Thank you. My problem is coming from somewhere else, but you have given me some tools to track it down with. I'll be able to verify this eventually now, but I think my issue is coming from highlighting several lines and commenting them all with Ctl-Alt-/ (nothing to do with C#) Your video was well explained.
As well as a 68k "MBC" comparable hardware conversion would also be very interesting for the better 16 bit SEGA "Mega Drive", since in order to have more interesting, colorful new software than RETRO "Homebrew" including a BBC Basic like its own "GUI". To be able to use it in the future. In order to be able to have RETRO fun with old 16 bit computers without an expensive KIT ala "32x" system. e.g. via a dollar "PI Pico" chip that could greatly change the "no-limit" of the only 64 KB RAM MD VRAM including some 3D functions as a new "blitter chip".😊
It would be so great to turn this almost "M.S.X. PLUS" video game console into a full-fledged, colorful RETRO learning Z80 BASIC computer together with a modern "MCU" (e.g. STM32F, Atmega). So that the “young generation” can easily program their own “home brew” software with it. Thanks to the good SEGA "VDP" chip, new, nice 2D games would also be possible.
For me personally, learning from an ancient original. Z80 is too strenuous and actually too pointless, but if there is a modern MCU on offer ala this "MBC 2" kit, it becomes interesting to build modern "add-on" modules with an SPI port for it, e.g. for a Vram MATH "Blitter" to expand the only 16 KB "VRAM" with "No limited" ala simple 3D options.
First of all, sorry for my bad English.🥴 Thank you very much for your good BBC Basic project - unfortunately I don't have a single z80 learning computer or learning MCB 2 construction kit at home - but we would all be very, very happy if you did something like a "Z80 mbc 2" project you can “conjure up” the “SMS” system. With such modern hardware, everyone would be able to use the "SMS" system via SD card and a modern PC, even without ancient Z80 stone age hardware.
The limitation with the AVR is the fairly slow ADC that can only sample from a single channel at a time rather than a CPU speed limitation. I don't have any interest in the Teensy do don't know how well it would perform, I'm afraid.
hay that´s some interestin idea, i didn´t even knew that product existed, personally i was removing rust from a big piece made of metal sheet using vinegar since you can find evapo rust in my counstry. I don´t know how better is that in comparision, but the vinegar you need to clean fast before it leaves rust
How well does vinegar work for you? I was actually spurred onto editing this video together because someone on Reddit was looking for advice and wasn't having any luck with vinegar. I live in a hard water area and have to descale my kettle and shower head frequently so always have a box of powder under the sink - I find it works better than vinegar for descaling (not sure about de-rusting) and doesn't make my kitchen smell like a chip shop.
@@benryves well I don't know exactly, but looks like descaler is faster. Also vinegar evaporates faster since is alcohol based, so you need to cover with a plastic film
The gun sees blue more so than any other colour, it will ignore red, and green will have very little impact. This is why it works so well on your blue screen, you have it on the correct colour for the job already, don't need to make it white :)
Phew thanks. Had a little bit of loose plastic get lodged in my R2 button causing it to stick. Felt like an idiot trying to get my controller back together before finding this vid.
Technically, it could do, though you'll need to do some experimentation of your own to get the response you're after. You can measure the resistance over time and see how much the resistance is changing (the force on the pads) as well as how quickly the resistance changes and from that translate to (for example) a MIDI velocity. That's what I did in this demo, though ultimately the ADC in the microcontroller I was using was not fast enough to provide good time resolution to make pads that responded well to quick strikes.
Sadly while I did follow exactly how to do this I cracked off a tiny bit of the button due to the amount of force needed to take them out, that or I simply did it wrong
Oh, I'm sorry! :( I've not encountered it myself yet with the DualShock 2, but I can see how it could happen if the plastic was getting brittle with age.
Was looking for the pinout of the serial adapter, but wasn't able to find a clear instruction in your blog article. The PS2 keyboard adapter is a nice one ...
The serial pinout is at the top of Serial.asm (pin numbers are given for DE-9 ports on the Master System, pin numbers at the other end will depend on what serial device you're connecting to). Pins are described from the context of a DTE (so TxD and RTS are outputs from the Master System, RxD and CTS are inputs to the Master System).
I should probably also mention that if you're going to connect the Master System to anything that uses RS-232 you'd also need an interface circuit to adapt the voltages (e.g. MAX232 chip or equivalent) - I don't think the Master System would be very happy to have -12V dumped onto its controller ports!
As a cheap "Z80 computer "learning system", such a forgotten 8-bit "SEGA Master System" would be much more colorful, better and much cheaper than the previous boring CP/M Z80 "MBC" system. Such a fast "STM32F" MCU or a "PI PICO" MCU "chip" could significantly improve the graphics performance of all ancient RETRO TI9929 VDP "computers" aka ti99/4a, MSX1, Sega master system! Because they can then serve as a modern "VRAM emulator", including "TASK TIME" for further SPECIAL effects!
Thank you very much for your many good videos and the beautiful “BBC Basic” for this video game console! Unfortunately, I only programmed a "C64" with a 6510 30 years earlier, and I would very much like to turn this ancient 8-bit Z80 video game console into a real "pretty" Z80 learning system for all young "freaks" who also have it want to learn. As already said, I imagine using the expensive only 4 chip "Z80 MBC3" system HERE as a new CMOS CPU "addon"! and later the STMF4 "C64 Kungfu Flash" as the "VDP RAM" video "Addon" take in addition. Where a fast 10 Euro "STM32F" CHIP will "give" its internal RAM memory in order to "generate" enough "VRAM" as a new "so-called" good IQ "blitter" like the 16 BIT SNES/Amiga graphics "effects" back then ". Something like this is also interesting - as a DIY PROJECT - for all old "MSX 1" home computers that only have 16 KB of VRAM!
Okay two things, number one I absolutely plan to find a way to hook up a set of ADCs to a standard arduino to make a large number of responsive pads. I've been researching how to make velocity sensitive MIDI pads and this is one of the only useful results I've found. Secondly, what is that microcontroller? Is it the IC from an arduino or something else? Is there any good information on where to get these and how to do it? I'm looking at making some custom PCBs for my projects and having ICs instead of daughter boards would make them much cleaner.
Thank you! The microcontroller here is an ATmega324P which is related to the chips found in some Arduino boards. The Arduino system tends to involve a bootloader preloaded onto that chip, a USB to serial interface to load a program onto the chip via the bootloader and a bunch of libraries to ease development in C, whereas here I'm just using the plain chip with no bootloader and no USB interface (I program it via the ICSP pins and an USBtinyISP) and I don't use the Arduino libraries, I write the code in plain C using avr-gcc as a compiler (the AVR datasheets are very clear on how to access on-chip peripherals like the ADC via their registers with plenty of sample code). In this case as I wanted to be a USB MIDI device I used the V-USB library which implements USB in software, if you search the web for "V-USB MIDI expression pedal with capacitive sensor" you should be able to find a good sample project that gives you an idea of how a USB-MIDI device using a cheaper AVR might look.
@@benryves Thanks so much! This is great info, I can imagine actually making some viable professional-seeming products this way. And I've found the github project by that name, I think I can go from here. Thanks again :)
I have zero knowledge of electronics but found your video interesting.... Out of curiosity is it possible to make the pads slightly larger, say 10cm by 10cm. I'm thinking how this could be used for less able people to stimulate certain reactions. Any response appreciated
I'm not sure how well they'd scale up to larger sizes - you might have a smaller change in resistance so you might need to press harder or have a more sensitive circuit to measure them; alternatively you could try dividing the larger pad into a few smaller pads underneath. Could certainly be interesting to experiment with, at the time I was playing around with this I was trying to replicate the small pads on MIDI controllers so never tried anything bigger than what you see here.
Thank you! Personally I use a VGA cable, but I make sure that when I buy a TV it has a VGA connection on the back. Not all games are VGA-compatible so sometimes I swap to other cables (RGB SCART, S-Video, composite...) depending on the need. If your TV lacks any sort of analogue inputs (so it's just HDMI, for example) then there's a whole array of different products out there that can convert from analogue signals to HDMI - I use a GBS-8200 board with the gbs-control modifications for some of those, but there are commercial products like the OSSC or RetroTINK series. You've also got cheap cables specific to the Dreamcast that contain a VGA to HDMI converter (these unfortunately squish the picture horizontally, but at least they're cheaper and less involved than a dedicated scaler that would handle the picture properly) and if you want to go all-out there's the DCDigital mod that natively outputs a clean digital HDMI signal directly from the Dreamcast. Getting the best picture from old consoles is a complete science in itself, so maybe take a look at the RetroRGB channel here on RU-vid for example as they cover things in much more detail than I could in a comment here!
I can't share links on here but put "bbc basic z80" into your favourite search engine and you should find it quite easily. The original author R. T. Russell hosts a generic CP/M version on his website and source code for it is also available on GitHub should you wish to port it to a different Z80 machine (i.e. not one running CP/M).
@@diego123cruz Assuming you mean BBC BASIC (Z80) that you've downloaded from GitHub, there's a Makefile so "make" should assemble the project, but that's the easy part. As well as development tools (like "make") you'll need z88dk. As I'm predominantly a Windows user I use Debian running inside WSL as my build environment as it tends to be rather easier to get working under Linux. The z88dk page has instructions on how to download and build it under Linux, though this is rather outside the scope of a RU-vid comment and I don't know how much you already know about setting up development tools under Linux.
This is really fascinating! I wonder what the same program would look like on a more modern TV (i.e. one that the Light Phaser doesn't work with). It'd be interesting to see a visualization of how it attempts to parse the gun's position on that.
Thank you! The light gun contains a light sensor (and amplifier) and sends a pulse to the console when it "sees" light (any light) via the controller port's TH pin. The program on the console can poll whether the gun currently see any light, and when it does it can read the VDP's free-running vertical counter register to determine which scanline the VDP is currently outputting to the TV to determine the vertical position. It can also read the horizontal counter register to determine the horizontal position, but as this would count up too quickly for the software running on the console to accurately keep up with this is automatically latched by the hardware when the TH line goes low rather than being free-running. This works on a CRT because the CRT isn't constantly illuminated, only a small extremely bright dot is illuminated at once (the position of which corresponding to the horizontal and vertical counters in the VDP) and it's our persistence of vision that makes it appear as a solid single image (albeit a slightly flickery one, at least here in 50Hz PAL-land). On a modern LCD TV the entire picture is constantly illuminated by a solid backlight which means there's no way to determine the aimed position on when the gun "sees" light as it will constantly see the same light, regardless of where it's aimed (though in practice the spot that you aim at on a modern LCD is a constant much lower brightness, rather than a sudden very bright spot on a CRT when the sweeping beam passes under the point you're aiming at, so it may not have enough brightness to trigger the light sensor in the gun in the first place).
wow, i am so lucky to have found someone who implemented MIDI receive on ATmega328p in C, thank you so much for sharing this!! btw this is an awesome project
No, as the TI-84 Plus CE doesn't have the traditional link port (only USB) and isn't compatible with TI-83 Plus programs. You'd need a USB version of the "modem" and a TI-84 Plus CE-supporting client.
@@S-VideoYes, that should be fine, as the TI-84 Plus is backwards-compatible with the TI-83 Plus. The "modem" part should work on any calculator with the old-style 2.5mm link port, but you may need to search for suitable terminal software for the calculator.
