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PeteCotton

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Joined: 13/08/2020
Location: Canada
Posts: 638

Posted: 01:39pm 24 Jun 2026

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Volhout said

PeteCotton said
Remember the CMM2 doesn't have any networking capabilities out of the box.

Not yet ....
Volhout

Ooooh - very cool. I look forward to this.

PhenixRising said Seems to me that the ESP32 can provide WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet and ESP-NOW. I already tested the ESP32 as an alternative to HC-05. Piece of cake.

Yes - I started developing an ESP32 daughter board a while back and had it fairly functional. But that would require extra hardware and configuration - this was just a "let's see if it can be done" sort of project. No extra hardware - no configuration. Just plug in and play.

Mixtel90 said I'm wondering about the star topology. You get better signal resiliency using RS485. You would still be running point-point, the only real difference is that you have addresses. Was there a reason for avoiding it?

There are many ways to skin a cat (a saying which I've always thought was odd

). But I was going for out of the box simplicity. This doesn't require anything extra from the user. They simply plug a CMM2 into the PC via their USB power connector - and voila - they're on the network/mainframe. They don't even need to install the GUI software, as I can write it down from the PC via the console.

lizby said In this vein of multiple MMBasic devices talking to each other there's also Mick's

I had also forgotten about this. It's a very exciting project. It would work great in this CMM2 case. I might get sidetracked again into integrating this

I love all of the ideas, but I think the point of this project was that it's just an experiment. I enjoy the YouTube videos of guys like Usagi Electric "wasting" hours of their lives tinkering with old mainframes. This is much the same sort of "waste" of time. Pretty much everything I do on the CMM2 is non-productive, and I love that. I spend my day job making money programming apps and trying to make tech do cutting edge stuff. It's nice to regress to the world of RS-232 and simplicity.

Is there a better way for my to transfer files to my CMM2 - yes, I could just get a Wireless LAN SD card and talk directly to it from my PC. But where's the fun in that?

Of course, as is always the way with these things, I then dive down the rabbit-hole - and hence this CMM2 case, which is a by product of the original project - and if I'm honest, has probably taken up far more of my time than the software. I think every panel of this case has been designed and printed at least three times. The front panel had about 10 different versions before I had the spacing "just right".

But I'm absolutely loving the process. You can keep your fancy Blueteeth and LoRa networks, give me good old fashioned 1960's mainframe stuff

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