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Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

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Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#181

Post by niutech »

deaddodo wrote: post #122
crq-yml wrote: post #42

I had a good time with PICO-8 - and I think it retains its core appeal - but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. The specification ends up being tighter when there's a board design, chips and I/O ports, and these new machines, like Picotron, are relatively uncompromised in what they can achieve within the I/O spec. You can emula…

> but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. I just wish these would move on from the same crop of retro CPUs (z80, 6502, maybe 8080) and clone VDPs on FPGA. I want a retro- style 2d/blit-based machine, but with more advanced hardware. Maybe a Cortex-M, z8000, 68000, low-end Risc-V, etc. Still give it BASIC in a boot ROM, but some…

You can run Commodore VIC or IBM PC wigh CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows 3.0, Linux ELKS on ESP32 using FabGL.

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#182

Post by jdboyd »

deaddodo wrote: post #122
crq-yml wrote: post #42

I had a good time with PICO-8 - and I think it retains its core appeal - but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. The specification ends up being tighter when there's a board design, chips and I/O ports, and these new machines, like Picotron, are relatively uncompromised in what they can achieve within the I/O spec. You can emula…

> but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. I just wish these would move on from the same crop of retro CPUs (z80, 6502, maybe 8080) and clone VDPs on FPGA. I want a retro- style 2d/blit-based machine, but with more advanced hardware. Maybe a Cortex-M, z8000, 68000, low-end Risc-V, etc. Still give it BASIC in a boot ROM, but some…

I think this is less people who grew up with C64s and more people who didn't trying to capture the magic without having to learn assembly or making sprites with graph paper and a hex editor.

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#184

Post by dragontamer »

qooiii2 wrote: post #154
deaddodo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. I just wish these would move on from the same crop of retro CPUs (z80, 6502, maybe 8080) and clone VDPs on FPGA. I want a retro- style 2d/blit-based machine, but with more advanced hardware. Maybe a Cortex-M, z8000, 68000, low-end Risc-V, etc. Still give it BASIC in a boot ROM, but some…

Something like an STM32 Discovery board is a good option for recapturing the mid-90s magic. You can get a ~200-MHz Cortex-M4 or M7 with a few MB of flash, external SDRAM, and a display for less than $100. They have really basic hardware 2D accelerators. The on-chip peripherals are well-documented, but off-chip peripherals require some digging to figure out how to program correctly. You can debug with GDB surprisingly…

No. Microcontrollers are the improper solution for this problem.

You can run full blown Linux efficiently at 500MHz or 600MHz processors like STM32MP1 processors, powered by AA batteries or other small battery packs.

There's also SAMA5D2, and a few other competitors in this space (both above, and below, the STM32MP1).

When we're talking about "consoles", that's "plug-and-play executables", meaning you now want a proper compile / library -> ELF + loader == Linux kernel, security, etc. etc.

Besides, a DDR2 chip gets you like 512MB of RAM for $4 and easily fits within the power-constraints of AA-batteries. There's very little benefit to going to the microwatt-scale devices like STM32 Discovery.

----------

Microprocessors for the win. Entry-level MPUs exist for a reason, and there's a ton of them well below Rasp. Pi in terms of power / performance.

There's many at the 2D level of graphical performance, but 500MHz is still a bit low for this. You'll probably want to reach into faster 1000MHz / 1GHz MPUs and push into STM32MP2 if you're reaching into 3d levels of performance. (Which is beginning to look like a cut-down cellphone chip really)

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#185

Post by RetroTechie »

mncharity wrote: post #171
bitwize wrote: post #15

It's a sign of the fact that personal computing has gone way, way off the rails that we make pretend computers to run on our real computers just to have fun ways to compute again. I really really appreciate work like this, but why aren't our actual operating systems "cozy" enough to support creative work anymore?

Others have mentioned a limitation-creativity link. But I wonder if there's also an implicit... "impedance match", to the current state of interface devices? "We'll make it more creative and popular by requiring physical punched cards! Think of the lovely chunkchunk-chunkity-chunk sounds!", or "You have to hand punch holes in paper tape!", would seem unlikely. On the other hand, decades-old ux is well matched to deca…

> Others have mentioned a limitation-creativity link. But I wonder if there's also an implicit... "impedance match", to the current state of interface devices?

No, it's a software (& hardware) design issue. Computers just aren't made to be tinker-friendly anymore.

Eg. back in the day, I had a trio of editor+assembler+debugger on MSX2 (often running from RAMdisk). For many programs, edit-assemble-test cycles were a few minutes at most. With nothing loaded, machine would boot into BASIC seconds after power-up.

So: develop on target device, even with that being Z80 based machine with ~256 KB RAM (which was already comfortable). Several vendors of these MSX machines would send you a full schematic / service manual for a nominal fee. Hardware mods were commonplace. Youngsters who'd never touched a computer could be tweaking BASIC programs within an hour. With patience you could wrap your head around the whole machine.

Nowadays: boot computer, wait, click on fancy icons. No default programming environment(s) in sight. 'Poke' some hardware port? Not happening. Modify any of the built-in software? Forget about it. Or at best: first download multiple GB's of development tools, spend the next week(s) buried in documentation. Not for the faint-hearted. Let alone newbies.

Yes, computers have become faster. But also more complex. Some of that complexity is justified. Or even necessary. Much of it is not, and is just heaps & heaps of technologies / abstraction layers & legacy cruft.

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#186

Post by deaddodo »

jdboyd wrote: post #182
deaddodo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. I just wish these would move on from the same crop of retro CPUs (z80, 6502, maybe 8080) and clone VDPs on FPGA. I want a retro- style 2d/blit-based machine, but with more advanced hardware. Maybe a Cortex-M, z8000, 68000, low-end Risc-V, etc. Still give it BASIC in a boot ROM, but some…

I think this is less people who grew up with C64s and more people who didn't trying to capture the magic without having to learn assembly or making sprites with graph paper and a hex editor.

Sure, but there was a whole other magic era that followed that. That also got to work with low-level assembler and direct framebuffer/video access. But wasn't constrained to 320x200x8 screens with pictograph fonts ("petscii") and POKE/PEEK.

It had other limits to explore other than shoving as much as you could into 64k of memory and 1Mhz of processing power.

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#187

Post by tombert »

I'm a bit confused. I was about to buy this, but when I logged into my account, it looks like I already own it? At least the alpha.

I already owned a legit copy of Pico-8 and Voxatron...do I get it automatically?

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#188

Post by klelatti »

deaddodo wrote: post #122
crq-yml wrote: post #42

I had a good time with PICO-8 - and I think it retains its core appeal - but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. The specification ends up being tighter when there's a board design, chips and I/O ports, and these new machines, like Picotron, are relatively uncompromised in what they can achieve within the I/O spec. You can emula…

> but I've moved on to "genuine" retro hardware with the new crop of machines like CX16, Mega65, or my personal choice, Agon Light. I just wish these would move on from the same crop of retro CPUs (z80, 6502, maybe 8080) and clone VDPs on FPGA. I want a retro- style 2d/blit-based machine, but with more advanced hardware. Maybe a Cortex-M, z8000, 68000, low-end Risc-V, etc. Still give it BASIC in a boot ROM, but some…

Maybe check out the Colour Maximite 2 with a Cortex M-7 [1]

Very much in the spirit of the early home computers (inc a decent BASIC) but with a lot more oomph.

[1] https://geoffg.net/maximite.html

Re: Picotron Is a Fantasy Workstation

#190

Post by qooiii2 »

dragontamer wrote: post #184
qooiii2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like an STM32 Discovery board is a good option for recapturing the mid-90s magic. You can get a ~200-MHz Cortex-M4 or M7 with a few MB of flash, external SDRAM, and a display for less than $100. They have really basic hardware 2D accelerators. The on-chip peripherals are well-documented, but off-chip peripherals require some digging to figure out how to program correctly. You can debug with GDB surprisingly…

No. Microcontrollers are the improper solution for this problem. You can run full blown Linux efficiently at 500MHz or 600MHz processors like STM32MP1 processors, powered by AA batteries or other small battery packs. There's also SAMA5D2, and a few other competitors in this space (both above, and below, the STM32MP1). When we're talking about "consoles", that's "plug-and-play executables", meaning you now want a prop…

I guess it depends on which part you think is fun. Using a big microcontroller is more about pushing the hardware to its limits. Using a small Linux system is about taking advantage of existing libraries. The Playdate has an STM32F7 and it seems to do pretty well as a console.
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