 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : A VT100 terminal on the Colour Maximite 2
| Author | Message | ||||
| matherp Guru  Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 12152 |
A new program in the RC3 zip, for both the G1 and the G2. It needs firmware 7.00.00RC3 or later. https://github.com/UKTailwind/CMM2V1.5/releases/tag/v7.00.00RC3 Plug a PicoMite into a USB socket and the CMM2 becomes its screen and keyboard. You get the PicoMite's prompt, its editor and its file manager, in colour and with the mouse, with no PC needed. It is a general purpose terminal, so it is not limited to PicoMites. Getting started Update the firmware to RC3 and copy the vt100 folder from CMM2_Programs_7.00.00RC3.zip to A:/vt100. Plug in the PicoMite, directly or through a hub. The prompt tells you which port it is, starting at COM4. Then: CHDIR "A:/vt100" RUN "vt100.app", COM4 115200 Press Shift-F12 or Pause for the setup menu, and choose Quit to leave. Ctrl-C does not leave the terminal, as it goes to the PicoMite to stop a program there. Once you have chosen Save settings in the menu, you can leave the port and speed off the RUN line. What it does • It is a VT100 and VT102, with VT52 mode, plus xterm's 256 colours and mouse reports. It is built on libvterm, with the Spleen fonts. • It uses the USB serial ports COM4 to COM7, and COM1 and COM2. • When a PicoMite asks for a screen size, at EDIT, FM or OPTION DISPLAY, the terminal changes to it. It tries a smaller font in the same video mode first, so your monitor rarely has to lock on again. • If the PicoMite restarts or you pull out the lead, the status line says so, and the terminal carries on when it comes back, as Tera Term's auto reconnect does. • Shift with Page Up and Page Down, or the mouse wheel, looks back through what has scrolled off the screen. • XMODEM works in both directions. You can also send a text file, or log everything that arrives to a file. • The setup menu has fonts from 5 x 8 to 16 x 32, white, green or amber text, an underline, block or bar cursor, and CP437, Latin-1 or UTF-8 characters. Your settings are kept in vt100.cfg in the current folder. In EDIT, the block on the screen is the mouse pointer and the underline is the text cursor. COM1 and COM2 use 3.3 V signals and are not 5 V tolerant, so do not connect them to an RS-232 port. Moving files To send a file to the PicoMite, type XMODEM RECEIVE "name.txt" at its prompt. Straight away press Shift-F12, choose XMODEM send... and pick the file. The PicoMite waits only a limited time, so do not stop to think between the two. To fetch a file from the PicoMite, type XMODEM SEND "name.txt" at its prompt, press Shift-F12, choose XMODEM receive... and type a name for the file. Esc stops a transfer. Known problems • XMODEM sends no file length, so a binary file arrives padded to a multiple of 128 bytes. Text files arrive exactly as they were. • A line made double width loses its right half, which is how libvterm treats it. • A device plugged in where a hub was may not be seen until the CMM2 is restarted. • If a CH340 stops answering a request there is no way out but a restart, as the request has no time limit. What has and has not been tried Tried on a G2 with a real PicoMiteVGA, through a hub and plugged in direct: EDIT, the mouse, OPTION DISPLAY, the bell, restarts, pulling out the lead, and XMODEM of 193KB in both directions. vttest, the standard test of a VT100, passes all of a VT100's features, run on a PC with the program's own code. Tried on a G1 with a real PicoMite: the prompt, EDIT, a restart, and XMODEM in both directions. Not tried yet: COM1 and COM2 with a real device, and vttest's tests of the VT220 and later terminals. Please report what you find. Licences libvterm is under the MIT licence and the Spleen fonts are under the BSD 2-Clause licence. Both are in the licences folder of the zip. The source is in apps/vt100 of the firmware's repository, and the full guide is in Colour_Maximite_2_App_User_Guide.pdf, posted with the release. Edited 2026-11-07 21:56 by matherp |
||||
Wölfi Newbie  Joined: 14/10/2026 Location: GermanyPosts: 40 |
Damn, this is excellent!  A while ago, I remembered how you could program an ATtiny using an Arduino, and thought it would be great to do something similar with the CMM2 and a Picomite. And now this. This is seriously impressive! Is anything similar planned for the PicoMite 3, VGA, or HDMI standalone versions? |
||||
| mozzie Guru Joined: 15/06/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 503 |
And it just keeps getting better After trying with limited success to write terminal programs for the PicoMite, I too would love to see something similar, even a stand alone MMBasic program, that could be run on the PicoMite or PC3 platform as a terminal for programming another Mite  Regards, Lyle. |
||||
| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 12152 |
There will be a standalone version for the RP2350. i.e. a uf2 which runs as a vt100 |
||||
| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2147 |
 |
||||
 Print this page |
 |
The Back Shed's forum code is written, and hosted, in Australia. | © JAQ Software 2026 |
