KONGONTOWER I agree and I can infer why you feel this way. A lot of the modern technology videos are just there for the sake of selling machines, and barely teach anything, Whilst the simplicity in older and lower level computing makes you conceptualize and understand computing better.
I've had two of the original maximite mono machines for a while now, one is installed in my caravan and displays various info, like solar panel output, battery voltage, fridge temperature etc, with graphs, on an old 5 inch B&W TV. The computer etc is hidden in a cupboard, only the mini TV is visible. Nice and retro, better than just another LCD/OLED.
4 hours for a version of Tetris that looks that nice is really good. I'm not surprised people assumed you were arrogant, as most of us would need at least twice that long.
Rob Bates, I don't think so, I think most competent programmers would be able to program Tetris in that time. The people who thought he was arrogant are just people with zero background in programming who have no idea how simple to program Tetris actually is.
I rarely comment, but I liked this video so much I feel it necessary to give credit where credit is due. I've been watching you for a little over a year now and you keep finding ways to tackle vintage hardware that makes it really interesting. I'm glad you moved to UA-cam full time and I hope you're doing well, you deserve it!
When I first saw this video, I thought, "There's the computer I've always wanted." Well, I recently went ahead and bought one. It's so much fun. I love it. I never got to take a swing at BASIC; my first computer was a Windows 95. Thanks for the review, David! I haven't been as happy with a new computer in all my life. The true definition of a PC. I get to write the software, add my own hardware, even make my own case for it. You can't get more personal than that. I had virtually no programming experience before I bought this thing, so it's definitely beginner friendly. I've already written a working paint program (with limited functionality, for the moment ;-) And I never would've known about it if it hadn't been for David and the people who told him about it. This channel, and everyone who watches it, is awesome.
The great thing about BASIC is it's instant results. You try your code change immediately. Thanks to the super speed of the PIC32 you may not even need to make it any faster by compiling it.
You can also use a Raspberry Pi Pico and create a "PicoMite" that runs MMBasic, which can also be modded with VGA and SD card. Personally I find the ability to program the Pico in BASIC and using it as a microcontroller is so much more user-friendly than programming via an IDE in Python. And Pico clones are going for $3 on AliExpress.
I have zero interest in anything computer or gaming related yet can’t get enough of this dudes videos. If he was my computer/tech teacher in school i’d definitely be a much smarter guy for it today. Keep it up m8
The Maximite is about to experience the “Dave Murray Effect” and sellout! Seriously though that is a great machine. I’ve used each generation of the Raspberry Pi thus far for a variety of music related projects but I’d really like to try out this Maximite because of how incredibly customizable that board is. This thing is just super neat. I’d love to try hooking up some Synth chips to that somehow. Lastly, it'd be awesome to see more of these “modern” retro machines!
One of the things I admired of older systems like the commodore was the instant-on feature, just like Maximite has, its so refreshing to just turn on a device and its ready to go.
Talking smack is what Gen-X'ers do -so when these loser nerd Generation Glee millennials hear any white man who isn't constantly apologizing they think it's arrogant.
@@rodmunch69 Hey, man. Why do you need to make it a generational thing? Can't we all just enjoy some 8-bit goodness together? Except for the trolls. They can fuck right off.
Gets scalded by people for saying he can write Tetris in a few hours. **Proceeds to say he did it in one hour years prior to scalding** That’s what I believe the kids call legitness.
I remember taking less than a day to write a simple Tetris clone on my HP-48 calculator back in high school. wasn't very hard at all, using its rather limited built in programming language. (Other people made significantly better software for the HP-48 using the more powerful compiled language available if you used a computer to write your software on.)
Wow, this is a blast from the past! I got a Maximite off of a Kickstarter years ago and just love the heck out of the thing. Mine has a very attractive wooden case that my son and I decorated with steampunk gears. The Maximite is seriously a legit BASIC experience on (mostly) modern hardware. There's no underlying OS to thunk down to. It's just BASIC! And a really good copy of BASIC to boot!
People couldn't believe you could program Tetris? Even ignoring your obvious skill in coding, Tetris isn't very complicated to code. People are silly. Loved the video, David!
This video inspired me to break out my Color Maximite and play with it. I bought one from Circuit Gizmos awhile ago to play with and shortly after it came in life happened and I had to put it away and deal with more important things. It is a very, very cool device. I teach coding after school as part of a middle school after school robotics club and I have always lamented the lack of an instant on type device that was ready to code. I think one of the things that gets in the way of learning to code is easy, unencumbered access to an easy to use and free development environment. Late 70's and 80's microcomputers provided that easy access and so many of us learned to code because the machine invited you learn! I was helping a kid get a development environment up and going not long ago as he wanted to do some game programming in SDL. It took an hour of downloading compilers an IDE, libraries, installing and configuring etc..... My only real quibbles with this device is that it has no audio jack - If you want audio out you have to do some soldering.
@marcel legault < You know, I feel sorry for you that your intellect has only evolved to the whoooosh level, and nothing more intelligent to say... by the way, I'd be embarrassed to use that sh*t anymore, it's so last year, especially on an educational channel like this. Sorry to say, but it's lame!
"I'll just program Tetris in an hour" . Dear gods, you have no idea how smart you are. I used to work in tech support and I can tell you that the majority of people out there can't even hook up cables properly!
And lets not forget that Paperclip composite mod, normally when you have to resort to sticking paperclips in something you've usually made or are about to make a mistake XD
I took your advice and purchased one of these. It's an awesome little guy. I am very happy to have run across your channel and the trips down 8bit memory lane. Now introducing my 7 year old son to it. We'll write our first 'game' together on the Maximite. Thank you David.
It's funny how people know you've programmed you're own game planet x2 and then automatically dismiss you when you say you could write Tetris, people are weird sometimes lol .
+Dimension Gamer Actually, I don't think they were saying he couldn't write Tetris. If I remember correctly, they were saying he couldn't have written it "in just a few hours". But the truth is, I could too. Programming is *not* the arcane science that some people think it is, especially not programming in BASIC.
I never grew up with basic but the language intrigues me , your videos make me feel like if i put some work i could learn it and at least mess around abit , i appreciate your videos they are very informative but easy on newbies like me
Back in 2000 or so I designed and built an 8bit I/O interface for an old TRS-80 Color Computer. You had to deal with address bus, data bus, CS, R/W. Using poke to an specific address you could output 8 bits and peek to read in 8 bits. The Color Maximite looks like fun being able to run Basic programs at speed with interfacing built right in. I'll have to look into this. Thanks, 8-Bit Guy!
May I suggest checking out the Microbee. A guy in Australia is still selling the kit computers, I built one and can highly recommend it. It runs CP/M (Z80) but works very well!
Wow. I started coding Basic on C64 at the age of seven, and am a fulltime developer today. I never was and never will be so fast, not even with the tools I use today and am used to since many years. Respect!
Sir, you won the "McGiver's award 2018" for the "metal clips adapter"! I don't know anything about electronics so for me what you did is like magic! Too much fun.
I assembled a Colour Maximite from kit and it's an awesome little machine. Pretty epic to know that it's actually a home-grown Australian product, which explains why the name "maximite" is similar to "vegemite" and that it's also readily available around here. Geoff if you're reading this, solid job mate. It's exactly what I've wanted: Both a microcontroller and a standalone BASIC computer in a single low-cost SBC. Right now I'm using it to control signals in my solar motion sensor lights system and the onboard real-time clock allows me to deactivate or change what the system does according to the time. Very useful stuff.
Dave, you may get a kick out of Stamp and Parallax microcontrollers. Stamp is programmed in BASIC. Parallax is way more advanced. Has video generation capabilities and multi-core parallel processing. It well exceeds what Maximite can do. I've built a follow focus system on Stamp (there's a demo of it on my channel with included firmware). My recommendation against a device such as Maximite being used to learn micro's. I'd suggest development boards with removable chips, because when you're learning to progam, or sticking paper clips into the VGA port, or attaching alligator clips too close to neighboring I/O pins... well, eventually you're going to fry things and it's best to be able to swap parts and keep going. For that reason I love PIC and Atmel development boards. Make a serious mistake, damage the chip, pull out of the socket and $3 later you're back in action. I'm against SMD micro use in development boards in general for that very reason.
Then just use a Micromite. They start with a pic32mx150 and uses a terminal screen for coding. also lcd screens are supported. It is just a chip in DIP package and can be replaced very easy. This for example www.shop-dontronics.com/Micks-Mites/MBG-Bare-Boards/MBG-MuP-V3-Bare-PCB (Not mine but i developed the code for the 1455 to be used as a USB/Serial and Programmer)
Would absolutely choose this version over the one in the video. Another benefit of having removable chips is being able to move them straight off development boards and into final designs. The more modular, the better.
Or, just buy a cheap FPGA board with VGA, SRAM and serial (or USB UART), then use something like the ATmega core from opencores. ;) That would give you a far more powerful and flexible board, with lots of high-speed IO. You can even add an HDMI output to most FPGAs using only the connector and a few resistors. (maximum of 720p without an external HDMI TX chip on most smaller FPGAs, but still.) I can see David's point, though - these mini computer boards are great for getting started, as you can just code things on the device itself. Although, there are lots of similar devices out there, including boards with an FPGA plus BASIC interpreter. I don't think that coding on a PC makes things harder tbh. Pretty much everyone knows how to open up a text editor or IDE, and you still might need to learn some of the coding stuff either way. Not everyone knows BASIC of course, and as David said, most of his time spent on porting Tetris to the Maximite BASIC was figuring out the (machine-specific) differences. In that time, you could be learning BASIC while coding on a PC, or even some C, Python, rust, Verilog, VHDL etc. (the latter two languages are technically HDLs, and they describe hardware logic. Verilog is surprisingly similar to C though.)
Because every country basically thinks Time as a game of Checkers, whoever gets the king is more powerful... Only problem, there's more than 2 players, and there are infinite pieces, so it turns into a fight. Ya see?
I've always used Raspberry Pi for my music but this Maximite sounds incredible especially knowing you can tailor it to your needs !!! wowza . . thanks for sharing this incredibly customizable board
+3DSage They already did. The C64DTV (by Mammoth Toys) is a "C64 on a chip" built into a joystick controller that plugs directly into your TV, that has 30 games on it. The same people that designed the C64DTV successfully funded a project on Indiegogo called "THE64", which is based around a high power ARM Cortex SoC. It'll have HDMI output, two USB ports (because nobody manufactures new joysticks with 9-pin D connectors anymore)... oh, screw it. I need to go to bed before I blow my sleep cycle to pieces, so here's the link: www.indiegogo.com/projects/the64-computer-and-games-console#/
I ordered a CGCOLOURMAX after watching this video and received an email today where they cited your name and video and told me that they won't be able to fulfil my stock for a while due to an influx of orders. I want it now! I'm so excited to get it after seeing your review!
Could you make a video on different dialects of BASICs? I already knew that some versions (BB4W and Casio for example) didn't require line numbers, but what other changes have been made troughout the years?
Ooooh, I'd like that very much. Personally I have experience with BASIC on the Commodore Vic 20 and C64, and Atari BASIC on the Atari 400/800, and those two were very different indeed, particularly with the bug in the Atari BASIC that made loops so. Very. Slow. I'd love to watch something like that, as I have no experience of the BASIC in the Apple II line, and other machines would be interesting too.
Troy Wilkins On a similar note did you know that there is a version of Basic for the Nintendo 3DS? It's called SmileBasic. It's pretty fun to play around with.
I'd agree, it'd definitely be interesting. I had a C64, then went to the mighty QBASIC when I was given a 386. There's quite a fair bit of difference, at least that I can remember. It has been a few years since I touched any form of BASIC. That said, there's so many variants around that it might be more of a task than is really justifiable. There's at least a hundred variants, from things like BlitzBASIC to FreeBASIC to QuickBASIC to the various 8 bit systems running a BASIC interpreter. I do wonder why it's been largely supplanted as the "introductory" programming language by Python as well.
Dohmnall MacDonald I think limiting it to the more successful 8-bit platforms that came with BASIC, and limiting it to only the BASIC dialect it came with, would make it manageable.
@10:05 - that's how I make almost all of my prototypes recently: with alligator connector cables and bare wires. It's ingenious in the situation when one has very limited time due to masonry works at home. ;) It works perfectly every time. No shorts. Well, it may be a little bit risky if someone has a cat running wildly around and jumping on the desk. I don't have such. ;)
Question - if you solder the barrel-connector on, and use that for power input, can you then use the USB port for data I/O? Oh, and go get that VGA plug out of the trash and use some thin wire to connect the #9 pin to the ground pin inside the plug itself - wrap the wire around the base of each pin, as close to the bottom of the plug as you can get it. When you shove the VGA cable into the computer’s VGA port, it’ll push that thin wire all the way down. Just make sure it’s insulated wire so it doesn’t short out any pins other than the two you’re trying to connect. I’m thinking of the type of super-thin wire that has lacquer on it, like what you’d find in a transformer. Scrape the lacquer off of the ends, and wrap those ends around the two pins...
The website says you can transfer files and update the firmware over USB, so that USB port does interface with the microcontroller. Just like a USB port in an average Android phone, it's for both power and data.
Typically the USB port can be used for power and data. I'm not saying that this is true for the Maximite, but I wouldn't be surprised. I suggest you look up it's specs. You'd be surprised what you learn. Also it's a good place to start if you are interested.
I was quite amused to see this using the same, if not similar version of BASIC on my Tandy 1000SX. So I got out my DOS floppy and tried out the line program you wrote for it. To my surprise it ran.
I don't think 8 bit guy does coding tutorials. However the logic behind tetris is dead simple and other UA-camrs have done code tutorials for it. Just watch some of those and convert it to your favorite flavor of BASIC.
mojolabs.nz/codearcs.php?code=2568 Global W[21,23],F[7,4,4,4],L[7];For S$=Eachin "ABEF,AEFJEFBC,IEFBABFG,BFJNEFGH,AEFGCBFJEFGKIJFB,EFGCBFJKIEFGABFJ,EFBGBFGJEFGJBEFJ".Split(",");L[M]=Len(S)/4-1;For I=0 To L[M];For J=0 To 3;A=S[I*4+J]-65;F[M,I,A&3,A Shr 2]=1;Next;Next;M:+1;Next;Graphics 800,600;Y=19;Repeat;Cls;For I=0 To 20;W[1,I]=1;W[12,I]=1;W[I,20]=1;For J=1 To 12;If W[J,I] Then DrawRect J*8,I*8,8,8 Next;Next;For I=0 To 3;For J=0 To 3;If F[N,R,I,J] Then DrawRect (X+I)*8,(Y+J)*8,8,8 Next;Next;Flip;A=X+KeyHit(39)-KeyHit(37);B=Y+KeyDown(40);Q=(R+KeyHit(87)-KeyHit(81))&L[N];IF C(A,B,N,Q)=0 Then X=A;Y=B;R=Q M=Millisecs();If M>T Then T=M+999;If C(X,Y+1,N,R) Then If Y=0 Then End For I=0 To 3;For J=0 To 3;If F[N,R,I,J] Then W[X+I,Y+J]=1 Next;Next;D=0;For I=19 To 0 Step -1;Q=0;For J=2 To 11;If W[J,I] Then Q:+1 W[J,I+D]=W[J,I];Next;IF Q>9 Then D:+1 Next;X=5;Y=-1;N=Rand(0,6);EndIf;Y:+1;End If;Until KeyHit(27);Function C(X,Y,N,R);For I=0 To 3;For J=0 To 3;If F(N,R,I,J)*W[I+X,J+Y] Then Return 1 Next;Next;EndFunction ^Copy and paste that into BlitzMax (nitrologic.itch.io/blitzmax), run and voila... Tetris! \o/
So I've now ordered one of these CGCOLORMAX things, mainly on the back of this :) Really enjoying your history series. The mid-80s/early 90s machines are where I got started, so takes me right back. Thanks.
to be honest this might be the best way to get a basic computer im 17 and i dont have that much money to get one but this is just gold thank you for showing this with us
Wes Nice, have fun sampling whatever sounds, grittying them up, and playing them chromatically No sarcasm, lo-fi sampling is cool, even on something like an SK
Hi I’m morgan and I have been watching you for 1 year now yes I know I’m young but I love everything retro it’s so fascinating I found my older brothers GameCube and guarded it with my life XD but I love retro I want to collect an n64 and nes/snes I have every console after game cube by Nintendo and I will save them so I can show them off in the future
Those saying his Tetris claims are bullsugar don't have a clue what they're talking about. When I was in middle school I wrote Tetris on my C64 in 32 minutes, and that was before the game was even released.
Never learned the graphical side of BASIC, so I doubt I can use BASICA or QBasic to write Tetris. If I could, I would now, even on a Mac, well emulated Apple ][.
I had a couple of friends who had the Tetris coding argument when I was at uni. One friend had written his own Tetris in C. It was pretty good but it took him a while. The other guy said he could do it in a day and he did. Well he did it in half a day to a basic level of function, but he did it in Excel using VBA. He used the Excel worksheet cells for the blocks and layout. I thought that was quite a neat idea at the time.
man, I'm saying this just for the introduction of the video, but as a content producer, (i'm bbmbbf on your patreon) , i can tell you.. you are payin too much attention to your critics.. uff.. one thing that i learn is that there will be always smart ass people who feel the urge to use any chance to make them feel superior.. using any kind of cheap, fast logic excuse... ignore the trols my my friend , and wish you great success (if this was not obvious, english is not my native language, that's why I extra appreciate your patience for the subtitles on your video.
@The 8-Bit Guy Fantastic video David! Good googlie mooglie have you come a long way. Your video's have become so comprehensive and awesome it truly [defies] words. I mean your video's were always awesome, but this? Dang BooiIiii. And who's that out there bitching about you simply stating a fact so others can gauge and compare a particular skill set? You showed them. That Tetris looked and played great. Keep it up. Oh sure they'll bitch about it not keeping score or something weak like that. As for the comment nags I say get with Techmoan and see if the Muppet's can come over to set them straight! LOL
Yay go Geoff- he's a member of a forum I hang out at, I have several of the Maximites little brother, the 28 DIL micromite- runs basic and can run with little more than a single 28 pin DIL IC, a capacitor and a power supply- and can interface with the outside world
陈北宗 strictly, a 32bit Microcontroller. I would consider the distinction to be that it is a full microcomputer-on-a-chip with general purpose io pins, where a microcomputer needs external memory and peripherals.
6mins in and enjoying the video so much, I had forgotten to hit the like button at the very start like I normally do. I know......really sorry.....will not happen again! :-o
I SAID - I was told that the given UA-cam blogger is a fan of 8 bit games, and I thought that he was about them and shoots, went to the channel, and then what kind of parcels he opens and not a gram of video for games, well, his nickname is suitable, I would say I accept parcels . thanks for the time spent on your channel! Sorry if that is not correct I wrote with Belarus and with English is not particularly friendly.
Really wish we could go this route (editor built into the system, no need for line numbers in basic) for your new computer project. Best of both worlds.
8bit guy, I love your show and I've been a faithful viewer for years. I would love some videos watching you program in BASIC, or videos on basic programming principles.
Failed to notice would likely be it. I removed quite a bit of it. I always put the high-pitched filter on any scenes involving a CRT. But, since I cannot hear it it is easy to miss one.
Great video David - that's a cool little computer. I love the fact that it's not burdened by the complexity of a "full" OS - simply boot straight into BASIC, just like home computers of the 1980s.
Wow that Tetris for the Maximite looked slick! I'm sorry you experienced the accusation of being arrogant. Some folks lack the ability to distinguish between arrogance vs. one being confident in their abilities. Great video as always!
If you want to play with BASIC, you can get FreeBASIC as well. www.freebasic.net/ It's a QBasic compatible modern BASIC compiler, with some extensions to the language. QB mode is supposed to be 100% compatible with QBASIC/QuickBASIC, and since it's a compiler you can make executables of Nibbles and Gorilla, instead of just running them through an interpreter. It's available for DOS, Windows, and Linux, and is open source so you can probably compile it for MacOS if you care to. It's also free, so it's quite a bit cheaper than buying a vintage computer running a BASIC interpreter or a modern SoC like the Maximite.
freebasic is a fugly BASIC. If you want to play with old hardware and can't find it, there are a number of open source emulators that run on any modern platform. As for systems like Maximite and the various clones, there is a growing market for low cost "instant on" (simple systems that boot from rom to a language interpreter) that can output video to HDMI and have more than just a simple frame buffer and waveform based sound output using modern a 32 bit SoC and an FPGA. Think of it as a hacker friendly version of a 90's style game console with USB HID support for keyboard, mouse and SD card.
I didn't say it was pretty, I said it was free, as in legal to download and use without paying for it, and readily available for some 95% of desktops and laptops in the world today. Unlike VisualBASIC or QBASIC, which are copyrighted by Microsoft, just as ugly, and unlike running an emulated C64 or BBC Micro or what have you, you can compile and run your code directly on your system without needing to run in an emulator. That also makes it a lot simpler to save and transfer source code around, since it's a plain text file you can copy to any storage drive in the world. It's a command-line compiler, not an IDE, so for those who don't know, you write the code in a plain text file, then run the compiler via command line. Though there is an IDE for FreeBASIC if you want to use that instead. It looks like, surprise surprise, just about every other simple text editor on the market with a few tools for using the compiler. As far as the Maximite, I know what it's for. It's in the same general market as a Raspberry Pi, which I've done several projects with and am working on an OS for. It is also completely irrelevant from the perspective of learning BASIC programming. It's a waste of money to buy a dedicated SoC just to learn BASIC, when you can freely use something that's available to most everyone who would even be interested in the first place. It would be just as silly and wasteful to buy a Raspberry Pi and install Raspbian just to learn C++; download Code Blocks or Eclipse or whatever IDE you want, and go to town! Likewise, in terms of general usefulness, writing code on a Windows or Linux machine that can be compiled directly is a bit more useful than using an emulated 8 bit system.
I'll also point out QB64 www.qb64.net/ which is another modern implementation of the QBASIC dialect, with support for all three major OSes, and is supposed to be compatible with QB4.5 and lower. I haven't checked it out much, since I just discovered it during a duckduckgo search, but it's there, and again freely available.
I remember QB64 from SDDE Class in school some years back, i was the only person in the class to take the plunge to QB64 while everyone else stayed on the old Qbasic, and for the most part it was a good move. Heck, Mouse support only need about 3 lines of code in QB64 vs an entire sub routine in QB. The downside to QB64 is that you lose the Sub Routine pages and everything is edited inline, which can be a pain in the ass for larger programs, but thats mainly just a usability quirk. I did find that QB64's compiler was also better behaved and less likely to act up.
I love how he handled the Tetris programming debacle. Very professional.
davids a genius
Watching this was a perfect way to end a good day
Lol I'm watching at morning 😂
same
Lol
I end every day with this guy, and that way every day is a good day
the fact you can make one of the most iconic games ever in one hour from scratch is impressive.
I guess he's become really good at BASIC from when he got his VIC-20
There’s thousands of videos being uploaded for CES 2018 showing the latest and greatest tech, yet I find this much more interesting and entertaining 🤓
KONGONTOWER I agree and I can infer why you feel this way.
A lot of the modern technology videos are just there for the sake of selling machines, and barely teach anything,
Whilst the simplicity in older and lower level computing makes you conceptualize and understand computing better.
Emojis are ghey.
Especially Smartphones are gotten so boring. The biggest "innovations" are no headphone jack and notches
I've had two of the original maximite mono machines for a while now, one is installed in my caravan and displays various info, like solar panel output, battery voltage, fridge temperature etc, with graphs, on an old 5 inch B&W TV. The computer etc is hidden in a cupboard, only the mini TV is visible. Nice and retro, better than just another LCD/OLED.
I know this is an old post but I would love to see a video showing that of and maybe some explaining of how you did it
@@cortos_9733 composite to coax converter and cut the coax cable and use the shielding and inner wire as different parts and screw them in
but if you use a newer monochrome it would draw less power and let your batteries last longer.
Enter Clippy - "I see you're making a composite cable, would you like some help with that?" - Great fun video thanks
his name isnt "clippy" its "Clippit"
metallicarabbit commonly nicknamed Clippy. Wiki says so we cannot question wiki 😁
"Wait... what are you doing? No! Stop! Stop bending me like that. Not in the hole, please, I do _not_ consent! Aaarggh!"
We've been calling him Clippy since at least 1998. I know because I remember.
metallicarabbit you’re the worst kind of human we have.
4 hours for a version of Tetris that looks that nice is really good.
I'm not surprised people assumed you were arrogant, as most of us would need at least twice that long.
Rob Bates, I don't think so, I think most competent programmers would be able to program Tetris in that time. The people who thought he was arrogant are just people with zero background in programming who have no idea how simple to program Tetris actually is.
Rob Bates just proves his power with coding
QuotePilgrim I guess so, I don't code, I don't have access to any old computers, but tetris does seem fairly simple
brian Ruian you learn a lot just copying and typing it out. Well worth the time. That's how most of us learned.
Then go back and tinker with the code.
Ninja Master thanks
I rarely comment, but I liked this video so much I feel it necessary to give credit where credit is due. I've been watching you for a little over a year now and you keep finding ways to tackle vintage hardware that makes it really interesting. I'm glad you moved to UA-cam full time and I hope you're doing well, you deserve it!
When I first saw this video, I thought, "There's the computer I've always wanted." Well, I recently went ahead and bought one. It's so much fun. I love it. I never got to take a swing at BASIC; my first computer was a Windows 95. Thanks for the review, David! I haven't been as happy with a new computer in all my life. The true definition of a PC. I get to write the software, add my own hardware, even make my own case for it. You can't get more personal than that. I had virtually no programming experience before I bought this thing, so it's definitely beginner friendly. I've already written a working paint program (with limited functionality, for the moment ;-) And I never would've known about it if it hadn't been for David and the people who told him about it. This channel, and everyone who watches it, is awesome.
The great thing about BASIC is it's instant results. You try your code change immediately. Thanks to the super speed of the PIC32 you may not even need to make it any faster by compiling it.
You can also use a Raspberry Pi Pico and create a "PicoMite" that runs MMBasic, which can also be modded with VGA and SD card. Personally I find the ability to program the Pico in BASIC and using it as a microcontroller is so much more user-friendly than programming via an IDE in Python. And Pico clones are going for $3 on AliExpress.
What a nice comment you've left :)
I hope you and your computer are still having a great time together even all these years later !!
That outro music so unexpected - I like.
Agreed, would love to know the name/artist of that song.
.
Jonathan Smith: Anders Enger Jensen, it's in the credits of the video.
Mentioned in the credits -- "Escape Your Fear" by Anders Enger Jensen: soundcloud.com/eox-studios/escape-your-fear
im sad he missed the opportunity to play Macintosh plsu
That's a component hack that would make MacGyver proud.
schtive81 paper clip checks out
It's basically an 8-bit Raspberry Pi ;)
I have zero interest in anything computer or gaming related yet can’t get enough of this dudes videos. If he was my computer/tech teacher in school i’d definitely be a much smarter guy for it today.
Keep it up m8
The Maximite is about to experience the “Dave Murray Effect” and sellout! Seriously though that is a great machine. I’ve used each generation of the Raspberry Pi thus far for a variety of music related projects but I’d really like to try out this Maximite because of how incredibly customizable that board is. This thing is just super neat. I’d love to try hooking up some Synth chips to that somehow. Lastly, it'd be awesome to see more of these “modern” retro machines!
I had the same thought with a Yamaha FM chip or something.
It's SID or nothing! :)
the same thing happens with tech moan!!
Yeah... ever time he says the word "commodore" the prices rise 5 bucks.
Dave Murray Effect... heh!
One of the things I admired of older systems like the commodore was the instant-on feature, just like Maximite has, its so refreshing to just turn on a device and its ready to go.
Jack Kraken very true !
@@maicod it's not possible to qualify the word true, it's either true or false!!
@srg007 you're right in the sense of language rules but I did not invent the combination of very and true. It's used a lot :)
@@maicod That's very true! :)
thanks alot (wrong) :D see hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
The composite video mod is awesome
Ya
Who said that Mr. Murray was 'arrogant'? He is one of the least arrogant people that I have seen posting videos on UA-cam.
Talking smack is what Gen-X'ers do -so when these loser nerd Generation Glee millennials hear any white man who isn't constantly apologizing they think it's arrogant.
Definitely agree with you on this, I just can't imagine the nice 8bit guy being anywhere near arrogant.
@@rodmunch69 Hey, man. Why do you need to make it a generational thing? Can't we all just enjoy some 8-bit goodness together? Except for the trolls. They can fuck right off.
They call him 'arrogant'? I'd love to see THEM code a game. They have 6 hours. :P
He is not but coding Tetris in 4 hours could make people jealous. I sure can't do that! He is really skilled.
Congrats on passing your $3K Patreon goal!!!
And great video as always!
That Tetris you made was REALLY impressive to me.
And I loved the composite hack.
Gets scalded by people for saying he can write Tetris in a few hours. **Proceeds to say he did it in one hour years prior to scalding** That’s what I believe the kids call legitness.
Then making a full color playable version in exactly a few hours.
I usually dont do this as I make a lot of spelling errors but its scolding....scalding is a painful type of burn usually hot water in nature.
He can claim whatever he wants, there's no way to prove it was really one hour.
I remember taking less than a day to write a simple Tetris clone on my HP-48 calculator back in high school. wasn't very hard at all, using its rather limited built in programming language. (Other people made significantly better software for the HP-48 using the more powerful compiled language available if you used a computer to write your software on.)
I highly doubt he wrote over 6000 lines in an hour.
Wow, this is a blast from the past! I got a Maximite off of a Kickstarter years ago and just love the heck out of the thing. Mine has a very attractive wooden case that my son and I decorated with steampunk gears. The Maximite is seriously a legit BASIC experience on (mostly) modern hardware. There's no underlying OS to thunk down to. It's just BASIC! And a really good copy of BASIC to boot!
People couldn't believe you could program Tetris? Even ignoring your obvious skill in coding, Tetris isn't very complicated to code. People are silly.
Loved the video, David!
This video inspired me to break out my Color Maximite and play with it. I bought one from Circuit Gizmos awhile ago to play with and shortly after it came in life happened and I had to put it away and deal with more important things.
It is a very, very cool device. I teach coding after school as part of a middle school after school robotics club and I have always lamented the lack of an instant on type device that was ready to code. I think one of the things that gets in the way of learning to code is easy, unencumbered access to an easy to use and free development environment. Late 70's and 80's microcomputers provided that easy access and so many of us learned to code because the machine invited you learn! I was helping a kid get a development environment up and going not long ago as he wanted to do some game programming in SDL. It took an hour of downloading compilers an IDE, libraries, installing and configuring etc.....
My only real quibbles with this device is that it has no audio jack - If you want audio out you have to do some soldering.
Did you know when they buried the guy who invented Tetris; the whole cemetery disappeared!
@@BillAnt r/whoooooosh
@marcel legault < You know, I feel sorry for you that your intellect has only evolved to the whoooosh level, and nothing more intelligent to say... by the way, I'd be embarrassed to use that sh*t anymore, it's so last year, especially on an educational channel like this. Sorry to say, but it's lame!
@@BillAnt Nice thesis. Can you see me from your high horse here on youtube?
😑 😐 😱
That's funny.
Good Ol' PIC32. Used them for tons of applications at my last job and 2 years of school! They're great microcontrollers.
Cue that MacGyver theme at 9:54! Impressive! Thanks for another great video, 8-Bit Guy!
I don't understand why anyone would leave a negative comment on any of your videos.
You are smart and always nice.
That intro song gets me PUMPED for learnin'
I think after people see your commodore game, no one will ever doubt your coding skills ever again. That thing is impressive, very impressive.
"I'll just program Tetris in an hour"
.
Dear gods, you have no idea how smart you are.
I used to work in tech support and I can tell you that the majority of people out there can't even hook up cables properly!
And lets not forget that Paperclip composite mod, normally when you have to resort to sticking paperclips in something you've usually made or are about to make a mistake XD
@@UNSCPILOT how interesting-are you a time traveler
I took your advice and purchased one of these. It's an awesome little guy. I am very happy to have run across your channel and the trips down 8bit memory lane. Now introducing my 7 year old son to it. We'll write our first 'game' together on the Maximite. Thank you David.
It's funny how people know you've programmed you're own game planet x2 and then automatically dismiss you when you say you could write Tetris, people are weird sometimes lol .
Where did this happen?
+Dimension Gamer Actually, I don't think they were saying he couldn't write Tetris. If I remember correctly, they were saying he couldn't have written it "in just a few hours". But the truth is, I could too. Programming is *not* the arcane science that some people think it is, especially not programming in BASIC.
+SpearM75503
Honestly if you know BASIC then Machine code isnt that much more difficult tbh.
I never grew up with basic but the language intrigues me , your videos make me feel like if i put some work i could learn it and at least mess around abit , i appreciate your videos they are very informative but easy on newbies like me
Wow Anders' song at the end is pretty lit!
Back in 2000 or so I designed and built an 8bit I/O interface for an old TRS-80 Color Computer. You had to deal with address bus, data bus, CS, R/W. Using poke to an specific address you could output 8 bits and peek to read in 8 bits. The Color Maximite looks like fun being able to run Basic programs at speed with interfacing built right in. I'll have to look into this. Thanks, 8-Bit Guy!
"Old cheap VGA monitor"
Same monitor I'm currently using...
I remember being that good at code in 9th grade. Then my interests shifted. Now I follow these guys like they are my sports heroes.
May I suggest checking out the Microbee. A guy in Australia is still selling the kit computers, I built one and can highly recommend it. It runs CP/M (Z80) but works very well!
Wow. I started coding Basic on C64 at the age of seven, and am a fulltime developer today. I never was and never will be so fast, not even with the tools I use today and am used to since many years. Respect!
We love your restoration videos please make more
Sir, you won the "McGiver's award 2018" for the "metal clips adapter"! I don't know anything about electronics so for me what you did is like magic! Too much fun.
port planet x2 to it
Aaron Redding Haha.
First thing I thought of too.
PX2 is in machine code, for a machine with a completely different architecture, so that would be quite the undertaking :/
I assembled a Colour Maximite from kit and it's an awesome little machine. Pretty epic to know that it's actually a home-grown Australian product, which explains why the name "maximite" is similar to "vegemite" and that it's also readily available around here. Geoff if you're reading this, solid job mate. It's exactly what I've wanted: Both a microcontroller and a standalone BASIC computer in a single low-cost SBC. Right now I'm using it to control signals in my solar motion sensor lights system and the onboard real-time clock allows me to deactivate or change what the system does according to the time. Very useful stuff.
Dave, you may get a kick out of Stamp and Parallax microcontrollers. Stamp is programmed in BASIC. Parallax is way more advanced. Has video generation capabilities and multi-core parallel processing. It well exceeds what Maximite can do. I've built a follow focus system on Stamp (there's a demo of it on my channel with included firmware). My recommendation against a device such as Maximite being used to learn micro's. I'd suggest development boards with removable chips, because when you're learning to progam, or sticking paper clips into the VGA port, or attaching alligator clips too close to neighboring I/O pins... well, eventually you're going to fry things and it's best to be able to swap parts and keep going. For that reason I love PIC and Atmel development boards. Make a serious mistake, damage the chip, pull out of the socket and $3 later you're back in action. I'm against SMD micro use in development boards in general for that very reason.
Then just use a Micromite. They start with a pic32mx150 and uses a terminal screen for coding. also lcd screens are supported. It is just a chip in DIP package and can be replaced very easy. This for example www.shop-dontronics.com/Micks-Mites/MBG-Bare-Boards/MBG-MuP-V3-Bare-PCB (Not mine but i developed the code for the 1455 to be used as a USB/Serial and Programmer)
Would absolutely choose this version over the one in the video. Another benefit of having removable chips is being able to move them straight off development boards and into final designs. The more modular, the better.
Or, just buy a cheap FPGA board with VGA, SRAM and serial (or USB UART), then use something like the ATmega core from opencores. ;)
That would give you a far more powerful and flexible board, with lots of high-speed IO.
You can even add an HDMI output to most FPGAs using only the connector and a few resistors.
(maximum of 720p without an external HDMI TX chip on most smaller FPGAs, but still.)
I can see David's point, though - these mini computer boards are great for getting started, as you can just code things on the device itself.
Although, there are lots of similar devices out there, including boards with an FPGA plus BASIC interpreter.
I don't think that coding on a PC makes things harder tbh. Pretty much everyone knows how to open up a text editor or IDE, and you still might need to learn some of the coding stuff either way.
Not everyone knows BASIC of course, and as David said, most of his time spent on porting Tetris to the Maximite BASIC was figuring out the (machine-specific) differences.
In that time, you could be learning BASIC while coding on a PC, or even some C, Python, rust, Verilog, VHDL etc.
(the latter two languages are technically HDLs, and they describe hardware logic. Verilog is surprisingly similar to C though.)
Nice little channel. Been subscribed for over a year and never get tired of your tinkering. And your attitude is just right.
That moment when it's 4:15 AM and a new 8-Bit guy video is out...
But it 948 pm
:D
it was 3:15 AM when this was uploaded....
The world hates sharing the same time apparently. Why can't time zones get along :-).
Because every country basically thinks Time as a game of Checkers, whoever gets the king is more powerful... Only problem, there's more than 2 players, and there are infinite pieces, so it turns into a fight. Ya see?
modular basic , thats pretty cool idea and how it should have been from the start make the jump to C+ much more easier for when we were younger
modula-2
Here i am in europe at 3am all sick then a 8 bit guy video pops up just what i needed :)
Ditto. BS'D.
I've always used Raspberry Pi for my music but this Maximite sounds incredible especially knowing you can tailor it to your needs !!! wowza . . thanks for sharing this incredibly customizable board
They should make a commodore classic console with games and programming of the same speed.
+3DSage They already did. The C64DTV (by Mammoth Toys) is a "C64 on a chip" built into a joystick controller that plugs directly into your TV, that has 30 games on it.
The same people that designed the C64DTV successfully funded a project on Indiegogo called "THE64", which is based around a high power ARM Cortex SoC. It'll have HDMI output, two USB ports (because nobody manufactures new joysticks with 9-pin D connectors anymore)... oh, screw it. I need to go to bed before I blow my sleep cycle to pieces, so here's the link: www.indiegogo.com/projects/the64-computer-and-games-console#/
They should make a commodore classic with hookers and blackjacks
there's a C64DTV on the shelf in the back ground of nealy all his video's (the wide shot't by his desk,
oh wow! I feel bad for not knowing about that but I just didnt know. I'm looking into it now. Thank you for letting me know!
In fact, forget the blackjack!
I ordered a CGCOLOURMAX after watching this video and received an email today where they cited your name and video and told me that they won't be able to fulfil my stock for a while due to an influx of orders. I want it now! I'm so excited to get it after seeing your review!
Could you make a video on different dialects of BASICs? I already knew that some versions (BB4W and Casio for example) didn't require line numbers, but what other changes have been made troughout the years?
Ooooh, I'd like that very much. Personally I have experience with BASIC on the Commodore Vic 20 and C64, and Atari BASIC on the Atari 400/800, and those two were very different indeed, particularly with the bug in the Atari BASIC that made loops so. Very. Slow. I'd love to watch something like that, as I have no experience of the BASIC in the Apple II line, and other machines would be interesting too.
Troy Wilkins On a similar note did you know that there is a version of Basic for the Nintendo 3DS? It's called SmileBasic. It's pretty fun to play around with.
I'd agree, it'd definitely be interesting. I had a C64, then went to the mighty QBASIC when I was given a 386. There's quite a fair bit of difference, at least that I can remember. It has been a few years since I touched any form of BASIC.
That said, there's so many variants around that it might be more of a task than is really justifiable. There's at least a hundred variants, from things like BlitzBASIC to FreeBASIC to QuickBASIC to the various 8 bit systems running a BASIC interpreter.
I do wonder why it's been largely supplanted as the "introductory" programming language by Python as well.
Miles Darkwright I had no idea, very interesting, thank you.
Dohmnall MacDonald I think limiting it to the more successful 8-bit platforms that came with BASIC, and limiting it to only the BASIC dialect it came with, would make it manageable.
Your videos should be played as late night shows on national television channels I am sure people will love them
I think it's time everyone stopped questioning David's coding prowess.
These videos are always so oddly satisfying for tech that's before my time.
10:05 I literally laughed out loud right before he told me not to.
Let's Get Creative i kinda laughed because it worked, i mean it didnt look great but it worked
So did I. And continued laughing after being told not to
@10:05 - that's how I make almost all of my prototypes recently: with alligator connector cables and bare wires. It's ingenious in the situation when one has very limited time due to masonry works at home. ;) It works perfectly every time. No shorts. Well, it may be a little bit risky if someone has a cat running wildly around and jumping on the desk. I don't have such. ;)
Let's Get Creative i
Every time I turn on UA-cam and see a new video by you it's a good day
Question - if you solder the barrel-connector on, and use that for power input, can you then use the USB port for data I/O?
Oh, and go get that VGA plug out of the trash and use some thin wire to connect the #9 pin to the ground pin inside the plug itself - wrap the wire around the base of each pin, as close to the bottom of the plug as you can get it. When you shove the VGA cable into the computer’s VGA port, it’ll push that thin wire all the way down. Just make sure it’s insulated wire so it doesn’t short out any pins other than the two you’re trying to connect. I’m thinking of the type of super-thin wire that has lacquer on it, like what you’d find in a transformer. Scrape the lacquer off of the ends, and wrap those ends around the two pins...
At the very least it could be hacked and populate the port circuitry on the bread board area
The website says you can transfer files and update the firmware over USB, so that USB port does interface with the microcontroller. Just like a USB port in an average Android phone, it's for both power and data.
+LMacNeill
You might be thinking of "magnet wire"
Typically the USB port can be used for power and data. I'm not saying that this is true for the Maximite, but I wouldn't be surprised. I suggest you look up it's specs. You'd be surprised what you learn. Also it's a good place to start if you are interested.
Us old farts call that lacquered wire "magnet wire" since it is used in making inductors, transformers, and solenoids. Generally known as magnetics.
I was quite amused to see this using the same, if not similar version of BASIC on my Tandy 1000SX. So I got out my DOS floppy and tried out the line program you wrote for it. To my surprise it ran.
As great as this video is... love the shirt.
The fact that you can program tetris on a computer without having the software already is incredible. You are a programmer!
Please do a video on coding tetris in BASIC!!!!! XD
This
I don't think 8 bit guy does coding tutorials. However the logic behind tetris is dead simple and other UA-camrs have done code tutorials for it. Just watch some of those and convert it to your favorite flavor of BASIC.
mojolabs.nz/codearcs.php?code=2568
Global W[21,23],F[7,4,4,4],L[7];For S$=Eachin "ABEF,AEFJEFBC,IEFBABFG,BFJNEFGH,AEFGCBFJEFGKIJFB,EFGCBFJKIEFGABFJ,EFBGBFGJEFGJBEFJ".Split(",");L[M]=Len(S)/4-1;For I=0 To L[M];For J=0 To 3;A=S[I*4+J]-65;F[M,I,A&3,A Shr 2]=1;Next;Next;M:+1;Next;Graphics 800,600;Y=19;Repeat;Cls;For I=0 To 20;W[1,I]=1;W[12,I]=1;W[I,20]=1;For J=1 To 12;If W[J,I] Then DrawRect J*8,I*8,8,8
Next;Next;For I=0 To 3;For J=0 To 3;If F[N,R,I,J] Then DrawRect (X+I)*8,(Y+J)*8,8,8
Next;Next;Flip;A=X+KeyHit(39)-KeyHit(37);B=Y+KeyDown(40);Q=(R+KeyHit(87)-KeyHit(81))&L[N];IF C(A,B,N,Q)=0 Then X=A;Y=B;R=Q
M=Millisecs();If M>T Then
T=M+999;If C(X,Y+1,N,R) Then
If Y=0 Then End
For I=0 To 3;For J=0 To 3;If F[N,R,I,J] Then W[X+I,Y+J]=1
Next;Next;D=0;For I=19 To 0 Step -1;Q=0;For J=2 To 11;If W[J,I] Then Q:+1
W[J,I+D]=W[J,I];Next;IF Q>9 Then D:+1
Next;X=5;Y=-1;N=Rand(0,6);EndIf;Y:+1;End If;Until KeyHit(27);Function C(X,Y,N,R);For I=0 To 3;For J=0 To 3;If F(N,R,I,J)*W[I+X,J+Y] Then Return 1
Next;Next;EndFunction
^Copy and paste that into BlitzMax (nitrologic.itch.io/blitzmax), run and voila... Tetris! \o/
So I've now ordered one of these CGCOLORMAX things, mainly on the back of this :) Really enjoying your history series. The mid-80s/early 90s machines are where I got started, so takes me right back. Thanks.
Nice music!!!
to be honest this might be the best way to get a basic computer im 17 and i dont have that much money to get one but this is just gold thank you for showing this with us
I found an old Casio SK-5 at a thrift store for $10
Wes Nice, have fun sampling whatever sounds, grittying them up, and playing them chromatically
No sarcasm, lo-fi sampling is cool, even on something like an SK
This probably my favorite tech channel on UA-cam
Hi I’m morgan and I have been watching you for 1 year now yes I know I’m young but I love everything retro it’s so fascinating I found my older brothers GameCube and guarded it with my life XD but I love retro I want to collect an n64 and nes/snes I have every console after game cube by Nintendo and I will save them so I can show them off in the future
ItzMorgan same I'm 11 so lol I love retro stuff
brian Ruian same age! 🤗
ItzMorgan nice! We should have a talk about stuff sometime
ItzMorgan I also have an n74 it's great
i'm 13. i love retro, even though i've never had much hands on
Those random lines made me so happy. I did the same thing in a few languages as a kid.
Saw three notifications:
Lines tech tips: later
Some other UA-camr I subscribed to: not today
8 bit guy: no hesitation
lol sounds like me, I'm subed to all of them to.
we told the 8bit guy to program tetris in 4 hours... he did it the absolute madman!
Those saying his Tetris claims are bullsugar don't have a clue what they're talking about. When I was in middle school I wrote Tetris on my C64 in 32 minutes, and that was before the game was even released.
Never learned the graphical side of BASIC, so I doubt I can use BASICA or QBasic to write Tetris. If I could, I would now, even on a Mac, well emulated Apple ][.
Blindfolded.
Back in my day, we had to write our own damn games... in the snow... and then we had to hack them ourselves... in the snow!
I had a couple of friends who had the Tetris coding argument when I was at uni.
One friend had written his own Tetris in C. It was pretty good but it took him a while.
The other guy said he could do it in a day and he did. Well he did it in half a day to a basic level of function, but he did it in Excel using VBA. He used the Excel worksheet cells for the blocks and layout. I thought that was quite a neat idea at the time.
9:50 If you threw electronics in the thrash were I live(Sweden) people would get really really mad at you :P
+Wockes
Should do it more often.
Swedes are so annoying.
Tjena där
I like the way you explain everything as thought the viewer had no idea.
man, I'm saying this just for the introduction of the video, but as a content producer, (i'm bbmbbf on your patreon) , i can tell you.. you are payin too much attention to your critics.. uff.. one thing that i learn is that there will be always smart ass people who feel the urge to use any chance to make them feel superior.. using any kind of cheap, fast logic excuse... ignore the trols my my friend , and wish you great success (if this was not obvious, english is not my native language, that's why I extra appreciate your patience for the subtitles on your video.
just if you're curious .. drive.google.com/file/d/1OfzcmYo5WHXw9jmGt5wLHyj3ARXBqV9s/view?usp=sharing
i'm just trying with that number, is that say that i sort the same kind of problems that you
This is actually quite good English compared to some natives I see, coming from a native speaker of uk
That was cool learning how to convert VGA to composite. Also neat to see the pin and LED being controlled.
@The 8-Bit Guy Fantastic video David! Good googlie mooglie have you come a long way. Your video's have become so comprehensive and awesome it truly [defies] words. I mean your video's were always awesome, but this? Dang BooiIiii. And who's that out there bitching about you simply stating a fact so others can gauge and compare a particular skill set? You showed them. That Tetris looked and played great. Keep it up. Oh sure they'll bitch about it not keeping score or something weak like that. As for the comment nags I say get with Techmoan and see if the Muppet's can come over to set them straight! LOL
Man, that ending song was love at first listening. Thanks!!!!
Hi. Love your videos and your channel, bye
Yay go Geoff- he's a member of a forum I hang out at, I have several of the Maximites little brother, the 28 DIL micromite- runs basic and can run with little more than a single 28 pin DIL IC, a capacitor and a power supply- and can interface with the outside world
This is actually a 32-bit Computer
陈北宗 strictly, a 32bit Microcontroller.
I would consider the distinction to be that it is a full microcomputer-on-a-chip with general purpose io pins, where a microcomputer needs external memory and peripherals.
Great video. I haven't been so pumped about Basic since 1988 when I pretty much gave it up. That'l be 30 years then.
6mins in and enjoying the video so much, I had forgotten to hit the like button at the very start like I normally do. I know......really sorry.....will not happen again! :-o
You fucking bitch how fucking could you
Some people are ingenious commenter. +1
Why would you 'like' a video before you even watched it?
Because it's The 8-Bit Guy!
I SAID - I was told that the given UA-cam blogger is a fan of 8 bit games, and I thought that he was about them and shoots, went to the channel, and then what kind of parcels he opens and not a gram of video for games, well, his nickname is suitable, I would say I accept parcels . thanks for the time spent on your channel! Sorry if that is not correct I wrote with Belarus and with English is not particularly friendly.
Really wish we could go this route (editor built into the system, no need for line numbers in basic) for your new computer project. Best of both worlds.
Has 8 bit guy ever tried to hack time? He has all the needed gear it looks like.
pfft he created time
8bit guy, I love your show and I've been a faithful viewer for years. I would love some videos watching you program in BASIC, or videos on basic programming principles.
What this guy said
You forgot to remove (or failed to notice) the CRT whine at 10:48
Failed to notice would likely be it. I removed quite a bit of it. I always put the high-pitched filter on any scenes involving a CRT. But, since I cannot hear it it is easy to miss one.
I'm still curious why you don't just band pass filter the whole episode.
Great video David - that's a cool little computer. I love the fact that it's not burdened by the complexity of a "full" OS - simply boot straight into BASIC, just like home computers of the 1980s.
his shirt is great LOL.
Using BASIC to mess around with the GPIO sounds like a ton of fun. The integrated breadboard on this particular board is a nice touch too.
I wonder how a port of planet X2 would look like on that.
Completely unrelated: I love your intro music! The 1 6 3 4 5 1 progression is so catchy!
Dictionary:
Maximite =
Max - Imm - I - Te
======================
Micro computer running basic.
This takes me back to high school, makes me want to program in basic again.
Crazy cool!
Wow that Tetris for the Maximite looked slick! I'm sorry you experienced the accusation of being arrogant. Some folks lack the ability to distinguish between arrogance vs. one being confident in their abilities. Great video as always!
If you want to play with BASIC, you can get FreeBASIC as well. www.freebasic.net/
It's a QBasic compatible modern BASIC compiler, with some extensions to the language. QB mode is supposed to be 100% compatible with QBASIC/QuickBASIC, and since it's a compiler you can make executables of Nibbles and Gorilla, instead of just running them through an interpreter. It's available for DOS, Windows, and Linux, and is open source so you can probably compile it for MacOS if you care to. It's also free, so it's quite a bit cheaper than buying a vintage computer running a BASIC interpreter or a modern SoC like the Maximite.
freebasic is a fugly BASIC. If you want to play with old hardware and can't find it, there are a number of open source emulators that run on any modern platform. As for systems like Maximite and the various clones, there is a growing market for low cost "instant on" (simple systems that boot from rom to a language interpreter) that can output video to HDMI and have more than just a simple frame buffer and waveform based sound output using modern a 32 bit SoC and an FPGA. Think of it as a hacker friendly version of a 90's style game console with USB HID support for keyboard, mouse and SD card.
I didn't say it was pretty, I said it was free, as in legal to download and use without paying for it, and readily available for some 95% of desktops and laptops in the world today. Unlike VisualBASIC or QBASIC, which are copyrighted by Microsoft, just as ugly, and unlike running an emulated C64 or BBC Micro or what have you, you can compile and run your code directly on your system without needing to run in an emulator. That also makes it a lot simpler to save and transfer source code around, since it's a plain text file you can copy to any storage drive in the world.
It's a command-line compiler, not an IDE, so for those who don't know, you write the code in a plain text file, then run the compiler via command line. Though there is an IDE for FreeBASIC if you want to use that instead. It looks like, surprise surprise, just about every other simple text editor on the market with a few tools for using the compiler.
As far as the Maximite, I know what it's for. It's in the same general market as a Raspberry Pi, which I've done several projects with and am working on an OS for. It is also completely irrelevant from the perspective of learning BASIC programming.
It's a waste of money to buy a dedicated SoC just to learn BASIC, when you can freely use something that's available to most everyone who would even be interested in the first place. It would be just as silly and wasteful to buy a Raspberry Pi and install Raspbian just to learn C++; download Code Blocks or Eclipse or whatever IDE you want, and go to town! Likewise, in terms of general usefulness, writing code on a Windows or Linux machine that can be compiled directly is a bit more useful than using an emulated 8 bit system.
I'll also point out QB64 www.qb64.net/ which is another modern implementation of the QBASIC dialect, with support for all three major OSes, and is supposed to be compatible with QB4.5 and lower. I haven't checked it out much, since I just discovered it during a duckduckgo search, but it's there, and again freely available.
I remember QB64 from SDDE Class in school some years back, i was the only person in the class to take the plunge to QB64 while everyone else stayed on the old Qbasic, and for the most part it was a good move. Heck, Mouse support only need about 3 lines of code in QB64 vs an entire sub routine in QB. The downside to QB64 is that you lose the Sub Routine pages and everything is edited inline, which can be a pain in the ass for larger programs, but thats mainly just a usability quirk. I did find that QB64's compiler was also better behaved and less likely to act up.
I could totally make one of these work as a laser controller for rave toys. Thanks for demonstrating!
Yeah... but... can you code Doom?
That's a tall order, but I bet he could do Wolf 3D in a reasonably short time.
OldRed91 the question is can it run Crysis?
can he code crysis?
Doom is like Crysis but for 80's computers
He doesn't have to, that's open source.
Man, I thought I was done with microcontrollers after my embedded class last fall. I was wrong! Loved the video!