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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Trying Blitz Basic in 2025 on an Amiga
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LeoNicolas Guru  Joined: 07/10/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 503 |
Great video from The Retro Collective channel about basic and game development. At the end, he says something I felt when I got my CMM2 a couple of years ago: "It is reconnecting me with code in a way I haven't felt since the 90s" This is so true. I've been programming professionally for nearly 30 years, in various languages and environments. Still, I never felt the same sense of satisfaction as I did when programming my games on my 90s home computers. Has this happened with anyone else? Can I Write an Amiga Game? Trying Blitz Basic in 2025 |
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PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 539 |
I watched that video too, and felt a similar feeling when he said that (about the CMM2). It really resonated. |
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Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1216 |
The video was suggested to me yesterday by Youtube. exactly that, except that for me it was more the 1980s  'no comment |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5016 |
PicoMite can do that. Another challenge ahead... Volhout Edited 2025-06-25 17:52 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1324 |
Similar but different: This is one of two that I just received in the UK, sent from North Carolina. It's a PC-based control that I used to program in QuickBASIC but the real-time was MASM. Such great times because QuickBASIC made programming a piece-of-cake. I stopped building this model in 1991 and I see that the hard-drive has been replaced in year 2000. Works perfectly. They only sent them to see if I can replace the floppy drive with one of those USB emulators. I look at this and then I look at today's equivalent; the RPi Pico with MMBasic Even more fun than the QuickBASIC days   |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1324 |
The 640 X 350 (EGA) DOS GUI with touchscreen:  |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4031 |
Looks like it was value for money! John |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1324 |
No kidding These things are all over the map. The only failure has been the old CRTs. I chuckle because this backs-up my ongoing rant re:"needs to be industrially hardened". The propaganda that was put-out by the industry giants around the time that people realised that a PC made a great controller. |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7806 |
They did have a point at the time. PCs tended to be hot, expensive dust magnets that needed delicate handling. PLCs were rugged, even if they were less flexible and (often) slower. Neither of these are true now. :-) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1216 |
Volhout, that was also my first thought. He has not published his listing, but as he says himself, it is not optimized. That's why it's probably easier to completely rewrite it.  With a tile(not the MMBasic-TILES)size of 24x24, the playing field could be divided up as follows: (rough draft)If you like I can draw the tiles for you. cheers Martin 'no comment |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1324 |
No, they never had a point. They got in a panic about their own market Never experienced any of this and the unit in the pic, I shipped 1000+. "Expensive" is the licence-fee that you have to pay for the privilege of merely programming the PLC hardware that you already paid a ripoff price for. $18K/licence for instance. What does that even mean? Pure propaganda. I got this flak from engineers at GM. The "pocket-protector brigade" who are all "experts" that never do anything. They get the "free training" conferences, hosted by AB, Siemens, etc., with the free lunches which are nothing other than brainwashing sessions. It's 01:00 on a Sunday. If this thing dies, I can grab a secretary's PC from the front-office and your $1M/hour car production line is back-up and running. How many hours before AB gets a new PLC to you? GM soon changed their tune. I got the order for the one and only machine that makes the entire Corvette chassis and it runs on a generic PC |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5016 |
That would be nice. I am in doubt how to use the layer structure in the VGA (and LCD) mites. The guy in the video had to cut some corners to make it work in a 500/1200. Since the pipes always appear on the (blue) square/cross background, you don't need many tiles I think. You could tile on layer L with the fluid path transparent, and the outer edge transparent. So a tile would have blue cross, and pipe segment. (and one tile without pipe segment, only the cross. The focus would be by painting the border below tiles area on layer N. Flowing the water by slowly filling the area below the tile with color on N. Is this also what you where thinking ? I think it would be more difficult if you have pipes on L and blue cross on N. Volhout P.S. the game in the video is not final, water has to follow all the channels, not only START-END. P.P.S. I like the faces on top that blink at you.... P.P.P.S currently working on "boxing up" my Game*Mite. It needs some TLC, and I plan to blow a bit of fresh air into the Game*Mite platform. First I have to make all software run again on 6.00.02 since these have been changes in the language. I will issue 2 new UF2 files for 2040 and 2350 game mites. This game may be VGA/GM compatible. Edited 2025-06-25 23:30 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1216 |
 Here are the existing directions. I think it's a good idea to do the filling over the N layer. As you can see in the picture, I chose magenta as the transparent color again (out of tradition) Pipes.zip Edited 2025-06-26 03:39 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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Dinosaur Guru Joined: 12/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 331 |
Hi All Exactly my sentiment AND experience. Didn't use 1000's (perhaps 500), never found them delicate, rarely had failures. It was and still is, the tunnel vision of "plant technicians" that want to replace PC cpu boards with plc's. Then they want you to help them understand the logic of what you have slaved over. Show me the plc that can retrieve 20bit a2d date at 3000 samples per second, crunch the data, graph performance on the screen and run the rest of the machine within spec. The licensing of software eventually drove me to Linux. At 78 I finally retired for the third time last Sept, after another plc attempt. I loved the programming in QuickBasic with dedicated MASM routines to speed things up. But in the last 15 years it has been FreeBasic, which combined with faster cpu boards eliminated the need for assembly language routines. Regards Hervey Bay Qld. |
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Marcel27 Regular Member  Joined: 13/08/2024 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 89 |
Why not send them just a programmed pico back as joke and tell them: "It just does the same but smaller" |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5016 |
Thanks Martin !!! I may adapt the tiles a little to also allow the focus color in the corners. But this is a good starting point for me. You must be a bit patient through. I first need to finalize my Game*Mite tasks. Volhout Edited 2025-06-26 18:25 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1324 |
It's only company money and they get paid to become familiar with these platforms which looks good on their CV/resume.  This, along with DeviceNET is being replaced with the PicoMite   Blow one of the sixteen 2A outputs and you have to replace all.  It came with the typically-proprietary-can't-be-found-when-urgently-required programming cable but I won't be needing it. |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5016 |
Hi Phenix, I assume you are designing an IO board for the 2350B 64 pin PCB ? Any preview ..?? Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1324 |
Hi Harm. Preview? You have no choice I'll be seeking approval before I send the files. I'm not a board designer.Matherp inspired me to go SMD and so I'm still screwing around but soon. |
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