Pi 4 + Argon One M.2 = Awesome

[TomXP411]

On 11/1/2021 at 9:38 PM, Scott Robison said:

I would like to create a native Commodore like environment for the RPi as an alternative.

That could be interesting. RISC OS includes BBC BASIC, but it's still a GUI. 

At this point, I don't think I'd want to go to the hassle of coding a bare metal OS, but it could be interesting to build a BASIC command shell that uses SDL for graphics without needing X-Window. I've spent some time playing around with that in c#, and while I got something that was mostly working, I got frustrated and ended up purging most of it in a re-write. 

I'd have to start over from scratch if I was to implement it in c++, to make it work on Linux. 

[john_e79]

On 11/1/2021 at 11:38 PM, Scott Robison said:

I would like to create a native Commodore like environment for the RPi as an alternative.



My biggest project for PCBoard was the scripting language PPL. It had peek and poke! ?

I've been thinking along the same kind of lines. I went through some tutorials and learned a bit of Arm ASM.

I've got RPis and NUCs here that I don't really want current versions of Windows or Linux on, those are way too big. Even "lite" versions of current OSes I've looked at are very big, they have lots of configurations, lots of places to have to hunt down files, you don't know how well it will go with your hardware, and with new devices we are putting new OSes on new hardware a lot. DOS is just so much simpler. If you had something like a x86/x64/arm compatible DOS that had some niceties like NTFS support, TCP support, multiple TTYs, virtual memory addresses to access hardware so say all video starts at 0xA000 like DOS on PCs and audio on 0x220/0x388 and so on that's just an example from DOS PCs but with PEEK/POKE support it would be way nicer.

[x16tial]

bmc64?

[Scott Robison]

On 11/2/2021 at 8:15 AM, x16tial said:

bmc64?

The difference in my mind is that it wouldn't be an emulator. It would have a kernal written in ARM instead of 6502, and a BASIC in ARM instead of 6502, and would land at a full screen BASIC editor. Direct access to the system with peek and poke, ability to load and run BASIC and ML programs, ability to access the hardware directly.

I'm not suggesting it would be easy, that I've started it, or that it will be available soon. Just a fun idea for Qommodore. ?

[BruceMcF]

On 11/2/2021 at 10:33 AM, Scott Robison said:

The difference in my mind is that it wouldn't be an emulator. It would have a kernal written in ARM instead of 6502, and a BASIC in ARM instead of 6502, and would land at a full screen BASIC editor. Direct access to the system with peek and poke, ability to load and run BASIC and ML programs, ability to access the hardware directly.



I'm not suggesting it would be easy, that I've started it, or that it will be available soon. Just a fun idea for Qommodore. ?

If it takes a Tramgineering view on build cost, it would be based on the RPi Pico.

[Scott Robison]

On 11/2/2021 at 12:37 PM, BruceMcF said:

If it takes a Tramgineering view on build cost, it would be based on the RPi Pico.

Excellent point.

RPi Pico: KIM

RPi Zero: PET

RPi: VIC-20

RPi 2: C64

RPi 3: C128

RPi 4: Amiga

C16, Plus/4, etc do not exist in this universe.

[Tatwi]

On 11/2/2021 at 2:42 PM, Scott Robison said:

RPi Pico: KIM

I think you're selling that hardware a little short there. Back in the early 2000s I used "Basic Linux" (Slackware 7.1 base on two floppies with custom kernel) on a 25MHz 486SX and it ran all the command line stuff well (X was generally awful back then so I just used Win95 on that machine). A stripped down Linux kernel with Busybox, BASH, TCC, nCurses, SDL, VIM, Emacs, and Nano would utterly fly on that dual core 133MHz ARM CPU and 512MB RAM would be waaay more than enough for programs made in C. FreeBASIC is also available for ARM.

I've done a fair amount this with my Pi Zero W over the years, but I put it aside to explore retro stuff. Truth be told, if we're talking command line only, I actually prefer Linux over DOS and 8 bit systems, because it's more capable, extensible, and doesn't require assembly to achieve great performance.

It's funny, a few years ago I started work on a BASIC shell for the Linux kernel on the PI Zero, written in C. I didn't get very far before I moved on, but hey, great minds think alike, eh? ?

[Scott Robison]

On 11/2/2021 at 7:30 PM, Tatwi said:

I think you're selling that hardware a little short there. Back in the early 2000s I used "Basic Linux" (Slackware 7.1 base on two floppies with custom kernel) on a 25MHz 486SX and it ran all the command line stuff well (X was generally awful back then so I just used Win95 on that machine). A stripped down Linux kernel with Busybox, BASH, TCC, nCurses, SDL, VIM, Emacs, and Nano would utterly fly on that dual core 133MHz ARM CPU and 512MB RAM would be waaay more than enough for programs made in C. FreeBASIC is also available for ARM.



I've done a fair amount this with my Pi Zero W over the years, but I put it aside to explore retro stuff. Truth be told, if we're talking command line only, I actually prefer Linux over DOS and 8 bit systems, because it's more capable, extensible, and doesn't require assembly to achieve great performance.



It's funny, a few years ago I started work on a BASIC shell for the Linux kernel on the PI Zero, written in C. I didn't get very far before I moved on, but hey, great minds think alike, eh? ?

Oh, absolutely there is no comparison to the power of any of those two sets of hardware. It was just a list that amused me. ?

[Tatwi]

If you do happen to want a minimal Pi Zero Linux system, Jon Wallace has already put one together using Buildroot. It boots in 12 seconds, which is pretty good for Linux.

That said, the entire RISCOS desktop boots almost instantly and it comes with BBC Basic, which can be set as the default boot mode. If you just want a BASIC machine, this is the path of least resistance. Sadly RISCOS has poor driver support and it's management is rather opaque, but it and BBC Basic are well documented though, if that's your cup of tea.

Also of interest, Graham Sanderson ported the BBC B/Master 128 emulator to the Pi Pico. While "only" an emulator, it does apparently play all the games for the original BBC Micro. Unfortunately it requires a computer to pass keyboard instructions to it over UART, so it's not a practical project. Still nifty that the emulator runs well on the Pico!

A bare-metal 8-bit style kernel and software package for the PICO attached to a board that has VGA, 3.5mm audio, USB or PS/2 keyboard, and some kind of joystick port, would be compelling.