Rather depends the country where the author of the comment resides, in English the spelling is "Colour". In American it is "Color". Take your pick. Most people can understand both spellings and accept people will use the correct spelling for where in the world they happen to live, those who live in other countries will have to translate. In Austrialia the correct spelling would be "Colour", so in terms of the original comment, the spelling is indeed correct.
I suspect these Wii nunchuck ports are more envisioned for use with Wii Classic Controllers that plug into the same port on a Wiimote. Lots of gamepads and arcade sticks have came out through the years that follow that controller standard, with the NES/SNES Classic Edition (I believe Nintendo labeled them as 'Minis' in Europe) controllers the most notable recent examples. Or at least I hope so. I can't imagine playing 8-bit games with a single nunchuck in one hand.
Cool, but, as of this date I cant really find these. I think there may be some reason why these are much harder to find than the original VIC 20/C64 on like ebay or something. Also I'm waiting on the CLIPS (Commander X64) project from 8-bit-guy. So, I must look somemore for a modern affordable retro style system that works well. It's just that coding a diy kernal for the 6502 with a custom chipset board design, plus a reasonable video card eg. iCE40 FPGA is a large project from scratch for one person. Even for a small team. And the open source projects are nice, however, specific and have smaller feature package's than the gen 2 deluxe.
Dear Jan... I can indeed confirm that I have actually been living under a rock for at least the last ten years (photographic proof available on request) and emerged recently to discover the retro resurgence... Did I miss anything else in my decade of hermit like solitude?
QBasic was a direct descendant of GW BASIC. IIRC, you could take the former, replace some of the line numbers with labels, and bingo! So, to be fair, they're easily enough confused.
Will there be a part 2? I'm curious about the expansion cards. It looks like there's not much room in the enclosure, so the cards have to be pretty small.
I think you would have to cut a hole into the top part of the case or leave it open when using the cards. I’m eventually going to tinker with some of the expansions, I have another one coming soon from Piotr actually. There’s definitely going to be another video about the CMM2 sometime. :)
@@JanBeta That's pretty important aspect, that would have to be said in the review. Hopefully there will be another case option, where the cards will fit. Anyway, I'm looking forward to next videos. :-)
But with RISC OS running the powerful BBC BASIC natively on a Raspberry Pi, now with Hardware FP acceleration, millions of colors and lots of memory for 35 USD, why posting about this overpriced piece of (censore)????
Seems blazingly fast! Are there ways to write machine level code if necessary though? Also, do you know of any emulators for this so people can develop for it without owning one? (I heard they are hard to get sometimes)
I have a sense of deja vu.🤔 Anyway... A nice overview of the Colour Maximite 2. I totally agree with the joy of just turning on a retro computer and you are straight into BASIC. I like the simple yet smart design of these too -- an off-the-self porject box case and custom PCB front and back plates is very smart. Great video, as usual.
Nice! I've been playing a lot with these stm32 micros, now I've made a board with stm32h743iit6 (480MHz also) It has 32 megabytes of sdram (on a 32-bit bus) and hdmi/(dvi) video output. Max res that I've tried is 1280x1024. Colour output is limited on this board to rgb565 but another is on the works that has rgb666. I chose TDA9983B as the hdmi driver but I've not managed to get it fully working, display shows only other pixel on the line... sound is working though... Datasheet for the TDA9983B chip is of no use... There are are 3 PLL's, up/down scaler etc. but very little information.
Fun! I started thinking what use this could possibly be. But when you showed Gauntlet running I was excited. Really nice. And simple. The one thing I would probably change (and it might even be a setting) is the black background. Nothing says retro like something nice and blue :)
Haha, you are right, the background could be optimized for more retro feel. :D It is a very fun device, and there’s quite a large community with some amazing software for it. Hope it continues growing and there’s going to be lots more to try for the CMM2. Programming it yourself is probably the most fun though. Just like the ol‘ days. ;)
It's a great machine but what really annoys me about it is scrolling in the editor, especially as your listing gets longer. It's slower than a z80. Why can't they fix this?
I bought my maximite 2 years ago and for the last 6 months it's not been keeping the date and time. All i need is a new battery but I don't know how to get the old one out. Can anyone help?
Kind of neat concept, but it feels like the BASIC implementation is *very* slow for the power of the hardware. I wrote a Wolfenstein-style raycasting engine in QBasic back in the early 90s which ran pretty well on a DX2/66 (admittedly it had no audio and no sprites, but still), and things like AMOS and Blitz BASIC on the Amiga could produce impressive results on a measly 7MHz 68k (Worms, one of the most popular games of the era, was written in Blitz!), so a Gauntlet clone and a Wolfenstein port running on a 400MHz ARM CPU seems a bit... meh?
Well... not quite. Blitz basic was a compiler, while Maximite basic is interpreted. So, some difference is to be expected. True, Maximite does prepare the program for running, but it does not compile to machine code. And result is that even a large program runs pretty much immediately you press F2 (Run) And that was the design purpose of the machine. It may be "meh" to you, but very nice to number of others.
@@mikaachren7611 QBasic was interpreted, though, and even interpreted AMOS programs were capable of some pretty cool feats (and TBH compiled AMOS code didn't really run that much quicker - the main advantage of the compiler was for ease of distribution). I will have to see if I can dig out some of the stuff I worked on back then for comparison, but I stand by my "meh" - for the huge increase in hardware performance over older machines neither of those games were anything that couldn't have been achieved in BASIC on the older crustier machines of the early 90s. (Heck, even some pretty good commercial games that were written in BASIC were released commercially on 8-bit machines - take a look at Temple of Apshai on the Atari 8-bit.)
Unfortunately, JanBeta showed my early prototypes I don't know why. The recent versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Gauntlet are much more polished, and my last game is a Final Fight port that the comments were positive. Please, see the more recent versions of my games in: ua-cam.com/users/mauroxavierneto I will appreciate it if you post any type of comment as you are an experienced BASIC programmer. I will gladly accept even critics, feel free to give your fair opinion.
Not everyone wastes their lives playing games. I have been using BASIC for industrial control since the mid eighties and today I use MMBasic. Always been self employed and "time is money". I have products up, running and making parts while my competitors are still tracking down memory leaks etc 🤣😂🤣😂
@@AdaptivePhenix Same here. I was coding pic's for water treatment then found MMBasic and the M170 saving a lot of time. Will now be going to the RP2040 with MMBasic as the chip cost and usability is far better.
Yes, cheaper. But I like the combination of simplicity and speed. 8-bit computers are slow which limits what you can do. Modern computers are very complex, and I miss the simplicity of early computers. Maximite, while far from perfect, fills the niche it was designed to fill. You may not like it and that is perfectly ok. But I like it.
You can do that, yes. But as you can see from the MANY repair video's on youtube, they will require some serious maintenance to keep them running and the chips they use are getting harder to find, if you can find it at all. Factor in the cost of more modern storage solutions etc. for these older machines and the price point for this computer is not too excessive.
Your comments about modern 8-bit computers was great. Don't forget Foenix Retro Systems by Stefany Allaire. I think she's ahead of the game with regards to modern 8-bit (up to 32-bit). She's destroying everyone with bad ass modern-retro computers begging everyone in the game to step it up.
Several years ago I went to The makers faire in San Mateo, some guy took a 6502 and laid it out to the the about the size of an album cover He had leds to show processes Soooo cool!
JanBeta, I'm a little disappointed as you had used old versions of my programs as your last (deleted) video, as they are very early prototypes and don't make CMM2 justice. The current version of Wolfenstein 3D is far more advanced and faster, and the Gauntlet is more polished too. You missed the Final Fight port too. In any case, here is the link to my GitHub with the last version of all my programs for the CMM2: github.com/mauroxavierneto And my UA-cam channel that shows more recent games: ua-cam.com/users/mauroxavierneto
Cool video! This does seem to be the ideal 'retro" computer. I have sympathy for Dave Murray's effort but once you run into the problem of video generation etc. without having access to a silicon fab you are basically forced to use modern components such as fpga's. Then you might as well do everything on the fpga like TheC64 or the spectrum next.
I find the plan to create a system from more discrete components quite interesting. It’s quite a niche interest, admittedly. Makes it more true to the original machines at least. Using an ARM processor and other modern components obviously has many advantages, especially considering the price point and ease of production.
@@JanBeta Yes, in his last video he admits that they have basically blown their original budget and that phase 3 of the project will almost totally be FPGA based to get to his original price-point. MiSTer is a good example of what can be done with FPGA's if you are against the 'emulation' route.
Your enthusiasm is infectious. I bought a PicoMiteVGA kit and am having a ball programming in BASIC again. It’s a great way to get the retro 80s computing experience.
@@JanBeta Named by Americans who couldn't pronounce their own product. I've been wondering for a very long time if Germans used a German pronunciation (and that's a lot of Germans- we all know how much German kids enjoyed the chance to shoot Nazis. Not sure why the game was banned if the Nazis are the bad guys. An early example of people downloading a game they weren't allowed to play)
Ah, sorry, completely forgot about that. Would certainly be cool (although I have so many projects going at the moment that it will take a while until I get to it). Would you email me at thejanbeta at gmail dot com please? Thanks! :)
Looks nice, but having expansion slots without plenty of height to put a decent sized card in looks like a design flaw. Do they also sell a taller case to overcome this problem?
@@elbiggus Sure, it clearly isn’t impossible to change, though the front and rear faces won’t go well with a new case, but I would hope there will be an option for either a bigger case or it fitted a miniATX easily.
I tested it out this morning and it technically does work but it's not very useful because the C64 keyboard has difference scan codes for many keys and lack other keys like ALT and more. It was a frustrating experience trying to control the CMM2 with the C64 keyboard, but it did technically work. Things like the Control key aren't the same scan code, so many features of the CMM2 would not operate.
It's an interesting little machine but the port choices are kinda... weird. USB-A for power? I don't think I've EVER seen it used for that. Nunchuk ports for controllers? Why?!?! Why needlessly limit what controllers people can use by restricting them to those... Awful things? VGA video? Well... OK I guess, but really.... It's 2021... A HDMI port would have been far more useful for modern displays... I feel they've kinda missed the point of an easy to use computer here...
I can't speak to the Nunchuck choice, but one benefit/reason for the USB-A for power is that it doubles as a data connection too. When you run the CMM2 off of a USB connection to a PC, the PC can communicate with the CMM2 because the power port is COM3 from the CMM2's perspective. You can also flash the firmware using this connection. The terminal software I wrote, Maxiterm, can use the power port as COM3 and use tcpser running on the PC as a virtual modem to call BBS's. And regarding the VGA/HDMI, advertising HDMI requires license fees and sometimes the CMM2 outputs non-standard VGA resolutions so not all converter chips might handle that well.
@@frnno967 Thanks for your response. Is not the power/data issue on USB the same for more standard ports though? USB Micro or Mini, or USB-C? The rather obsolete USB-A seems like an odd choice. I get your point about HDMI licensing, but there's always DisplayPort...
@@FloatingFatMan Ahh, I understand now. Yeah they could have used Micro or Mini. I myself appreciate the full sized Type-B for it's mechanical heft though. Reminds me of the full size DIN power on the C64 :)
Cute little machine. I'd definitely want to play with one. One thing though - QBasic-like language is... kinda nasty, as it carries legacy baggage from the days of Dartmouth BASIC and Altair BASIC. I'd love some sort of.. like BASIC II that shook off that legacy stuff, while still being interpreted, with an immediate mode, and more or less instant start.
@@AdaptivePhenix - Would you like an exhaustive list (payment will have to be arranged in advance for that), or would you be happy with a brief list off the top of my head like: + awkward keyword-only stuff like DEF FN/END DEF, IF/THEN, IF/ELSEIF/ELSE + Overloading of statements like 'END' + Handling of local variables + Lack of proper character facilities + INKEY$ + Defaulting to floating point numbers + Suffix line noise ($/%/&/!/# etc) + Strings in general + Clumsy file handling + Lack of '==' And that's just an off-the-cuff list for modernish BASIC dialects, I could go on for older dialects and how they lack 'THEN' entirely and being able to GOTO out of FOR loops causing stack corruption, lack of labels, and such. Oh, and I could go into other deficiencies about how the dated syntax is entirely unlike real production languages and makes for poor training. I mean, even goddamn Python uses != and ==. TL;DR: I didn't go into the details because the text document that would result would be larger than the size of all BASIC dialects added together...and I'm NOT doing a project like that for free.
I have a color maximite 2 and, sadly, just don't ever find time to use it. It really is a great machine but I just haven't found that thing yet that draws me into using and programming it a bit more.
I found a bug in the (rnd*255)... it goes to 254.99999 and doesn't return 255, same for number zero I think, you don't get 0 and 255... must use INT or something like this...
6:04 tip (taken from dozens of other teardowns and channels): try not to put your hands between the product and the camera. If you could use an pen or a tool it would be perfect.
The first part of the video was filmed in May. If I remember correctly, I had a stomach infection around that time, that’s probably why I look like crap. Gets better a bit later in the video. Fully recovered now. ;)
Maybe it's because it was designed in Australia, but I keep wanting to call the original Colour Maximite the Colour Vegemite. :D
*Color*
Rather depends the country where the author of the comment resides, in English the spelling is "Colour". In American it is "Color". Take your pick. Most people can understand both spellings and accept people will use the correct spelling for where in the world they happen to live, those who live in other countries will have to translate. In Austrialia the correct spelling would be "Colour", so in terms of the original comment, the spelling is indeed correct.
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich
@@midixiewrecked7011 American English it is color British and Australian English it is colour
@@themckennafamilyfarmchanne8189 one is right , the other isn't.
I suspect these Wii nunchuck ports are more envisioned for use with Wii Classic Controllers that plug into the same port on a Wiimote. Lots of gamepads and arcade sticks have came out through the years that follow that controller standard, with the NES/SNES Classic Edition (I believe Nintendo labeled them as 'Minis' in Europe) controllers the most notable recent examples.
Or at least I hope so. I can't imagine playing 8-bit games with a single nunchuck in one hand.
Cool, but, as of this date I cant really find these. I think there may be some reason why these are much harder to find than the original VIC 20/C64 on like ebay or something. Also I'm waiting on the CLIPS (Commander X64) project from 8-bit-guy. So, I must look somemore for a modern affordable retro style system that works well. It's just that coding a diy kernal for the 6502 with a custom chipset board design, plus a reasonable video card eg. iCE40 FPGA is a large project from scratch for one person. Even for a small team. And the open source projects are nice, however, specific and have smaller feature package's than the gen 2 deluxe.
Dear Jan... I can indeed confirm that I have actually been living under a rock for at least the last ten years (photographic proof available on request) and emerged recently to discover the retro resurgence... Did I miss anything else in my decade of hermit like solitude?
IIRC, GW Basic still used line numbers. This rather resembles Q Basic.
QBasic was a direct descendant of GW BASIC. IIRC, you could take the former, replace some of the line numbers with labels, and bingo! So, to be fair, they're easily enough confused.
Will there be a part 2? I'm curious about the expansion cards. It looks like there's not much room in the enclosure, so the cards have to be pretty small.
I think you would have to cut a hole into the top part of the case or leave it open when using the cards. I’m eventually going to tinker with some of the expansions, I have another one coming soon from Piotr actually. There’s definitely going to be another video about the CMM2 sometime. :)
@@JanBeta That's pretty important aspect, that would have to be said in the review. Hopefully there will be another case option, where the cards will fit. Anyway, I'm looking forward to next videos. :-)
With how simple the board layout is, I think one could be 3D printed to accommodate expansion cards, might even work with a friction fitted design.
@Jan Beta: Thank you for showing this! Looks like my next Christmas present.
What a nice idea to design a PCB to be used as a front and/or back panel.
But with RISC OS running the powerful BBC BASIC natively on a Raspberry Pi, now with Hardware FP acceleration, millions of colors and lots of memory for 35 USD, why posting about this overpriced piece of (censore)????
Seems blazingly fast! Are there ways to write machine level code if necessary though? Also, do you know of any emulators for this so people can develop for it without owning one? (I heard they are hard to get sometimes)
I have a sense of deja vu.🤔 Anyway... A nice overview of the Colour Maximite 2. I totally agree with the joy of just turning on a retro computer and you are straight into BASIC. I like the simple yet smart design of these too -- an off-the-self porject box case and custom PCB front and back plates is very smart. Great video, as usual.
This would be neat if there was a port of GEOS or some other kind of 8-bit GUI.
Nice! I've been playing a lot with these stm32 micros, now I've made a board with stm32h743iit6 (480MHz also) It has 32 megabytes of sdram (on a 32-bit bus) and hdmi/(dvi) video output. Max res that I've tried is 1280x1024. Colour output is limited on this board to rgb565 but another is on the works that has rgb666.
I chose TDA9983B as the hdmi driver but I've not managed to get it fully working, display shows only other pixel on the line... sound is working though...
Datasheet for the TDA9983B chip is of no use... There are are 3 PLL's, up/down scaler etc. but very little information.
David Murray (The 8-Bit Guy) and Perifractic are developing the X16. David also reviewed the Original Colour Maximite 2
Yes, I mention that in the video, too. ;)
And it will "never cost more than $50." 🙄
Fun! I started thinking what use this could possibly be. But when you showed Gauntlet running I was excited. Really nice. And simple. The one thing I would probably change (and it might even be a setting) is the black background. Nothing says retro like something nice and blue :)
Haha, you are right, the background could be optimized for more retro feel. :D It is a very fun device, and there’s quite a large community with some amazing software for it. Hope it continues growing and there’s going to be lots more to try for the CMM2. Programming it yourself is probably the most fun though. Just like the ol‘ days. ;)
lol those can't be nunchuck controller ports because that would be wierd
jan beta: these are nunchuck controller ports.
LMAO
It's a great machine but what really annoys me about it is scrolling in the editor, especially as your listing gets longer. It's slower than a z80. Why can't they fix this?
wow. i got the maximite deluxe gen 1. the expansion slots are awesome need to get one. my cmm2 deluxe never worked.... updates failed and i gave up.
Very cool looking hardware revision for the maximite and the games! Awesome!
I bought my maximite 2 years ago and for the last 6 months it's not been keeping the date and time. All i need is a new battery but I don't know how to get the old one out. Can anyone help?
Hmm... I've a slightly feeling of déjà vu...
Jaja
Is this a summer rerun?
Kind of neat concept, but it feels like the BASIC implementation is *very* slow for the power of the hardware. I wrote a Wolfenstein-style raycasting engine in QBasic back in the early 90s which ran pretty well on a DX2/66 (admittedly it had no audio and no sprites, but still), and things like AMOS and Blitz BASIC on the Amiga could produce impressive results on a measly 7MHz 68k (Worms, one of the most popular games of the era, was written in Blitz!), so a Gauntlet clone and a Wolfenstein port running on a 400MHz ARM CPU seems a bit... meh?
Well... not quite. Blitz basic was a compiler, while Maximite basic is interpreted. So, some difference is to be expected.
True, Maximite does prepare the program for running, but it does not compile to machine code.
And result is that even a large program runs pretty much immediately you press F2 (Run)
And that was the design purpose of the machine. It may be "meh" to you, but very nice to number of others.
@@mikaachren7611 QBasic was interpreted, though, and even interpreted AMOS programs were capable of some pretty cool feats (and TBH compiled AMOS code didn't really run that much quicker - the main advantage of the compiler was for ease of distribution).
I will have to see if I can dig out some of the stuff I worked on back then for comparison, but I stand by my "meh" - for the huge increase in hardware performance over older machines neither of those games were anything that couldn't have been achieved in BASIC on the older crustier machines of the early 90s. (Heck, even some pretty good commercial games that were written in BASIC were released commercially on 8-bit machines - take a look at Temple of Apshai on the Atari 8-bit.)
Unfortunately, JanBeta showed my early prototypes I don't know why. The recent versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Gauntlet are much more polished, and my last game is a Final Fight port that the comments were positive. Please, see the more recent versions of my games in: ua-cam.com/users/mauroxavierneto
I will appreciate it if you post any type of comment as you are an experienced BASIC programmer. I will gladly accept even critics, feel free to give your fair opinion.
Not everyone wastes their lives playing games. I have been using BASIC for industrial control since the mid eighties and today I use MMBasic. Always been self employed and "time is money".
I have products up, running and making parts while my competitors are still tracking down memory leaks etc 🤣😂🤣😂
@@AdaptivePhenix Same here. I was coding pic's for water treatment then found MMBasic and the M170 saving a lot of time. Will now be going to the RP2040 with MMBasic as the chip cost and usability is far better.
Mini pet vs Micro pet
I've build/soldered some of the CMM2 and it was a real fun. I like this machine, but still got not enough time to get into programming...
I wonder if running machine code is available too. 🤔
Way too expensive for what it is.
Cheaper to buy an old 8-bit computer on eBay.
Yes, cheaper. But I like the combination of simplicity and speed.
8-bit computers are slow which limits what you can do.
Modern computers are very complex, and I miss the simplicity of early computers.
Maximite, while far from perfect, fills the niche it was designed to fill.
You may not like it and that is perfectly ok. But I like it.
You can do that, yes. But as you can see from the MANY repair video's on youtube, they will require some serious maintenance to keep them running and the chips they use are getting harder to find, if you can find it at all. Factor in the cost of more modern storage solutions etc. for these older machines and the price point for this computer is not too excessive.
Your comments about modern 8-bit computers was great. Don't forget Foenix Retro Systems by Stefany Allaire. I think she's ahead of the game with regards to modern 8-bit (up to 32-bit). She's destroying everyone with bad ass modern-retro computers begging everyone in the game to step it up.
Can you make sections with inline Assembler in a Basic program?
It is possible to peek & poke into memory and registers and also make L.M. routines?
Where can I buy this Colour Maximite 2?
Several years ago I went to The makers faire in San Mateo, some guy took a 6502 and laid it out to the the about the size of an album cover
He had leds to show processes
Soooo cool!
That thing is amazing!
JanBeta, I'm a little disappointed as you had used old versions of my programs as your last (deleted) video, as they are very early prototypes and don't make CMM2 justice. The current version of Wolfenstein 3D is far more advanced and faster, and the Gauntlet is more polished too. You missed the Final Fight port too.
In any case, here is the link to my GitHub with the last version of all my programs for the CMM2: github.com/mauroxavierneto
And my UA-cam channel that shows more recent games: ua-cam.com/users/mauroxavierneto
Hier liegt noch ne platine für gen.1 cmm2. Jemand interesse? Nur noch waveshare fehlt. Preiswert abzugeben
Nackte platine?
Nein alles drauf und getestet, läuft
Wonder if those USB ports support modern USB keyboards and mice, or if it's just older ones that were more PS/2 compliant.
Cool video! This does seem to be the ideal 'retro" computer. I have sympathy for Dave Murray's effort but once you run into the problem of video generation etc. without having access to a silicon fab you are basically forced to use modern components such as fpga's. Then you might as well do everything on the fpga like TheC64 or the spectrum next.
Is the TheC64 an FPGA?.. I was led to believe it was a dual core ARM chip with a combined ROM PLA SIDs etc on a separate ROM kernel chip...
TheC64 is emulation running in an SoC ARM processor (same as in many tablets and phones etc), yes.
I find the plan to create a system from more discrete components quite interesting. It’s quite a niche interest, admittedly. Makes it more true to the original machines at least. Using an ARM processor and other modern components obviously has many advantages, especially considering the price point and ease of production.
@@paulluce2557 my mistake. Comment is still valid though.
@@JanBeta Yes, in his last video he admits that they have basically blown their original budget and that phase 3 of the project will almost totally be FPGA based to get to his original price-point. MiSTer is a good example of what can be done with FPGA's if you are against the 'emulation' route.
Your enthusiasm is infectious. I bought a PicoMiteVGA kit and am having a ball programming in BASIC again. It’s a great way to get the retro 80s computing experience.
Woaw... Deja vu.. ;)
Haha, sorry. :D
Guessing "RIGT" keeps it within four characters, I probably would have gone with "RITE" just so it still reads the same.
I have the original CMM2 but sadly hardly use it. I did have the PDF manual printed and bound online which really made it easier to look stuff up.
Hab ich jetzt ein Déjà-vu? ^^
No HDMI output?
Units of measure: 1 JBH = 1 Jan Beta Hand (Standard Human)
Awesome you got hold of it Jan . Please keep it up mate!
mauro Xavier is a very talented programmr from Brazil
I wonder if Maximite can also run DOS. :)
With a BASIC DOS emulator maybe… ;)
Or CP/M ;-) ?
@@ArjanvanVught it's not a Z80 CPU, so I doubt about that. Linux should run on it just fine, though.
Mauro Xavier is actually from Brazil
Deja Vu?
So cool, thanks for another fun video
Jan, what happened to your Fluke multimeter? I see you are now using a different make.
@reeder 76 not his new oscilloscope, I was talking about the multimeter.
So much choice for new machines now.
I've been waiting many years to hear someone pronounce Wolfenstein properly
Haha, probably helps that I’m German. ;)
@@JanBeta Named by Americans who couldn't pronounce their own product. I've been wondering for a very long time if Germans used a German pronunciation (and that's a lot of Germans- we all know how much German kids enjoyed the chance to shoot Nazis. Not sure why the game was banned if the Nazis are the bad guys. An early example of people downloading a game they weren't allowed to play)
@Jan Beta My offer for sending you a Basic Engine still stands (in case you want to fiddle with it). Cheers!
Ah, sorry, completely forgot about that. Would certainly be cool (although I have so many projects going at the moment that it will take a while until I get to it). Would you email me at thejanbeta at gmail dot com please? Thanks! :)
Looks nice, but having expansion slots without plenty of height to put a decent sized card in looks like a design flaw. Do they also sell a taller case to overcome this problem?
You use expansion card with top lid removed. In short time there will be top lid with slots cut available.
@@greyxopera Doesn’t sound like a long term solution if you want to keep the cards in place.
@@Doug_in_NC It looks like a fairly standard clamshell project box (maybe an IDAS?) so you could easily pop it in a bigger one or get some spacers.
@@elbiggus Sure, it clearly isn’t impossible to change, though the front and rear faces won’t go well with a new case, but I would hope there will be an option for either a bigger case or it fitted a miniATX easily.
I have the odd desire to use this machine with my breadbin C64 that has a keyrah v2h built in to act as USB keyboard.
That would be an interesting combination! Not sure if it would work but I have both at home and can test it out for you.
I tested it out this morning and it technically does work but it's not very useful because the C64 keyboard has difference scan codes for many keys and lack other keys like ALT and more. It was a frustrating experience trying to control the CMM2 with the C64 keyboard, but it did technically work. Things like the Control key aren't the same scan code, so many features of the CMM2 would not operate.
Great review Jan! 👍
Is this video the same as the one that was released prematurely and then withdrawn?
Yes, only some very slight changes. Had to postpone the release until now unfortunately. ;)
@@JanBeta Hah, that's what I was sure I already saw it many weeks ago.
Yes, I had a déjà vu moment there
It's an interesting little machine but the port choices are kinda... weird. USB-A for power? I don't think I've EVER seen it used for that. Nunchuk ports for controllers? Why?!?! Why needlessly limit what controllers people can use by restricting them to those... Awful things? VGA video? Well... OK I guess, but really.... It's 2021... A HDMI port would have been far more useful for modern displays... I feel they've kinda missed the point of an easy to use computer here...
I can't speak to the Nunchuck choice, but one benefit/reason for the USB-A for power is that it doubles as a data connection too. When you run the CMM2 off of a USB connection to a PC, the PC can communicate with the CMM2 because the power port is COM3 from the CMM2's perspective. You can also flash the firmware using this connection. The terminal software I wrote, Maxiterm, can use the power port as COM3 and use tcpser running on the PC as a virtual modem to call BBS's. And regarding the VGA/HDMI, advertising HDMI requires license fees and sometimes the CMM2 outputs non-standard VGA resolutions so not all converter chips might handle that well.
@@frnno967 Thanks for your response. Is not the power/data issue on USB the same for more standard ports though? USB Micro or Mini, or USB-C? The rather obsolete USB-A seems like an odd choice. I get your point about HDMI licensing, but there's always DisplayPort...
@@FloatingFatMan Ahh, I understand now. Yeah they could have used Micro or Mini. I myself appreciate the full sized Type-B for it's mechanical heft though. Reminds me of the full size DIN power on the C64 :)
Cute little machine. I'd definitely want to play with one. One thing though - QBasic-like language is... kinda nasty, as it carries legacy baggage from the days of Dartmouth BASIC and Altair BASIC. I'd love some sort of.. like BASIC II that shook off that legacy stuff, while still being interpreted, with an immediate mode, and more or less instant start.
And yet you fail to identify this "legacy baggage"?
@@AdaptivePhenix - Would you like an exhaustive list (payment will have to be arranged in advance for that), or would you be happy with a brief list off the top of my head like:
+ awkward keyword-only stuff like DEF FN/END DEF, IF/THEN, IF/ELSEIF/ELSE
+ Overloading of statements like 'END'
+ Handling of local variables
+ Lack of proper character facilities
+ INKEY$
+ Defaulting to floating point numbers
+ Suffix line noise ($/%/&/!/# etc)
+ Strings in general
+ Clumsy file handling
+ Lack of '=='
And that's just an off-the-cuff list for modernish BASIC dialects, I could go on for older dialects and how they lack 'THEN' entirely and being able to GOTO out of FOR loops causing stack corruption, lack of labels, and such.
Oh, and I could go into other deficiencies about how the dated syntax is entirely unlike real production languages and makes for poor training. I mean, even goddamn Python uses != and ==.
TL;DR: I didn't go into the details because the text document that would result would be larger than the size of all BASIC dialects added together...and I'm NOT doing a project like that for free.
@@LordRenegrade Well, if you don't like it then this just isn't for you. Go find something else.
@@Ffinity - Well, if you don't like my comment than it just isn't for you. Go find something else.
I have a color maximite 2 and, sadly, just don't ever find time to use it. It really is a great machine but I just haven't found that thing yet that draws me into using and programming it a bit more.
One correction, "True color" is 16 million colors, 65k is "high color".
In 40 years from now, the "Presentation Untit" Label Sticker would make the machine very valuable for the future retro-scene... just saying...... ;)
I found a bug in the (rnd*255)... it goes to 254.99999 and doesn't return 255, same for number zero I think, you don't get 0 and 255... must use INT or something like this...
6:04 tip (taken from dozens of other teardowns and channels): try not to put your hands between the product and the camera. If you could use an pen or a tool it would be perfect.
Computer from my childhood? Sorry, but I never had a Data General Nova (which would have been the smallest computer during MY childhood).
So the big question, whether any German ever played Wolfenstein is answered! ;)
Of ocurse we did, shooting Nazis is fun!
In which Jan learns that he has *freakishly* large hands!
GPL violation is the Maximite
Jan are you ok?? you do not look good, it looks like you lost alot of weight and you look sick... I hope you are better soon...
The first part of the video was filmed in May. If I remember correctly, I had a stomach infection around that time, that’s probably why I look like crap. Gets better a bit later in the video. Fully recovered now. ;)
Jan,un video sul maximite l'avevi già messo in rete,poi lo hai tolto.hai fatto bene a rimetterlo,bel video
Let me show you it's features!!!
Can't get that gravelly slingshot channel voice out of my head now.
What about the expansion cards? :0