BASIC in 2020 - DIY microcomputer w/ early 90's graphics - Colour MaxiMite 2 (build/test)
Channel: debuglive
Date: 2020-06-21

I've coded BASIC since I was 5 : C64 then QBASIC then VB - so when a sub-100USD boot-to-BASIC touting 16-bit graphics appeared, I decided to build one (aka 5) from beta plans. Anyone who struggled with QBASIC on a 386 or AMOS on an Amiga and just wished it was faster (without poke commands) will probably love this box. It seems promising for late 80's / early 90's sprite based games (like Turtles / SF2) and being BASIC, it's simple and fun to code.  

The CMM2 is purely a DIY hobby box for BASIC lovers and not designed for pro use.  It creates a world similar to the C64 / MSX / QBASIC / BLITZ days.  It natively plays Amiga MOD files, imports PNGs for sprites, fast decodes JPEG, and plays WAV files making it easy / fun for collaboration, game jams, VJ'ing or just noodling about.  It's the BASIC that any early 90's programmer wished they had "back in the day"!

To make one you can source all the parts manually (like I did here) or build it as a kit from numerous places (coming July/Aug).  I've seen a prototype a with surface mount STM (no WaveShare) which may even knock the price lower.  The BASIC is still just-about-slow-enough that you have to work within a SNES / Megadrive (looking) limit, but that is a fun limit to work with and causes the programmer to write some legitimate looking and feeling retro-games / demos.  Personally I still find BASIC the most fun language I've ever come across; and it's easy to show newcomers.  For collab, even though it's offline, the fun of syncing your SD cards and working on routines / resources separately then combining powers in a sit-back-and-test session brings back those old days.

Massive thanks to Peter Mather and Geoff Graham for their fantastic design and dev work.  Cheers to Mauro Xavier for some great demos.