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Rickard5

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Joined: 31/03/2022
Location: United States
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Posted: 04:07pm 21 Jul 2023

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Hi, My name is Rick, and I'm a G.A.S. (Gear Addiction Syndrome) Survivor, and Data Hoarder. A key part of my Recovery is trying to thin down my collection of "Vintage" Equipment! Part of my Recovery is to realize that I don't need 9 Macintosh Laptops when I can run all the Classic Systems and 68K systems on one Raspberry Pi 400. I'm finding that that I don'r necessarily need the kinesthetic feel of the original Artifact to have the joy. but he other side of that is I have become a Data Hoarder. Example, when the Retro Pi movement came along, I had great fun build a super Retro Pi with a Joystick console using Actual Arcade controls, and curating all the Roms and cartridges I could find

Now that leads me the British Part of this Problem, The other Day Mick (Mixtel90) got me all wound up on a Nascom CP/M emulator, that runs on the Pico, Imagine replacing my Osborne 1 luggable with a Pico :). Well this got me looking at pother Emulators that will run on the Pico one is the BBC Micro, the Question is, is there a Software Repository for the BBC Micro?

I may be Vulgar, but , while I'm poor, I'm Industrious, Honest, and trustworthy! I Know my Place

stanleyella

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Joined: 25/06/2022
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2129

Posted: 04:31pm 21 Jul 2023

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Rick sir, I got a rpi400 and use twister os but using the retro pi it's not a pc. n64 is ok.

thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 4043

Posted: 04:56pm 21 Jul 2023

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Rickard5 said ... the Question is, is there a Software Repository for the BBC Micro?

http://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/
https://www.stairwaytohell.com/
http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums

Best wishes,

Tom

Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6798

Posted: 05:41pm 21 Jul 2023

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The BBC micro isn't all that easy to emulate fully. BBC BASIC is fine, but the rest of the machine is very hardware dependent (the Tube interface, screen Modes etc.). You can only go so far with an emulator.

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

stanleyella

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Joined: 25/06/2022
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2129

Posted: 05:48pm 21 Jul 2023

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amstrad basic was better than bbc basic. imho and z80 was better than 6502 to cause an argument

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
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Posts: 6798

Posted: 05:59pm 21 Jul 2023

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I cut my programming teeth on the Z80 (using a monitor in machine code, not assembler - I couldn't afford Zeap or enough RAM to run it in!). At the time I couldn't understand how the 6502 people could program with so few registers. :)

It was ages and ages before I got good ol' Microsoft BASIC (in ROM and complete with line numbers, integer & single precision with save to cassette).

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

barewires
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Joined: 13/04/2015
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 30

Posted: 06:08pm 21 Jul 2023

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I bought an Agon Light2 but have yet to get it running.
Check out the software links:
https://thepihut.com/products/agonlight2-z80-bbc-basic-retro-single-board-computer

IanRogers

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Joined: 09/12/2022
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 151

Posted: 06:21pm 21 Jul 2023

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I too have an Pi4 connected via HDMI to my monitor.
( my home PC is connected to the VGA input)

I have virtually EVERY machine emulated.

Linux ( rpi normal )
Amiga 4000 ( with a really good AppleII sub emulated )
The usual retropie setup all game machines up to N64.

£40 for the Pi and @ £12 for each uSD..

I have a 128Gb for retropie, over 100 machines and most programs for same.

I also have the collection / hording as you do.

Most older games machines, but I no longer use them as the Piis better.

I'd give my left arm to be ambidextrous

stanleyella

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Joined: 25/06/2022
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2129

Posted: 06:22pm 21 Jul 2023

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I had use of a maxam or something assembler on a eprom box on amstrad cpc so use all the cpc memory. bbc had built in assembler.
bbc was a status symbol like what car you drove. not educational like sinclair was.
affordable and magazines like unclear user :)

stanleyella

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Posted: 06:32pm 21 Jul 2023

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Emulation station is good on rpi400. picomite is not going to do starfox n64 though.

NPHighview

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Joined: 02/09/2020
Location: United States
Posts: 200

Posted: 06:57pm 21 Jul 2023

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Like Mixtel90, I too cut my programming teeth on monitor-level Z80, with a whopping 2K of static RAM (until I soldered a 16Kbyte RAM card); this, a "Digital Group" computer.
I hand-coded a music "interpreter" (generating square wave single-voice tones; makes Debussy and Ravel sound really weird), a meeting annunciator application (utilized at 1970s Midwestern science fiction conventions to display the speaker program), etc. At least the monitor had cassette I/O so I could store and retrieve my laboriously-created programs. Still remember those Z80 op-codes :-(

I made the case from a surplus 10 kg rack-mountable instrument assembly. Add in the 10 kg whopper transformer for the analog power supply, and the barely-noticeable backplane and cards. Luggable, indeed.

In comparison, the Colour Maximite II and Pico are really, really fun, and this forum is incredibly helpful!

Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now!

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6798

Posted: 07:21pm 21 Jul 2023

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2K? Luxury! The Nascom-1 had 2K on the board, but 1K was for the screen and part of the other 1K was taken by the monitor. IIRC you were left with about 900 bytes of user space. It's enough when you are having to type machine code in. :)

Sound output was by connecting a 75R speaker to the cassette relay output transistor!

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

Andy-g0poy
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Joined: 07/03/2023
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 59

Posted: 09:52pm 21 Jul 2023

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Mixtel90 said I cut my programming teeth on the Z80 (using a monitor in machine code, not assembler - I couldn't afford Zeap or enough RAM to run it in!). At the time I couldn't understand how the 6502 people could program with so few registers. :)

Z80* and 8085 at work, and 6502 hobby - happy days:-)

It's just two different design methodologies. The 6502 has a couple of hundred registers - zero page. Only 50 or so commands, but 13 addressing modes.

The Z80 has a couple of banks of registers, and a few 16 bit operations that are useful. However the tendency to shove in anything that might seem to be useful is not always a good idea. Most of the extended commands were very slow and you soon learned to avoid them.

Generally the two systems were about equal. The big game changer was the 6809 but that really came a little too late as the first 16 bitters were starting to come out shortly after.

It boils down to whatever system you were used to.

I sometimes find myself thinking when looking at the Pico, Arduino or any other of the small MCU's that they provide 100's of times the performance and facilities of the Z80 and 8585 systems that I designed on eurocard sized boards, sometimes several!

I even stuck in a Arduno nano to "fix" the Xmas tree lights! Talk about overkill, a couple of 555's would have done the job!.

RAM prices... Mmmm I remember a friend paying well over 300 pounds for 32K of ram I think 4116's

Interesting ideas regarding the emulators on the Pi. I have an Amiga 4000 as well as several of the other CBM machines. Might be fun to get something up and running again.

Andy

Rickard5

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Joined: 31/03/2022
Location: United States
Posts: 463

Posted: 10:07pm 21 Jul 2023

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IanRogers said I too have an Pi4 connected via HDMI to my monitor.
( my home PC is connected to the VGA input)

I have virtually EVERY machine emulated.

Linux ( rpi normal )
Amiga 4000 ( with a really good AppleII sub emulated )
The usual retropie setup all game machines up to N64.

£40 for the Pi and @ £12 for each uSD.

I have a 128Gb for retropie, over 100 machines and most programs for same.

I also have the collection / hording as you do.

Most older games machines, but I no longer use them as the Piis better.

Right now this is my Monster Solution

Retrostone 2
I got given one the Christmas before Last when the first Kick starters came out
it runs a full Debian distribution so I can run Bit Torrent to Download "Large OS Distributions" while in meetings or just hanging out having Coffee :) and when I need a bigger screen and KB I can just dock it with my Motorola Razor Phone Dock

I never was a gamer :) but part of Curating you Rom collection is you HAVE to play each one to make sure it is labeled correctly and in working order so I built a Joystick using HAPP controls from an old game some one had I can also just plug my Retrostone in to the TV and Joystick :)

I may be Vulgar, but , while I'm poor, I'm Industrious, Honest, and trustworthy! I Know my Place

stanleyella

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Joined: 25/06/2022
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2129

Posted: 05:54pm 22 Jul 2023

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Nice projects. I had a snes .. for the kids, and my fav was star fox. on retro pi I had n64 star fox .. I can't say it was for nostalgia as never had a n64 but it's one of my fav retro games and plays well on rpi 400... which is amazing in itself.

And z80 ldir was nice to shift ram to screen with a few lines of asm :)
Edited 2023-07-23 04:48 by stanleyella

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