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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Another Retro Computer ... and the future of the CMM2?
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9307 |
Can Pete or anyone else please link me to the most current "Welcome tape" and any other graphics demos for the CMM2 please? I know Mario was writing "Demo X", which is what I still use to test units before shipping them off. It was never completed though. You can buy 256MB(yes, megabyte) SD cards for about one buck each, so I am thinking about loading these cheap cards up with the welcome tape and demos etc, and now including that in each unit sold - that is a good idea. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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PeteCotton Guru  Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 368 |
That is fantastic - I never knew any of that. It just makes me love the CMM2 even more. If we could revive that network now that the chips are available, that would be the best scenario. |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 368 |
I agree, however, I think Grogster is right, the HDMI is a licensing issue. Having said that, I use a cheap VGA to HDMI convertor, and I would suggest that we could ship that with the unit. Again, the problem for customers is finding all of the right peripherals that work with the CMM2 - the right keyboard, the right HDMI convertor (not all worked).  It would be even nicer if we could mount the HDMI convertor inside the case, but lets walk before we can run. Yes, I know all of these things add $10 here, $10 there, which pushes up the cost of the final product, but they are barriers for a lot of people. Yes, there will always be the enthusiast who's happy with the bareboard, but if you want to just pull a machine out of it's box and plug it in, you don't want to be buying three different keyboards in the hopes that one of them works. https://www.amazon.ca/Jmday-Adapter-Samsung-Computer-Projector/dp/B07F1K3QQX/ref=dp_prsubs_sccl_2/132-3230169-5628127? Edited 2023-12-05 16:01 by PeteCotton |
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Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1611 |
Grogster, The welcome tape link: Welcome Tape Click on the green CODE button then on "Download ZIP" Bill Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 368 |
I've been giving this question a lot of thought. As has been mentioned, it's too expensive to "just" be an I/O controller (there are plenty of cheaper options for that), it's not as powerful as a modern phone or PC - so it's not going to be a gaming system - but when you look at the YouTube reviewers who praise the CMM2, they have a common love (shared by me) of the BASIC abiltiies of the machine. Quite simply, the CMM2 is a BASIC Programming Beast. You don't buy it to perform work tasks, you buy it so that you can program it. If you are in any doubt, look at these reviewers, and they all enthuse about the joy of just tinkering with the BASIC and making games and demos. It's a common thread through all of the reviews - so I think that answers the question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzrX72aB7zg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vw8DAv3S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA7REQxohV4 |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2135 |
If using the sort of adapter shown above its manufacturer would most likely have licensed it, If that is required. If the output is just DVI through a HDMI socket it is likely no licence is needed as they are not using the HDMI protocol. |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9307 |
You never knew it, cos no-one did.  It was a "Secret" agreement between us all at the time, but as 75% of the suppliers have now dropped off the scene, I did not think it would be breaking any "Contract" to state that was how we were doing it at the time. It worked, and it worked well. For ALL of us four suppliers at the time.  I so wish that WW, CG and PSlabs would come back to the forums...  I like Rob's idea of including the 9350 USB chip, but the FW would have to be adapted to support that, and that is something we'd have to convince matherp of doing. I think native HDMI is simply out of the question, as I seem to recall matherp also posting that to do that - although the ARM chip could technically do it - would require almost a page-one re-write of the code, so you can certainly see why he would not exactly be keen on that idea. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9307 |
@ Turbo46 - thank you for that link. I have downloaded the ZIP.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4040 |
@Grogster, I've got the day off so let me give it a smoke test before you start writing it to any SD cards (the last commit is marked WIP). Best wishes, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9307 |
OK.  It is still an IDEA. I had not decided to do it, or buy up a whole heap of 256MB SD cards or anything. I planned to try it out myself also, so I think we are on the same page. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4239 |
I have been out of the industry 12 years, but 12 years ago the situation was this: The HDMI licence fee is based on implementation(Broadcom/ST). It is not depending on the actual use model (do you connect or actually use it). But there are many more licenses connected to HDMI than the technology license, especially when data protection comes into play. So if the STM32 has a HDMI interface inside, and use it without copy protection, the fee (already) payed by ST is sufficient. ST will have billed you already for it, included in the chip price. Not using it ... is wasting money, mere fattening of the HDMI association. Volhout Edited 2023-12-05 17:47 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6797 |
As far as I'm aware HDMI requires a licence fee, which also includes the use of the connector and logo. DVI is free to use. The chip is working with a memory-mapped display. The entire display is held in memory. If you approach domestic HDMI display resolutions that memory becomes huge, especially as the number of colours goes up. That needs a lot of CPU power. Even the Raspberry Pi Zero uses a GPU with shared memory to do the heavy lifting - similar to what Peter did using the second CPU of the Pico for VGA. That GPU is very closely linked to the main CPU bus so there is a high data rate between them. I don't think you could get *satisfactory* HDMI/DVI on the CMM2. That's *satisfactory* as in keeping the performance up and having sufficient memory for other purposes. It's one of those things that can probably be done, but it's simply not worth the time and effort to end up with something that looks pretty but runs like a snail. The USB keyboard issue isn't a problem with the CMM2, it's a problem with some modern keyboards, I think. Certainly the first version of the CMM2 requires a USB keyboard that can use PS2 protocol, which is far easier to work with than USB. Luckily most low-medium cost USB keyboards seem to work fine as the Chinese have been using the same (or very similar) chip for many years. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2350 |
to err on the safe side i'll reframe my suggestion to: in order to become mass-marketable the CMM2 (or its successor) needs to have a DVI video output on a DVI-D connector. a passive cable can connect between a DVI source port and an HDMI display, HDMI being a superset of DVI. to be extra safe, any such CMM2 should not ship with any such required cable! i can see no material difference between outputting 3x analog signals (from R-2R DACs) and a single-channel serial data stream (ie, DVI). it is the same information, just in a different format. on all accounts, the ST processor has the necessary serializing hardware onboard. btw, DVI is good up to 1080p (1920 x 1080). not that it would be easy to make the necessary changes to the CMM2 firmware to replace VGA with DVI output. but it would not be rocket science. and along the way you get the advantage of a rock solid pixel-perfect image without need to tinker with VGA sync timings. quite true, it isn't a problem - until it is! as time moves on less and less new USB keyboards will implement PS2 backwards compatibility. and existing (old) USB keyboards will fail. then one day we will notice that in fact very few keyboards still support PS2, at which point the CMM2 will become... unusable. supporting keyboard + mouse via CH9350 would, from both the software and hardware perspective, be relatively simple. it would also mean that much (if not all) of the existing USB firmware would become redundant. cheers, rob :-) |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9121 |
The CMM2 supports normal USB keyboards NOT PS2. The restriction is that the ST USB stack does not support composite USB devices which is any keyboard with a built in mouse, a dual mode dongle, or an in-built hub (e.g. Raspberry Pi keyboard) If someone wants to do the work to integrate the H7 DSI peripheral into LTDC then please do and I will integrate it, It may not be rocket science but I don't see any volunteers willing to spend hours studying the datasheet and playing with code to try and get it to work Edited 2023-12-05 19:50 by matherp |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4040 |
Whilst we are redesigning the hardware  can the next board please have a bigger RTC battery than the weedy CR1220 that is in my G2 (not a production model, it still has bodge wires, perhaps it was changed before release?) as I swear it only lasts ~1 year.But seriously if the rest of us (mostly excluding me) can't get a maintained software archive and a decent wiki up and running then having Peter and the rest of the band update the hardware and firmware is a waste of their time. Best wishes, Tom Edited 2023-12-05 20:36 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4040 |
Hi folks, I have given "The Welcome Tape" the briefest of smoke tests and it seems to be working including CSUBs and the Mouse & Controller support in the "Mandelbrot Explorer" program; which is the only program that included such support. If there is someone with more time on their hands then it would be great if they could take a look too as I'm prepared to address bugs even if I'm not prepared to extend it until we have maintained archive/wiki ("yes", I will keep going on). Version 1.0.2 - 5-Dec-2023: - For firmware 5.07.00 or later. - This is a maintenance release, it contains the same catalogue of programs as Version 1.0.0. - Updated "Minesweeper" to version 1.0.2 - fixed bug where using the lower-case 'a' key to move left did not work. - Updated timings on splash screen. - Updated firmware version sanitisation. - Updated menu to use menu_quit() instead of quit() as a SUB name; the latter is a keyword in MMBasic for Windows and MMBasic for Linux (MMB4L). Download: https://github.com/thwill1000/cmm2-welcome/releases/tag/release-1.0.2 Note: untested, but most of it (CSUB programs excluded) should run on MMB4W. Best wishes, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4040 |
Accidental post, deleted. Edited 2023-12-05 20:24 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6797 |
I'll agree on the CR1220. They don't seem to last well and I found them difficult to source in small quantities. Only available online - shops don't stock them as there's so little demand. I ended up modifying my Armmite F4 to take a CR2032. I think it's going to take a l-o-n-g time for VGA to disappear. It's cheap to include in monitors and is virtually *the* standard for office display wiring as it can very easily be put over quite long lengths of CAT5. I suspect the main reason for it disappearing from some domestic monitors is that it's no longer common in home cinema applications because it can't use DRM. Thanks for clearing up the USB issue, Peter. You can tell it's a long time since I read that manual. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3802 |
That looks a huge amount of work and an unattractive place to start. I'm puzzled as to what makes you think otherwise? John |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6797 |
It's been tried but Raspberry Pi kept moving the goalposts and it involved a lot of work keeping that platform supported so it was dropped. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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