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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : CMM2: Next steps?
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Sasquatch Senior Member  Joined: 08/05/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 296 |
I only received my Waveshare modules this week. Took 7 weeks to arrive from Waveshare in China. I have been running the demo's and games posted here and I am thoroughly enjoying the project so far. One major feature that I find is lacking compared to the 8 bit machines of the '80s and '90s is the ability to load a file into memory and then "jump" or transfer execution to the code that was just loaded. This allowed code written in assembler or compiled code to be run in "bare metal" mode. As far as I can recall, ALL of the old 8 bit home computers (C64, TRS-80, Apple][ etc.) had provision for this. I realize that the primary focus of this project, as well as the entire MicroMite family, is that MMBasic lowers the bar of entry as well as provides a nostalgic feel for those of us who cut our teeth on the 8bit home computers. The performance of MMBasic on these modern 32bit CPU's is quite impressive. It might be argued that there would be little interest or that support for such a feature would become a nightmare etc. However, the ST developer tools (C-compiler etc.) are FREE and the source code for MMBasic could also be used as a "library" of functions in C to get things rolling. While MMBasic is simple and the learning curve is short, the ability to program the "bare metal" in C (with free compiler etc.) might encourage those who have not yet "taken the leap" into modern compiled languages. The hope would be that the community would provide open-source examples and demos that would provide newbies a starting point. Additionally, this could bring interest from those in the Arduino and other communities to take a closer look at the project. Oh, and the demo-scene would be absolutely fantastic! I realize that the prospect of providing documentation and support for compiled code seems daunting. At this point I'm just asking that this feature should be considered and possibly implemented and left to the community to see where it might lead. -Carl |
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vegipete Guru  Joined: 29/01/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 1085 |
Would the SPRITE READ command benefit from having an optional [source page] parameter? Visit Vegipete's *Mite Library for cool programs. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
Someone wanting that could add it. Common toolchains support the ST chip and ST provide lots of doc, including about the builtin bootloader. It's not currently a feature of CMM2's MMBasic. I'm not sure which would be the fastest/easiest way to get it. Possibly by tweaking MMBasic but perhaps not. It's very easy to replace the chip's flash contents (e.g. via USB, no special tool needed) so bare metal is already easy. John |
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| capsikin Guru Joined: 30/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 341 |
So as I understand it, the alternative is to set "PAGE WRITE" for which page the sprite will be read from. Your version is a bit clearer. Also I've seen a warning, "While sprites are in use, all sprite commands must be done with the same PAGE WRITE set". (in 2020-07-01_152409_Graphics Programming on the CMM2-v1.0b.pdf) I don't know if the warning needs to apply to "SPRITE READ". If not, that would be good to know, and to note with the warning. |
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| capsikin Guru Joined: 30/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 341 |
It would be nice for PLAY SOUND to have an optional duration, so new programmers can try it out without needing to learn the timing commands first, and without getting an annoyingly long beep. It could just do the equivalent of: PLAY SOUND soundno, channelno, type, frequency, volume : PAUSE duration : PLAY SOUND soundno, channelno, "O" -- Caspian |
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| capsikin Guru Joined: 30/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 341 |
For reading a sprite from screen (SPRITE READ) or loading from an array (SPRITE LOADARRAY), would you want to allow selecting a different colour to be transparent, similar to how the pi-cromite has an option for choosing the transparent colour in "SPRITE LOAD [#]n, fname$ [,colour]"? -- Caspian |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8605 |
Can add this in next version CFunctions are now supported and have access to internal firmware routines PLAY TONE has this capability. However, for PLAY SOUND there can be 8 independent sounds which would all need timers tracking and this is too much overhead for the sound interrupt which is already too big - sorry SPRITE READ in 12-bit mode will import the transparency of the original image. I removed the optional transparent colour for performance reasons - use an ARGB8888 png file for proper trnasparency |
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| capsikin Guru Joined: 30/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 341 |
Okay, sure. Yeah, I didn't mean for PNGs without their own transparency. I was thinking of when I don't have an external image file to use, and I might want to make a sprite that has solid black parts, separate from the sprite's background. I realised there's another way to do it, if I understand the guides correctly. In 8 bit mode, I could set a non-zero colour index to black using map(c)=RGB(0,0,0). Then use colour 0 for background, colour c for black. Does that look right? So it's only in 16 bit mode it can't be done, with SPRITE READ. For SPRITE LOADARRAY, should it be possible to load 8-bit colour indexes when in 8-bit mode, instead of RGB numbers? Otherwise it can be done using SPRITE READ. |
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| vegipete Guru Joined: 29/01/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 1085 |
I had this problem when I was making the deck of playing cards posted in another thread. My solution was to make the black parts very dark gray - &h101010 for example. Visit Vegipete's *Mite Library for cool programs. |
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thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3865 |
Does MMBasic provide a mechanism to find the size of an array, e.g. when it is passed into a function or subroutine? If not, then could one be added? The interpreter must know this because it reports an error if you access an out of bounds element. Regards, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3167 |
Currently there is no way for a program to get the size of an array. On reflection, it would be difficult to come up with a logical syntax that could deal with multiple dimensions. The manual recommends passing the size as additional parameter(s) to the sub/fun that will manipulate the array. This might not be the neatest approach but it works and is used in other languages. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3865 |
Thanks Geoff, and understood, I just thought I might be missing something since the interpreter knows these values. I guess they are nowhere conveniently PEEKable either? Regards, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| pipati Newbie  Joined: 09/07/2020 Location: NorwayPosts: 1 |
Hi, would you mind listing the tools you use, and perhaps suggest how to get started? Thanks, John |
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| MikoKisai Newbie Joined: 10/07/2020 Location: GermanyPosts: 6 |
QBasic had two functions relating to this, LBOUND and UBOUND. Both took an array as the first parameter and an optional dimension index (starting at and defaulting to 1), and returned the lowest or highest index for that dimension. Perhaps that could serve as inspiration here? From my understanding, MMBasic doesn't support arbitrary start indexes like QB did (only OPTION BASE) so it probably only needs the UBOUND function (and in that case, naming it BOUND might be better). |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2294 |
peter: a quick question: does the CMM2 firmware detect if the H7 is a 400MHz or a 480MHz part and then program the clock dividers appropriately at startup, or is this hard-wired into the silicon? if it were programmable, it may be useful to have a OPTION command to select between the speeds, as i see the odd report in the forums of some folks having issues with video noise that may be related to the higher speed. being able to select the speed would enable diagnosing this. ideally, there would be three settings: 400, 480, and AUTO cheers, rob :-) Edited 2020-07-12 12:09 by robert.rozee |
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Womble Senior Member Joined: 09/07/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 267 |
That would be me  both video noise and sound problems. I'm hoping that the suggested external Oscillator Mod will help/fix the problem. The capacitors arrived today, and the oscillator is on its way from Farnell in Belgium.I saw reference by one of the devs (Peter?) to overclocking the H7 during testing, so hopefully its a software setting (like the R.Pi). I would also like to see the above Option if it is possible to easily implement. |
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| Womble Senior Member Joined: 09/07/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 267 |
External oscillator mod fixed the video noise/tearing problem for me. I still have audio issues which could be Waveshare issue, or maybe ground loop interference. The ability to switch frequencies would be useful for testing. |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3027 |
What I could use at the moment, is an "eval-like" function that will take a BASIC command (or in particular an assignment) rather than a BASIC expression. So I'd like to be able to do 'EVAL("someVarName=1234")' (where "someVarName" is not known when the program starts, but then the variable would have been created). Is such a thing available now, or is it reasonable to make it available? Hmmm, upon reflection, I'm not sure how this dynamic expansion of the program's variable list would work. Edited 2020-07-20 09:30 by lizby PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| mkopack73 Senior Member Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
How about ON ERROR GOTO label. ??? Be a bit like exception handling in C++ or Java |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3027 |
This function is easily achieved now (for specific instruction lines) with, for instance: On error skip Open sFN For random As #2 ' try to open index file If MM.Errno<>0 Then where whatever you want can follow "then". ~ Edited 2020-07-30 22:54 by lizby PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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