's something!

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

That and his involvement with trannies. His music guy, who looked so damn autistic in the first place, eventually trooned out. Then there's that guy who collects Hearoid robots.

At least he doesn't have an "updated" LGBTQ+ flag and BLM stickers in plain sight like Cathode Ray Dude.

I think they are two seperate people. The man is Norwegan Anders Enger Jersen, while the transsexual's new name is Noelle Amelie Aman.

As for the Commander X16, I doubt that it can serve any educational purpose, because I don't there's much demand for such a device. Look at the Raspberry Pi, a machine designed to teach Zoomers computer science. Yet, it seems to me that the only people using are the already tech savy using for small projects like the PiHole and media streaming box.

 

[Gamepad]

I think they are two seperate people. The man is Norwegan Anders Enger Jersen, while the transsexual's new name is Noelle Amelie Aman.

As for the Commander X16, I doubt that it can serve any educational purpose, because I don't there's much demand for such a device. Look at the Raspberry Pi, a machine designed to teach Zoomers computer science. Yet, it seems to me that the only people using are the already tech savy using for small projects like the PiHole and media streaming box.

Anders and Noah both worked on X3, but the former got more focus in the making of for the box and manual designs. Noah, by PETscii Robots, wound up autistically making the soundtrack for almost every single versions of the game, on top of filming himself in his troon glory.

 

[Pissmaster]

I think they are two seperate people. The man is Norwegan Anders Enger Jersen, while the transsexual's new name is Noelle Amelie Aman.

That tranny name sounds like it's supposed to be a play-on-words, and it almost is but sounds like Engrish. "No Hell am I lay a man"

As for the Commander X16, I doubt that it can serve any educational purpose, because I don't there's much demand for such a device. Look at the Raspberry Pi, a machine designed to teach Zoomers computer science. Yet, it seems to me that the only people using are the already tech savy using for small projects like the PiHole and media streaming box.

Raspberry Pi enthusiasts: "they're SO AWESOME and you can do AAAAAAAAAAAANYTHING WITH THEM!!!!"
me: "Ok I bought one lol what can i do with it"
Raspberry Pi enthusiasts: "uh, roms, pihole, uh, thin client, you can um, stick it inside a robot if you're making a robot"
me: "cool but what can I do that I can't already do with an old obsolete desktop PC"
Raspberry Pi enthusiasts: "it's smol"

Don't get me wrong, I like my Raspberry Pis, but its enthusiast community is... kinda gay. Like you said, there's lots of "it's great for teaching children how to program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", but the most popular use seems to be to run emulators through it, and if that's what you really want, you probably have an old Wii sitting around that you could just hack, and install emulators onto for free, right now.

 

[Jump]

BTW it's funny you should mention bootstrapping a Z80 on a breadboard... this video came up in my feed yesterday. This guy makes it looks so simple that even I could probably manage it (eventually).

Z80 needs basically nothing but a clock to run. Here is a simple LED binary counter that uses a 555 as a clock.

Tie all the data lines low (NOP instruction) and the Z80 will start counting up the address bus as it executes the endless NOP instructions. This webpage and video explains this simple setup.

CP/M was the standard operating system for generic Z80 computers and it doesn't take all that much to build a home brew text based system with components still available today.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

Don't get me wrong, I like my Raspberry Pis, but its enthusiast community is... kinda gay. Like you said, there's lots of "it's great for teaching children how to program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", but the most popular use seems to be to run emulators through it, and if that's what you really want, you probably have an old Wii sitting around that you could just hack, and install emulators onto for free, right now.

The whole 'Maker' community probably deserves it own thread here, if not a thread in the community forum. It's full of soydevs and probably lots of drama and useless bullshit.

 

[Least Concern]

Don't get me wrong, I like my Raspberry Pis, but its enthusiast community is... kinda gay. Like you said, there's lots of "it's great for teaching children how to program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", but the most popular use seems to be to run emulators through it, and if that's what you really want, you probably have an old Wii sitting around that you could just hack, and install emulators onto for free, right now.

I think that emulation is pretty much the most boring thing you can do with a Pi or similar SBCs. I hate when I'm looking up info on SBCs and I come across an article or video which only frames the thing as an emulation device. I don't give a shit about emulation and if I did I'd just use a desktop machine, Jesus.

Being smol and cheep is enough to make these boards interesting, IMO, but what really differentiates it from just an old PC is its most prominent but under-discussed feature: the IO pins. They allow for hardware integration not possible on other systems at least without special cables or adapters. And yes, if you get your Pi working with an LCD character screen, you haven't built anything more practical or useful than a desktop PC for 99% of purposes, but maybe you had fun and learned something new. At least you did something more interesting than loading Super Mario 64 in RetroArch or whatever.

 

[byuu]

They allow for hardware integration not possible on other systems at least without special cables or adapters.

It's neat and all but doesn't really justify buying a Pi unless you have some specific project in mind.

You can do a lot with just a 2$ USB TTL adapter. For more complex stuff, a small 4$ STM32 dev board beats Pi GPIO in most cases since it allows you to do real-time stuff and has useful builtin peripherals like an ADC and you can still control it from a real computer through USB.

 

[Jump]

I think that emulation is pretty much the most boring thing you can do with a Pi or similar SBCs. I hate when I'm looking up info on SBCs and I come across an article or video which only frames the thing as an emulation device. I don't give a shit about emulation and if I did I'd just use a desktop machine, Jesus.

Being smol and cheep is enough to make these boards interesting, IMO, but what really differentiates it from just an old PC is its most prominent but under-discussed feature: the IO pins. They allow for hardware integration not possible on other systems at least without special cables or adapters. And yes, if you get your Pi working with an LCD character screen, you haven't built anything more practical or useful than a desktop PC for 99% of purposes, but maybe you had fun and learned something new. At least you did something more interesting than loading Super Mario 64 in RetroArch or whatever.

I have a few Pi's but never really used them for anything. Dragging a whole Debian Linux OS mess along for the ride when you want to do little micro controller stuff with the IO pins seemed dumb to me.

 

[Finder]

It's neat and all but doesn't really justify buying a Pi unless you have some specific project in mind.

You can do a lot with just a 2$ USB TTL adapter. For more complex stuff, a small 4$ STM32 dev board beats Pi GPIO in most cases since it allows you to do real-time stuff and has useful builtin peripherals like an ADC and you can still control it from a real computer through USB.

I used to just use the parallel port back in the day when every computer had those. It was super handy and super easy to use, I had a lot of random shit setup and automated that way.

 

[byuu]

I used to just use the parallel port back in the day when every computer had those. It was super handy and super easy to use, I had a lot of random shit setup and automated that way.

A USB TTL adapter is just a serial port you can hook up via USB. But it's TTL level like a parallel port and gives you a fair amount of i/o pins you can bitbang.

 

[seri0us]

I had a lot of random shit setup and automated that way.

like wat?

 

[AmpleApricots]

..besides the PC the C64 had it's user port, the Amiga also had the parallel port, and also the external disk drive port which also could be repurposed for all kinds of shenanigans and these are only the machines I used or have seen used in this manner (friend of mine made a whole lot of money in the 90s buying cheap C64s, gutting them and then throwing a hand-crafted EPROM into them to automate various stuff for businesses) these things aren't exactly something that came about with the Pi and it's strange people treat interfacing a computer with various electronics as some kind of novel concept the Rasperry Pi foundation thought first of. The Pi is often used in places where it's not really needed, from "learning Linux" to "running old games" - it's all things the Desktop PC most people already have usually does better, cheaper and simpler. But Consoomers gotta consoom.

 

[byuu]

..besides the PC the C64 had it's user port, the Amiga also had the parallel port, and also the external disk drive port which also could be repurposed for all kinds of shenanigans and these are only the machines I used or have seen used in this manner (friend of mine made a whole lot of money in the 90s buying cheap C64s, gutting them and then throwing a hand-crafted EPROM into them to automate various stuff for businesses) these things aren't exactly something that came about with the Pi and it's strange people treat interfacing a computer with various electronics as some kind of novel concept the Rasperry Pi foundation thought first of. The Pi is often used in places where it's not really needed, from "learning Linux" to "running old games" - it's all things the Desktop PC most people already have usually does better, cheaper and simpler. But Consoomers gotta consoom.

The BeBox even had a port specifically for people to fuck around with shit:

 

[Least Concern]

these things aren't exactly something that came about with the Pi and it's strange people treat interfacing a computer with various electronics as some kind of novel concept the Rasperry Pi foundation thought first of.

Nobody's saying the Pi did it first. Just that the Pi is doing it in an era where not many other common computer systems are.

 

[Pee Cola]

..besides the PC the C64 had it's user port, the Amiga also had the parallel port, and also the external disk drive port which also could be repurposed for all kinds of shenanigans and these are only the machines I used or have seen used in this manner (friend of mine made a whole lot of money in the 90s buying cheap C64s, gutting them and then throwing a hand-crafted EPROM into them to automate various stuff for businesses) these things aren't exactly something that came about with the Pi and it's strange people treat interfacing a computer with various electronics as some kind of novel concept the Rasperry Pi foundation thought first of.

It makes a bit more sense when you realise that the Raspberry Pi's lineage can be traced back to the BBC Micro. The Beeb had a ridiculous number of ports as standard. Not just the usual serial and printer ports, but a dedicated floppy disk port, a 1MHz bus port, a user port and a Tube (2nd processor) port.

In a bizarre twist of fate, a popular upgrade for current year BBC Micro users is to connect a Raspberry Pi to the Tube port and use it as a second processor.

The most astonishing thing about all this is how the Pi has all this capability, yet is also ridiculously cheap. Especially when you consider that the BBC Micro was around £400 in the early '80s (about £1,400 in current year money).

 

[AmpleApricots]

The BeBox even had a port specifically for people to fuck around with shit:
View attachment 2773879

So many DIN and serial connectors, nice. Such a massive DB37 (?) connector I saw last on an old PC ISA serial card, 7 serial ports or so. Had even it's own CPU.

Nobody's saying the Pi did it first. Just that the Pi is doing it in an era where not many other common computer systems are.

I think Windows and HAL killed direct access to hardware for a majority of the PC world and with that made parallel port shenanigans die, but I don't really know. It was kinda not my field anymore around that time. But don't get me wrong, that wasn't an attack, it's just that really a ton of people seem to think a lot of things are only possible with these small ARM computers when in fact, they're often not even optimal.

Microcontrollers have become increasingly powerful and cheap too, and they're often better equipped for the requirements or just about enough. There's the ESP32 line which are IoT targeted devices for example, with inbuilt Bluetooth and Wireless support. I've seen videos where people not only implemented a full (albeit slow) x86 emulation on them to run DOS and Win 3.1 (which yeah, is kinda pointless) but also used it's GPIO pins to process PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse input and do reasonably high resolution VGA (!) Output. No special hardware support. All in software. A chip that costs maybe $5 or something, ~$10 on a fancy devboard with USB/Serial connection. It's crazy what's possible today and with the smallest ARMs the line between microcontroller and full-blown computer really blurs. The common microcontrollers have an edge over the Pi's and their ilk though, mostly that they don't need the insane Linux software stack to run (complete with the Linux kernel who is a lot of things but not simple or low latency/RT - which sometimes is important in embedded) have a lower power consumption and thermal/physical footprint and also bring a few hardware goodies. something like a Pi can't really provide by design and nature of the used OS. They're also just a breeze to program these days, something I can't really claim for the Intel MCS ones I had to live with and that were really arcane and complicated to work with in comparison.

In a bizarre twist of fate, a popular upgrade for current year BBC Micro users is to connect a Raspberry Pi to the Tube port and use it as a second processor.

I saw this union of Pi and ancient computer a few times now, even the Pi sometimes replacing the CPU and other capabilities of the system in question altogether. Kinda weird and frankenstein-ish imo, why bother with the old computer even at that point? But that's just like, my opinion man.

The most astonishing thing about all this is how the Pi has all this capability, yet is also ridiculously cheap. Especially when you consider that the BBC Micro was around £400 in the early '80s (about £1,400 in current year money).

I have a small Allwinner A20 based SBC which I use as *nix box(only Framebuffer)/terminal/serial server/GPIO-to-whatever-that-machine-needs I/O for many of my retro machines. 2 GB of RAM and SATA port with attached SSD make it quite useful as minimalist desktop kind-of machine, even if the SoC is ancient by ARM standards. (but can run unmodified linux mainline, which is big for me) I genuinely marvel at this small $30 value ARM sometimes. Eats all of 3 Watts if it runs at full tilt, compiling something for example. In a world without webshit, I could live with this computer alone. It truly is ridiculous what is possible today, can't repeat that enough. (and yes I'm aware of what more modern ARMs can do)