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led-bloon

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Joined: 21/12/2014
Location: Australia
Posts: 203

Posted: 07:40am 15 Jun 2022

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Just finished re-compiling PicoMiteVGA V5.07.05b7 for other hardware
and noticed that the instability of horizontal sync (126 MHz Mode 1)
has been fixed, when compiling with a RaspberryPi
Thanks Peter

Miss you George

lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3019

Posted: 11:34am 15 Jun 2022

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matherp said Option display rows,cols
Maximum cols is 240

Thank you. That solves my problem.

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3663

Posted: 12:55pm 15 Jun 2022

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Volhout said Peter,

There is a serious problem with PLAY WAV "filename.wav".

It looks like the audio buffers overlap with the tile memory (colors) in mode 1.
Using 5.07.05b6

The audio sounds okay though. Even if I do a CLS in mode 1.
When I used the switchmode powersupply there was all kinds of noise and even the SD card trafic was audible. Now with the linear regulator all is noice.
The only thing that is audible is a little noise in the silent passages, but it is constant noise, and can very well come from the 11 bit resolution.
Needed to connect my living room audio system to be able to distinguish this noise. On (my) headset it is not audible at all.

Volhout

Oh, doesn't look good.

Maybe post a short test to show it, so Peter can fix it?

John

matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8592

Posted: 01:15pm 15 Jun 2022

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PicoMite V5.07.05b8

https://geoffg.net/Downloads/picomite/PicoMite_Beta.zip

Fixes crashing bug if edit is used after running a program with IR input
Removes support for the GDEH029A1 display as this controller is now obsolete
Reduces available RAM for VGA version from 108Kb to 104Kb to solve memory corruption issue.

Warning: this version will erase all flash and options - backup saved programs as required

matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8592

Posted: 08:15am 16 Jun 2022

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PicoMite V5.07.05b9

https://geoffg.net/Downloads/picomite/PicoMite_Beta.zip

Fixes bug in SDK that caused SPI clock to set to wrong level before first transaction
Improved error checking of SETPIN command to avoid crashes
SETPIN for PWM no longer needs to specify the channel and port e.g. "SETPIN 1,PWM" is now accepted

Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 3558

Posted: 10:22am 17 Jun 2022

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Hi Peter,

That solved the problem with the screen corruption. Thanks....

However.. When I am playing a song (it runs in the background) I cannot list a directory at the same time. Is that intentional ?

�
> play wav "track 1.wav"
> files
Error : Not enough memory
>

Volhout
Edited 2022-06-17 20:33 by Volhout

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

cosmic frog
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Joined: 09/02/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 278

Posted: 04:50pm 17 Jun 2022

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Volhout said

However.. When I am playing a song (it runs in the background) I cannot list a directory at the same time. Is that intentional ?

�
> play wav "track 1.wav"
> files
Error : Not enough memory
>

Volhout

I also have this problem. Sometimes it will actually work but most times says not enough memory.
I thought it maybe limitations of the hardware.

Dave.

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 5742

Posted: 05:24pm 17 Jun 2022

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There will be a buffer in RAM for the WAV data. How big it is I've no idea. I suppose that it might have to be a reasonable size, to read a certain numbers of sectors from the SDcard. The entire WAV file won't be loaded at once unless it's a brief sound effect - most are much bigger than the available RAM as WAV is uncompressed.

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 3558

Posted: 05:39pm 17 Jun 2022

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I am not sure if Peter can make this work at all, hence the question. Maybe it is a matter of RAM allocation, but maybe it is MMBasic trying to access the sd card to get the FAT, and at tje same time the WAV player tries to read new data. And that is quite frequent if you immagine that WAV files can be 50Mbyte for 3 minutes = 180 seconds. That is 300k per second. With RAM buffers sized 60k, that is 5x per second. So very frequent.

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

Michal
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Joined: 02/02/2022
Location: Poland
Posts: 116

Posted: 08:06am 18 Jun 2022

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And can picomite play mp3? For 128kbps it is only 16kB per second from the SD card.

Michal

Mixtel90

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Posted: 08:23am 18 Jun 2022

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No, sorry. It's wav files only on the PicoMite.

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

phil99

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Joined: 11/02/2018
Location: Australia
Posts: 1799

Posted: 08:24am 18 Jun 2022

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"And can picomite play mp3?"

The manual makes no mention, perhaps it can be done if you write a CSub.

For true retro sound get the background music from a radio-cassette player sitting behind the monitor. ;-)

Michal
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Joined: 02/02/2022
Location: Poland
Posts: 116

Posted: 08:39am 18 Jun 2022

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The processor power should be enough:
https://learn.adafruit.com/mp3-playback-rp2040

Michal

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
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Posts: 5742

Posted: 09:17am 18 Jun 2022

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Remember how MP3 works. It's compressed. You don't play the MP3 itself, you decompress it on the fly and play the resulting bit stream. That decompression process needs two things - processor power and RAM. The Pico may well be able to handle the processing, but it may not have enough spare RAM for decompression once things like a display, the user program, variables and MMBasic itself have taken their share. There's only 264K in total.

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8592

Posted: 11:19am 18 Jun 2022

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The CMM2 has MP3. MMB4W has MP3. If the PicoMite could do it, it would have MP3. It can't. Note I said the. PicoMite not the RP2040
Edited 2022-06-18 21:21 by matherp

Michal
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Joined: 02/02/2022
Location: Poland
Posts: 116

Posted: 12:32pm 18 Jun 2022

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Maybe some less memory-hungry compression method and algorithm?

Michal
Edited 2022-06-18 22:41 by Michal

Mixtel90

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Posted: 01:42pm 18 Jun 2022

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Why? You're still extremely limited for RAM. It's pointless decompressing any music files when you can't fit them into RAM. You may as well just stream WAV from a SD card, use less processor power and less RAM and stand a chance of getting get better sound quality too. :)

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8592

Posted: 08:52am 21 Jun 2022

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PicoMite V5.07.05b11

https://geoffg.net/Downloads/picomite/PicoMite_Beta.zip

Fixes bug when using "ON KEY int" command
Enables operation up to 378MHz
Maximum program sizes now 100Kb(PicoMiteVGA) and 124Kb(PicoMite)

fred777
Regular Member

Joined: 01/07/2021
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 57

Posted: 09:34am 21 Jun 2022

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I know that linux users will complain but shouldn't those "/" characters shown in CWD$ and FILES really be "\"? I mean its FAT after all...

> files
A:/STUFF
0 directories, 0 files

should be
> files
A:\STUFF
0 directories, 0 files

thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3850

Posted: 11:41am 21 Jun 2022

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Peter,

Is there room to discuss the Program/RAM split ? personally I'd rather give up some of the Program RAM in exchange for getting to ~160K of variable RAM.

Also am I correct in believing that processed CSUBs take up space in the variable RAM segment ?

Best wishes,

Tom

Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures

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