Hi

Has anyone got a Colour Maximite 2? It's not exactly a retro computer,
but more a modern computer for retro enthusiasts.

It's an ARM based computer, that boot straight to BASIC. It's got a
raspberry pi compatible header out the back, vga connecter, usb for a
keyboard, and a Wii Nunchuk port.

There's a small community that surrounds it, and they've put together a
variety of programs, mostly games.

I've been helping with a terminal program for dialling BBSes (using
ZiModem via an esp32 connected to the raspberry pi header) and we've
gotten ANSI and X-Modem working.

Does this sort of thing sound interesting to anyone? I love old
computers, but they're getting harder and harder to find, and more
expensive too.

In my mind, this is sort of like the mystic or talisman of the Computers,
ie a modern alternative while keeping the retro feel.

Anyway, I bought a colour maximite 2, but it was expensive. About $200
AU. I got a good deal. Anyway, it got me thinking... arm CPU, boot to
basic... what about a raspberry pi zero that had a custom OS that booted straight to BASIC...

A raspberry pi zero (without wireless) is about $10 here. The OS would be
on the SD-card, and read files from FAT, it's got the header...

So I started writing an OS for raspberry pi. My goal is to use
paladin-t's my-basic as the basic interpreter, so I need to write an os,
with a fat filesystem driver and enough of a lib-c to run my-basic, then
the fun can start and add functions to do graphics etc, via the
framebuffer.

Will I ever get there? Who knows... is anyone interested in such a thing? (Besides me?)

Andrew

--
|03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
|13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07


--- Talisman v0.21-dev (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: HappyLand v2.0 - telnet://happylandbbs.com:11892/ (21:1/182)

apam wrote (2021-05-28):

Has anyone got a Colour Maximite 2? It's not exactly a retro computer,
but more a modern computer for retro enthusiasts.

[...]

Anyway, I bought a colour maximite 2, but it was expensive. About $200
AU. I got a good deal. Anyway, it got me thinking... arm CPU, boot to basic... what about a raspberry pi zero that had a custom OS that booted straight to BASIC...

A raspberry pi zero (without wireless) is about $10 here. The OS would be on the SD-card, and read files from FAT, it's got the header...

So I started writing an OS for raspberry pi. My goal is to use
paladin-t's my-basic as the basic interpreter, so I need to write an os, with a fat filesystem driver and enough of a lib-c to run my-basic, then the fun can start and add functions to do graphics etc, via the framebuffer.

Will I ever get there? Who knows... is anyone interested in such a thing? (Besides me?)

Would it be possible to port the colour maximite 2 OS to the raspberry instead of creating another OS without software and a community (in the beginning)?

I think people are mostly interested in the original experience and memories: C64, Amiga, Atari, MSX, ...

I personally find the retro GUIs much more interesting: Windows 2 & 3, OS/2, older MacOS, Geos, Geoworks, Nextstep, Apple Newton, Amiga, TOS, RiscOS ...

But back to the OS for the raspberry zero: would it run on the zero only or on the bigger Pis too? Or maybe run it in QEMU and put it online for everyone to try :).

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* Origin: . (21:3/102)

I think people are mostly interested in the original experience and memories: C64, Amiga, Atari, MSX, ...

Yep, agreed. I wish I still had C64s.

Would it be possible to port the colour maximite 2 OS to the raspberry instead of creating another OS without software and a community (in
the beginning)?

I don't know to be honest. I am sure it would be, but as far as I can
tell it is proprietary. MMBasic, the basic interpreter, is most certainly proprietary, and I expect the OS itself is as well.

But back to the OS for the raspberry zero: would it run on the zero
only or on the bigger Pis too? Or maybe run it in QEMU and put it
online for everyone to try :).

Yeah definiatly. I'm currently targetting raspberry pi 2, just because
that was easiest, but yeah, qemu also works. I was just thinking zero
because:

1) it's a single core processor, and this OS would only make use of one
core

2) it doesn't have extras, like wifi and blue tooth that would be wasted.

3) it's dirt cheap :)

It's not too much trouble to support other OSes, especially if you just
target 32-bit arm, even the pi 4 should run it, it's just a few tweaks
when setting up mmio base etc.

Andrew

--
|03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
|13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07


--- Talisman v0.21-dev (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: HappyLand v2.0 - telnet://happylandbbs.com:11892/ (21:1/182)