 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : And now for something completely different: The Mobile Maximite
| Author | Message | ||||
| RC_tech Newbie  Joined: 05/07/2020 Location: GermanyPosts: 14 |
Well, it's obvious that the Maximite series competes with Raspberry Pi, Ardunio and similar stuff. Small, (rather) cheap, easy to code, I/O ports. But to be honest, it will never get the same status as the Pi or the Arduino. That's the reason why the next device should be something completely different. Cost is not the factor. The base are two cheap, easy to get laptops with 15 or 17 inch Full-HD display. The internals are removed, and the board is designed to fit in the main connectors row of this laptop. Of course, the Mobile Maximite gets a HDMI and LVDS display connector. The keyboard fits of course to the internal keyboard, an external USB connector is possible. An internal SD card is possible, but the most laptops have an SD slot which can be used for drive B. Features: - really fast CPU, fast enough for .H264 videos - PS2/EDO/DDR memory bar for main memory and VRAM - widescreen HDMI display controller - Atheros or Broadcom WLAN chip - two mouse ports - more than two gameports - a really good speech synthesis hardware It won't matter if the board gets more expensive, if the hardware is really good, and it becomes something that the Raspberry not has, it is in another league. So, some descriptions. The Color Maximite 2 has a 480 MHz and is fast enough for the most things. But well, faster can't be bad. At least video hardware playback should be better. For this, a masked windowing function should be integrated. Window functions are nothing too special, but the mask is the new idea. A simple png file with the measurements of the window should be provided. But the contents are only displayed in the transparent parts of the image. This would allow to have non-rectangled windows for video playback and other purposes. To remove memory problems, maybe it is possible to use a cheap memory controller for any kind of memory bar instead of a fixed amount of RAM. As I read that just 512 KB are free for BASIC code, this wasn't so good. Even the Spectrum Next can be upgraded to 2 MB RAM. The new video controller gets its own memory bar and is designed for widescreen. That is standard today. The resolutions are 1920x1080, 960x540 and 480x270. Maybe 1280x720 and 640x360. The original resolutions are multiplied (640x400 will be displayed as 1280x800) and get a frame around. Usually black, but this could be defined by some command. WLAN should be available. Not especcially for Internet, but for a multiplayer connection. Bluetooth I don't know. The Mobile Maximite should get two mouse ports, one on each side. Only a few games used two mice, like Lemmings on the Amiga, it has a two player mode. But if the computer is designed from the beginning for two mouse ports, two-mice-games will probably become more common on this machine. Gameports - I described a method how to get mouse and six joystick ports on the Nunchuk port. The Mobile Maximite should get real inputs, they could be located in the DVD drive slot. Speech synthesis. This is something which could be really important. The Commodore V364 was a prototype of the plus/4 with numeric keypad and integrated 'Magic Voice' cartridge. This should be a step forward. I would like to see a really good speeach synthesis chip with realistic sound. These are not cheap, but the Mobile Maximite should not designed to be cheap. A speech synthesis chip would be a real enhancement for adventure games, so the need for lots of WAV or MP3 files for speech output is not neccessary. So, this was this idea. Greets, RC. Edited 2020-07-05 18:20 by RC_tech |
||||
| IanT Regular Member  Joined: 29/11/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 84 |
Well, actually my 'Mites' compare very favourably with my Arduino UNO R/C - assuming that we are talking about the small applications that I've developed for my own uses (and not just stuffing someone else's code into them). Mites are inexpensive and easy to use. I can easily integrate a 28 pinner into my own H/W designs and I need the ease of debugging I get with them. There are points (of course) where the various different technologies/platforms overlap but generally I feel they exist in their own spaces - and have their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I am not a 'retro' gamer, although I think Mauro's work is simply fantastic. With regards the CMM2, I do like the idea of being able to directly control devices and also having a good graphical interface available on my worktop (instead of a text or LCD screen). Whilst Personal Computing was a major hobby of mine some 40 years ago, I have many other interests these days (3DP, CAD, Machinist, Modeller). So I've many things making demands on my time (mostly Solid Edge 3D CAD at the moment) and my 'computing' is just one part of a greater whole, with its focus being embedded. Discovering the Micromite has been a great help to me and frees my time for other things. So it's not really about the pros and cons of each technology or platform - it's about which one gets the job done. For me that's a no brainer, the jobs I need doing the MM can handle and I've many options if I need more performance. So define the need, then select the solution is good advice. Frankly, I don't really care how popular the CMM2 is compared to Arduino/RPi (I already own both) I can see how it might be useful to me - and when the time comes, my positive experience with it's smaller siblings will no doubt influence my decision. Anyway - your idea of a Mobile Maximite sounds very interesting. As you may have gathered, I don't need anything like that. However, I wish you well and look forward to seeing how it all turns out when you've finally got it working. Good Luck Regards, IanT |
||||
| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
I suspect ST don't have anything that fits the stated aims. Try an Allwinner CPU, such as T2. "Just" a bit of s/w & h/w work to do... John |
||||
| RC_tech Newbie Joined: 05/07/2020 Location: GermanyPosts: 14 |
Well, I think it would be time to create something different. The best method to create a portable Amiga is to install MorphOS on an Apple Powerbook. Why shouldn't be a portable retro computer? I found a laptop which may be suitable, with a 12.1 cm 800x600 TFT display, not DSTN. LVDS display connector. I also got an USB keyboard which is 28 cm wide, it should fit instead of the normal keyboard. But for the next time: Use HDMI and widescreen. This is the actual screen format, like it or not. I don't like it. I'm doing desktop publishing and need high Y resolutions. So I got a Dell 3008wfp, 2560x1600 pixels. This monitor is 12 years old, I think. But it provides 2x DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA, Component Video, Composite Video and even S-Video. It also features SPDIF out, an USB hub and a cardreader. You won't get something like this today. But displaying 800x600 on a 30" 16:10 screen would look arkward. |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
Obviously I can't speak for others but I have zero interest in an Apple Powerbook. John |
||||
| RC_tech Newbie Joined: 05/07/2020 Location: GermanyPosts: 14 |
But you don't know it, right? |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
I've friends who are extremely keen on Apple products and have done my best to see how wonderful they are but not found I agree. YMMV. I hate the rip-off prices, either way. John |
||||
| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 3490 |
Someone tried few years ago.... I was too late for the kickstarter, but still think (appart from the keyboard choice) this would have been great ..  Running MMBasic.. It basically is a TFT Maximite with prototyping area and 3 sd card slots running of LiPo battery. The old kickstarter: ELLO PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
||||
Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9041 |
Hallo.  I doubt that this will ever happen. Not cos your ideas aren't good, but simply that those kinds of resources are pretty much outside of what can be done with an MCU and an embedded platform. You really need multi-core CPU's for that kind of feature-set, and you are essentially describing a basic(no pun intended!) PC architecture which the Maximite/Micromite will NEVER be. Taking your list for example: "- really fast CPU, fast enough for .H264 videos" Any processor able to decode H264 or other video codecs would require multi-core arrangements with dedicaded graphics controller chips supporting native decoding of those kinds of video formats. I don't ever see a time where any MMBASIC device would ever be fast enough to decode HD video. You could have MMBASIC command an external CODEC chip I suppose, but again, I doubt that would be economically viable. "- PS2/EDO/DDR memory bar for main memory and VRAM" This is PC territory. No MCU would be able to interface to DDR/EDO memory modules. I don't see that ever happening. PS/2 keyboards have worked on the MM+ series of chips for a few years now, and I seem to recall someone did write a mouse driver. I think that worked with the old 9-pin "D" serial mice though, and they are just about extinct now.  I think the MMx(MicroMite Extreme) unit could have a USB mouse and keyboard."- widescreen HDMI display controller" This was talked about during development of the CMM2 unit, but was impractical, cos you (A) need a dedicated HDMI chip to generate the HDMI signal if not part of a multi-core processor such as that used in the Raspberry Pi, and (B) you can't use HDMI in anything you sell, without paying a huge reach-around fee to the HDMI standards authority. VGA is free. Big companies can afford that HDMI fee, little stuff like this cannot. Raspberry Pi only can, cos they effectively get it via the NDA they have with Broadcom for CPU/GPU stacked processor thing that they use, and even then, Broadcom will be the ones who obtain the HDMI licence - they just on-sell it as part of the NDA to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, I am pretty sure is how it works. I might be wrong on that one - someone will correct me if that is the case.  "- Atheros or Broadcom WLAN chip" Again, this is PC territory, and not something that would ever be able to be interfaced into a platform that uses a MCU as the CPU, and a single-core MCU at that! "- two mouse ports" As above, pretty sure that the MMx unit had support for ONE mouse. Not sure why you would want two mouse ports. Even zippy home computers only have one mouse. I have never seen a desktop with more then one mouse..... Perhaps you just mean the port, not necessarily two physical mouse units.(say two PS/2 ports or two USB ports etc) "- more than two gameports" Certainly do-able. "- a really good speech synthesis hardware" Certainly NOT do-able. Again, you need PC resources for speech synthesis. Alexa and Cortana and the like are great little units for that kind of thing, but they have extremely powerful processing power inside them to be able to do what they do! It could never be done inside any current or planned Maximite or MMBASIC-based concept.  Your ideas a good, but I don't see them as being practical inside the MMBASIC concept - you really need PC hardware for this kind of thing. How about an AppleTV box?  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
 Print this page |
