Commander X16

Oh yes, my wife's chickens are very special !  And they don't like possum visitors at night.      And yep it's overkill for that one application.  But what about a charge controller?  I've several processors out there, seems if I had a little more control on the programming I could combine all that into one device - but I don't need an Intel i7 out there (well, unless I wanted onboard facial recognition on the cameras, but nah).    Those Intel ITX boards are nice, but that's definitely overkill.   Anyhow, 5v is just a little too sissy - it can handle this wimpy plastic servos to slew a little camera, that's about it.  I think some "charge up" expansion thing could be added to the Arduino - so sure, if some "standard" expansion device was made for the X16 (with some fuses and such).  But extra cables really is a drag - even the IBM PC understood that, with the extra cable from the P/S to the monitor (so once switch to power up everything).     Now-a-days we got that induction stuff (for charging), trying to "cut the last cable" out of devices.

 

BTW: Tandy removed the 12v pin from their cartridges after the coco1 (not sure why, but just noting it).  The PCJR expansion boards (the ones on the side, not the cartridge slots) had a 12v line.  Yea there were some "horror stories" of abusing the 12v line of the Apple2.

 

I think the "killer app" here is making stuff like this easily accessible without the need for an elaborate operating system - and BASIC was kind of good for that: the simplest control language embeddable into a ROM?  And once you have PEEK/POKE, you can then basically inline any assembly stuff that's urgent (but wasting/consuming a lot of code space to express those POKEs since all have to be interpreted).

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 3/4/2022 at 10:34 AM, voidstar said:

Oh yes, my wife's chickens are very special !  And they don't like possum visitors at night.      And yep it's overkill for that one application.  But what about a charge controller?  I've several processors out there, seems if I had a little more control on the programming I could combine all that into one device - but I don't need an Intel i7 out there (well, unless I wanted onboard facial recognition on the cameras, but nah). 

This is the kind of stuff that an Arduino is ideal for. Even a cheap Arduino Uno can operate your gate opener or a battery charger, with the right sensors and relay boards.

And if you want on board programming, look at the Maximite series of microcontrollers. 

As to running motors and servos from the computer's power supply - that's a really bad idea. Always use an external power supply and either relays, transistors, or opto-isolators to control motors. Even hobby servos should be powered directly from a 5v source, not the the computer itself.

On 3/4/2022 at 10:34 AM, voidstar said:

 Anyhow, 5v is just a little too sissy - it can handle this wimpy plastic servos to slew a little camera, that's about it. 

Voltage is only part of the power equation. Current is the heavy lifter. 



I've had the privilege of seeing a superconducting coil running at 1 volt and near 500 amps in person in the late 80s. The magnetic field as it ramped up caused a Fluke multimeter (bolted to the floor) to fail at 10 ; at 25 ft one could hold a quarter in their vertical palm without it falling to the ground (not that it would if let go.) 

On 3/4/2022 at 10:34 AM, voidstar said:

But extra cables really is a drag - even the IBM PC understood that, with the extra cable from the P/S to the monitor (so once switch to power up everything).     Now-a-days we got that induction stuff (for charging), trying to "cut the last cable" out of devices.

Cables have their advantages - my wired network is a lot more reliable & secure than a wireless one. With switching high power loads off and on cabling makes sense. Any high power connection probably should have opto-isolation to a controller; fuse protection isn't ideal as it primarily limits current and that the current must exceed the value for it to disconnect the circuit. 



Are you thinking of trying to "wi-fry" a possum? ?

An Arduino is a good platform (or a Basic Stamp) if you wanted to home brew a system, but an industrial PLC would be a better choice IMO. These solutions require power, so when the electricity goes out things might not work out well for the chickens. 



 

  

On 3/4/2022 at 12:46 PM, TomXP411 said:

This is the kind of stuff that an Arduino is ideal for......with the right sensors and relay boards.

Exactly, with "this and that" wired up, with a homebrew concoction that nobody else will replicate.    We're defining a system here.   Make a standardized ROM with some programming control, and standardize parts of the system for some hobby-grade applications....   So all I have to do is share my BASIC  program, not any h/w schematics.     

 

This sort of relates to why the case is important, it sets the identity: the box that looks like that has X,Y,Z fixed capabilities (like you look at a PS3 - yea it could be modified, but chances are it's the standard formula as Sony defined it for that system).  [ about that -- at least define the "standard" or "default" case to establish that identity, let others replicate/3D print eventually - up front just sell maybe 20? 100? cases but sold at a premium kind of as collectors items, but also to kickstart production - $500+? yea it's just plastic, but partially a charity drive of sorts too? iirc, the concern was some minimum order was necessary to make it worthwhile doing that production, and then you have the logistics of storing all that inventory for awhile -- which yes, applies to the system as a whole, not just the case ]

 

Arduino is a nice modular thing - but you have to tether a laptop to upload some compiled C code.  That misses the "vintage experience" - where you plop down a machine, attach a screen, and can immediately start programming it to do stuff (with the default vintage capabilities being: make some beeps, poll a joystick, draw stuff on screen -- now add: make a couple network connections, and interact with some above-5v stuff).

 

I'm not sure how power management is envisioned on the X16.  For example, is it a power brick that does AC/DC convert, so the system itself is all DC power?   Could one of the expansions be reserved as a "power distributor" of sorts, for maybe 6V - 18V range? (and it has fuses or whatever appropriate circuit protection).  Or can the expansion bus be arranged to at least support such an add-on card?   The only reason I lobby for making it a more integral part of the system, is so that it can be accessible (in a standardized fashion) from a hypothetical BASIC ROM (so it is accessible as an "out of the box" capability - that could equally be accessible from compiled C code).

 

I guess while I'm dreaming: also standardize some LED blinky lights.  Capture a bit of the Altair experience, but can also be status indicators while the screen is off (like status on if a 12v line active?).  Yep, more costs - but that's what building a system is all about: finding that sweet spot between being affordable and interesting standard features that people want that system (like an "easy built-in language" that can interact with all this capability, in like a 10 page writeup).  I've got a lot of systems that can play Sonic-type games, but a networked Sonic game that blinks lights by day, and closes chicken-coop doors by night? That's new ?

 

On 3/4/2022 at 2:44 PM, voidstar said:

Exactly, with "this and that" wired up, with a homebrew concoction that nobody else will replicate.    We're defining a system here.   Make a standardized ROM with some programming control, and standardize parts of the system for some hobby-grade applications....   So all I have to do is share my BASIC  program, not any h/w schematics.     

That's simply not going to happen. 

Anything like what you're describing is going to require some hardware in-between for buffering and switching. About the only thing you can do with the VIAs directly is drive some LEDs or the input of another digital device. You absolutely cannot run motors with it or anything else that requires more than a few milliamps of current.

There's definitely no switching or external control for 12v devices. At that point, you are absolutely going to need motor controllers or drivers for 12v circuits. Usually, that's something like a relay or a transistor. 

Getting back to the point - no, there's nothing in the Commander that gives you any GPIO functionality you can't already get from an Arduino, Maximite, or Raspberry Pi. And there aren't going to be any changes in that direction, as far as we can tell. The system hardware is pretty much finalized, and the only changes Kevin is making is to deal with the few bugs left in the hardware: dealing with the keyboard and managing the ATX power supply. (Ironically, both of those will be fixed by the use of a small microcontroller - much like the one in an Arduino.)

 

Fair enough, no driving a 3D Printer or CNC! 

But yes to some LED blinky lights?  from BASIC, via the expansion port(s) ? Maybe ?

On 3/4/2022 at 3:37 PM, voidstar said:

But yes to some LED blinky lights?  from BASIC, via the expansion port(s) ? Maybe ?

Very doable as an expansion card on the X16 platform. Take a look at how Ben Eater interfaced a LCD to a 6502 process by putting it on the address bus of the CPU. LEDs would be much simpler as there is no controller that requires programatic steps to get data to be displayed.  Simple basic pokes could switch the LEDs on and off. 

 

 

On 3/4/2022 at 6:17 PM, Edmond D said:

Very doable as an expansion card on the X16 platform. Take a look at how Ben Eater interfaced a LCD to a 6502 process by putting it on the address bus of the CPU. LEDs would be much simpler as there is no controller that requires programatic steps to get data to be displayed.  Simple basic pokes could switch the LEDs on and off. 

You don't even need an expansion card for LEDs. There will be something like 14 GPIO lines available on the User port, and they should provide enough current at 5v to light an LED. You will need a 200Ω resistor, exactly like when using an Arduino Uno or other 5v microcontroller. (IIRC, the VIAs are actually running at 3.3v, but the I/O circuit is buffered and will have 5v level converters.)

I'm on the "let's add RS-232 so we can connect one of the many ESP32 solutions" camp. I filed a bug to port the CCGMS bit-banging RS-232 driver over from the C64/CIA. It should give us 19,200 baud.

https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-rom/issues/250

On 3/2/2022 at 7:19 PM, voidstar said:

Right at the tail end of the "BBS-era" (around 1996, subjectively) - we SysOps were experimenting with GUI-based BBS's (protocols sort of like ANSI or AVATAR, but interpreted codes to draw lines, menus, etc).  Might be fun to experiment with things more expressive than ANSI, but not as extensive as HTML and what all that has become.

Something like RIPtel for the X16?  Perhaps using a text based protocol like Gopher or Gemini in concert with RIPscrip could produce something like what you're talking about.  I'm sure there are aspects of it I haven't thought about, but creating a specific way for the X16 to get on and use the internet would be fun.