Hey folks, noob here

[Bumblemittens]

Thanks for letting me into the group, electronic hobbyist and ham operator here, I'm very much into 8 bit, z80 mainly, got my hands on an Emma II 6502 trainer, Nintendo Gameboy dev'ing but more recently got into the psion organiser II, I love gadgets especially when there's a user port involved, I have some plans for my organiser but realise I know nothing about I of 6303, progress is pretty slow going but hey I'm learning, I have an XP and an LZ

ATB
Shaun

[Martin]

Hi Shaun

Out of interest, we developed an Organiser II data / contact logging programme for amateur radio enthusiasts (here) and created a thread for users (here).

Oh and welcome
Sincerely Martin

[Lostgallifreyan]

When I look at my own ASM code, I realise I am still a noob. Always will be. All it takes is a few months, and I might as well be looking at something someone else did. Solving the puzzle is one thing, remembering every turn taken, quite another. I get lost in my own maze all the time.

[Lostgallifreyan]

Thanks for letting me into the group, electronic hobbyist and ham operator here, I'm very much into 8 bit, z80 mainly, got my hands on an Emma II 6502 trainer, Nintendo Gameboy dev'ing but more recently got into the psion organiser II, I love gadgets especially when there's a user port involved, I have some plans for my organiser but realise I know nothing about I of 6303, progress is pretty slow going but hey I'm learning, I have an XP and an LZ

ATB
Shaun

Any familiarity with the Raspberry Pi? I have long wanted to port my Win32 API hosted phase mod synth to a Pi, but I can't motivate myself to get away from what I know, because I don't have any spare lifetimes lying around. If I had some basis for efficiently hosting raw C code, compiled for a Pi, and accessing some existing framework to handle audio and MIDI ports, I might have at it. Just having good serial portage might get me there long enough to learn something useful enough to stay.

BTW, if you really like the retro approach, it's worth staying with the XP and a two-line comms link. What you lose in later facility you gain in raw speed (and less eye strain). You'll also end up learning methods that apply to ALL of the series 2 Organisers so you'll get more out of the LZ too. Too much high level function convenience is overrated.. Better to build on primitive foundations, they go further and faster in the end.

[Bumblemittens]

@Lostgallifreyan, I have some familiarity with Raspi, it has its uses, I have used a pi 3 as a remote SDR receiver, and currently use a zero with a mmdvm hat for DMR, woul like to get into Pico's but overall my preference is esp8266 & esp32 for their capabilities, speaking of midi and synths, I have got the ay 3 channel sound board on one of my z80 sbc's and plays PT3 files

[Lostgallifreyan]

@Lostgallifreyan, I have some familiarity with Raspi, it has its uses, I have used a pi 3 as a remote SDR receiver, and currently use a zero with a mmdvm hat for DMR, woul like to get into Pico's but overall my preference is esp8266 & esp32 for their capabilities, speaking of midi and synths, I have got the ay 3 channel sound board on one of my z80 sbc's and plays PT3 files

Ok, that went over my head slightly faster than an unladen swallow, but I take it that with a Pi4B I'd need to add some hardware to get the audio and MIDI. Not just do low-level things with the GPIO port.. The thing is, my synth will do 24 bit audio, or 16, and likes sample rates to be 48000, for best HF content, and I'm not sure if this is too much to ask of a Pi. I imagine not, as of Pi4, but if you think it is, let me know, it at least means I can avoid going down a blind alley for too long. A complex phase mod synth is a beast anyway, the method is inherently efficient, but with filters added it needs a fast CPU to get more than a few voices of polyphony. This also keeps me staying with the hardware I built it for.

[Bumblemittens]

@Lostgallifreyan years ago i had a wolfson audio card for raspi, it could supposedly sample and playback 192khz cd quality, my ears cant so it never got much use, that was for rpi 2b, now we on rpi 4 im sure there is some better adc/dac's out there, something i have no experience of though sorry

[Bumblemittens]

Hi Shaun

Out of interest, we developed an Organiser II data / contact logging programme for amateur radio enthusiasts (here) and created a thread for users (here).

Oh and welcome
Sincerely Martin

Yeah i have been playing with Hamlog, I like the concept of a pocket sized logbook especially for portable ops but i need to sit down an fully read the operating instructions, prefrence is pen and paper logging, that's all my brain can cope with these days

ATB
Shaun

[amenjet]

I've used the Pi Pico quite a bit recently and it is a really good bit of kit. It's based on the RP2040 microcontroller and has 2Mbytes of flash, 260K or so of RAM and two cores. It's also got the PIOs, which are fast state machines/basic processors. It's also overclockable up to 270MHz, or double the standard. It's sort of 5V tolerant on some GPIOs. There's 8 of those. It's got DMA so the processors don't need to move data between cores or peripherals. What can it do?

Have a look here:https://hackaday.com/tag/raspberry-pi-pico/

Some highlights:

Generate PAL video out of GPIO pins https://hackaday.com/2023/01/24/generat ... d-pi-pico/
Fancy an oscilloscope? https://hackaday.com/2022/11/06/a-pi-pico-oscilloscope/
Pretend to be a RAM chip on a Z80 bus in firmware https://hackaday.com/2023/03/08/pi-pico ... mory-back/
Logic analyser with 21 digital channels with up to
120 MHz capture speed, 3 ADC channels at up to 500
KHz, and hardware-based triggers https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/need-a- ... your-pico/
Create a bidirectional bit banged ethernet link https://hackaday.com/2022/12/03/bit-ban ... a-pi-pico/
Be all of the support circuitry for a 6502.
USB microphone https://hackaday.com/2021/12/25/mico-is ... a-pi-pico/
Run Linux by emulating a RISC-V processor: https://hackaday.com/2023/03/19/rp2040- ... emulation/
Emulate a transputer https://hackaday.com/2021/08/05/raspber ... ransputer/
Replace the insides of a Psion organiser,
emulating a 6303
Be a datapack https://hackaday.com/2021/08/26/proto-p ... y-pi-pico/

Yes, the last three are my projects.

I'm not sure if it does MIDI in hardware, but it probably could, using the PIOs. Audio, again, it probably could in firmware, or PIOs. Hmm, someone has done MIDI with it: https://hackaday.com/2022/08/20/picoste ... ly-formed/
MIDI over I2C:https://hackaday.com/2022/02/15/you-can ... y-need-to/

It's cheap too, at about £4 for a Pico and 89p for an RP2040, but you do need a crystal and some passives to get it to run and a flash chip. The flash chip being external to the processor means when using the RP2040 you can add up to 16Mbytes of flash.

The documentation is excellent and there's an SDK that lets you write in C and it is IDE neutral. I've moved to a command line toolchain with no IDE and its fast going round the loop. You can do source level debug over SWD using a Pico as the debug probe, so no need to have a dongle for the SWD stuff.

Downsides? It could do with more GPIOs and the RP2040 package is an absolute pain to solder (QFN-56). More RAM would be nice but you can add an external SPI RAM.

You might have gathered that i like it.

Andrew

[Bumblemittens]

I've used the Pi Pico quite a bit recently and it is a really good bit of kit. It's based on the RP2040 microcontroller and has 2Mbytes of flash, 260K or so of RAM and two cores. It's also got the PIOs, which are fast state machines/basic processors. It's also overclockable up to 270MHz, or double the standard. It's sort of 5V tolerant on some GPIOs. There's 8 of those. It's got DMA so the processors don't need to move data between cores or peripherals. What can it do?

Have a look here:https://hackaday.com/tag/raspberry-pi-pico/

Some highlights:

Generate PAL video out of GPIO pins https://hackaday.com/2023/01/24/generat ... d-pi-pico/
Fancy an oscilloscope? https://hackaday.com/2022/11/06/a-pi-pico-oscilloscope/
Pretend to be a RAM chip on a Z80 bus in firmware https://hackaday.com/2023/03/08/pi-pico ... mory-back/
Logic analyser with 21 digital channels with up to
120 MHz capture speed, 3 ADC channels at up to 500
KHz, and hardware-based triggers https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/need-a- ... your-pico/
Create a bidirectional bit banged ethernet link https://hackaday.com/2022/12/03/bit-ban ... a-pi-pico/
Be all of the support circuitry for a 6502.
USB microphone https://hackaday.com/2021/12/25/mico-is ... a-pi-pico/
Run Linux by emulating a RISC-V processor: https://hackaday.com/2023/03/19/rp2040- ... emulation/
Emulate a transputer https://hackaday.com/2021/08/05/raspber ... ransputer/
Replace the insides of a Psion organiser,
emulating a 6303
Be a datapack https://hackaday.com/2021/08/26/proto-p ... y-pi-pico/

Yes, the last three are my projects.

I'm not sure if it does MIDI in hardware, but it probably could, using the PIOs. Audio, again, it probably could in firmware, or PIOs. Hmm, someone has done MIDI with it: https://hackaday.com/2022/08/20/picoste ... ly-formed/
MIDI over I2C:https://hackaday.com/2022/02/15/you-can ... y-need-to/

It's cheap too, at about £4 for a Pico and 89p for an RP2040, but you do need a crystal and some passives to get it to run and a flash chip. The flash chip being external to the processor means when using the RP2040 you can add up to 16Mbytes of flash.

The documentation is excellent and there's an SDK that lets you write in C and it is IDE neutral. I've moved to a command line toolchain with no IDE and its fast going round the loop. You can do source level debug over SWD using a Pico as the debug probe, so no need to have a dongle for the SWD stuff.

Downsides? It could do with more GPIOs and the RP2040 package is an absolute pain to solder (QFN-56). More RAM would be nice but you can add an external SPI RAM.

You might have gathered that i like it.

Andrew

Hi Andrew, thanks for the links, I have a Pico, I've tried installing the dev environment but will hout success both on win7 and Linux mint, they fail on the python version and it seems the version I need is not available for my platform, they say the easiest way s to use Raspi to program Pico, I'll keep trying but yeah I'm interested in the datapak Pico app, my first choice would be esp32.
Right now I'm just trying to understand the top slot with a view of creating an 868mhz data link

ATB Shaun