Guru
Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United KingdomPosts: 9967
| Posted: 10:38pm 14 Mar 2025 |
I might just possibly put a hidden feature into MMBasic to ensure he can't update
Guru
Joined: 18/10/2016
Location: AustraliaPosts: 867
| Posted: 01:30am 15 Mar 2025 |
Geoff and Peter,
Be assured that genuine Shedders will support you however you wish.
Had it not been for this 'development' I may have been interested in it but not now!
Well spotted Tom.
Cheers,
Andrew
Guru
Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United KingdomPosts: 4228
| Posted: 07:18am 15 Mar 2025 |
It didn't take much spotting, I'm on their mailing list having bought a DevTerm last year and am an occasional lurker on their forums.
From what I've read there, they are more miss than hit with their delivery estimates for their products but seem to be pretty good with resolving hardware problems and providing replacement parts where necessary. Software support seems to mostly come from their community.
I still advocate a policy of engagement and (unless Peter/Geoff explicitly wants to tell me not to) may well prod on their forum once the PicoCalc becomes more than some flashy website images. I'd probably even invest if I didn't have a wife to (correctly) remind me that I already have sufficient gadgets gathering dust.
Best wishes,
Tom
Edited 2025-03-15 19:54 by thwill
Guru
Joined: 30/06/2020
Location: GermanyPosts: 521
| Posted: 10:20am 15 Mar 2025 |
Haha, I would like that!
Greetings
Daniel
Guru
Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New ZealandPosts: 2395
| Posted: 12:37pm 15 Mar 2025 |
i can see a few ways that could be done, in particular with the RP2350 having some OTP ROM. but beware: inserting a 'trap' goes against the principals of open-source software - far better to reason with him.
cheers,
rob :-)
Guru
Joined: 31/07/2019
Location: AustraliaPosts: 547
| Posted: 06:10am 16 Mar 2025 |
I see from the updated blurb, it now includes pico 2 and W and usual variants.
It has a 4x4-inch lcd so the overall size is more like a tablet than a calculator. Driving that screen pixel count with SPI is near the point where parallel data is needed for speed though. Small qwerty keyboards are a bit awkward, but the Blackberry was pretty popular I guess.
I think the overall presentation with the injection molded case is pretty slick, it points to a sustained (and costly) development effort which has backing. Given that it can use varied firmware from a wide range of sources I think it will be sustained.
If I was commuting I would probably get one to use on the train, and use my own programs, but I still prefer a full size keyboard (old git).
The lack of copyright notice is pretty bad but I don't think there is much to be gained overturning it, unless there is proof of loss and damage etc. They probably need some games to make it popular so that may be an opportunity.
Guru
Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New ZealandPosts: 2395
| Posted: 11:25am 16 Mar 2025 |
the initial feeling i got at first glance - and judging by the name "PicoCalc"- is that the designer was trying to capture the look-and-feel of the TI-NSpire calculators:
(from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-Nspire_series)
this is something i'd have loved to have back when (a) i was a teenager, and (b) we were all living some time back in the 1980's. but not quite so much these days. today, most teens would rather have a smartphone!
far more interesting to me personally is the DevTerm (https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-devterm). i would rather like to see a DevTerm with someone actually using it, so as to get some idea of the overall size. is the keyboard usable? how readable is the display when showing an 80-column screen? a DevTerm with a couple of RP2350 inside could be an interesting proposition!
cheers,
rob :-)
Guru
Joined: 11/02/2018
Location: AustraliaPosts: 2400
| Posted: 11:43am 16 Mar 2025 |
There's a challenge for Tom, porting MMB4L to Android.
Guru
Joined: 30/06/2020
Location: GermanyPosts: 521
| Posted: 12:06pm 16 Mar 2025 |
THIS would be a dream! Or even for the Raspberry Pi... :)
Greetings
Daniel
Guru
Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United KingdomPosts: 4228
| Posted: 12:49pm 16 Mar 2025 |
It already works on Raspberry Pi:
https://github.com/thwill1000/mmb4l/releases/tag/v0.7-alpha.1
Android will have to wait, I probably look at Webasm again before that.
Best wishes,
Tom
Edited 2025-03-16 23:07 by thwill
Guru
Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United KingdomPosts: 4228
| Posted: 12:53pm 16 Mar 2025 |
I have a DevTerm, the keyboard is rather cramped and really only good enough for hunt and peck, I'd have preferred something thumb typeable like a Psion 3a keyboard. The display is good, but rather lacking in vertical height for a good desktop experience ... ok for a terminal though. It runs MMB4L perfectly fine.
Best wishes,
Tom
Guru
Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United KingdomPosts: 3982
| Posted: 01:59pm 16 Mar 2025 |
Do you mean WebAssembly (aka WAsm) or what (and why)?
John
Guru
Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United KingdomPosts: 4228
| Posted: 02:04pm 16 Mar 2025 |
I do ... and because I quite like the idea of being able to run MMBasic in the web browser and opening up the games people have created on MMBasic to those who don't have 'mites and don't want to install the MMBasic interpreter.
I did actually make enough progress on this three (?) years ago to get MMB4L to transpile to WebAssembly and get the MMBasic prompt up in a browser. But I didn't get beyond the problem of the MMBasic prompt blocking the rendering loop. I know rather more about web programming now, so if/when I can find the time I expect I will be able to make more progress.
Best wishes,
Tom
Guru
Joined: 31/07/2019
Location: AustraliaPosts: 547
| Posted: 04:05am 17 Mar 2025 |
I got that wrong, now the blurb says 4 inch display but as diagonal, eg about 3 inch square. So the display and qwerty keyboard are pretty small.
Newbie
Joined: 02/07/2020
Location: United StatesPosts: 12
| Posted: 01:42pm 18 Mar 2025 |
It looks like Clockworkpi is taking steps to correct their mistakes and acknowledge MMBasic's copyright and licensing. Since Clockworkpi is a hardware company, not a software company and don't really like to update software, I think they recognize they will need to stay on good terms with Geoff and Peter so the PicoCalc can get what its needs from the community.
https://github.com/clockworkpi/PicoCalc/tree/master/Code/PicoMite