The only thing I've noticed is that it is very random in the way it fails.
And it may be luck, but when it fails with a monitor, it keeps failing until I connect it to another one, without doing anything else to the board (no config saving or anything).
Same monitors work sometimes, and failed others. And again, can’t explain it, but when it fails with a monitor, if I unplug the board and immediately connect it to another, it usually works, and then if I connect it to the original monitor, it start working. All these operations I mention are done without touching the configuration, just plugging and unplugging the board. That’s why I say it "sticks". I'll see if I'm lucky and can film the whole process, but the occurrence is kind of random...

You guys want to see something interesting?
Check this out:

https://damianvila.com/basicengine/power.m4v

Want to know what's going on in this video?
I just changed the power adapter. That's it!
The first one (the one that doesn't work) is a 5V 2.4A USB power brick (Orico brand).
The second one is the 5V 3A power adapter sold by the company that makes the Orange Pi.
The funny thing is the board works with an Orico brand 5V 2A power adapter I have.

So, it looks it's just an electrical issue. I've never seen a board so picky with its power source.
So my recommendation is: if you see something like the first screen, try another power adapter.
Cheers!

Edit: maybe it's something that happens only with my board, I have no idea. But I was pretty sure it wasn't a problem with the config.ini, because I saw weird behaviours with different monitors without touching the config.ini. Just now I thought of power as a test variable...

It looks like the newest build has an issue with the wait command. It throws an "Illegal value" error and says the input range for wait is (from 0 to -1).

On the bright side my board runs a lot cooler, the main chip is hardly warm now where before I was considering putting a heat sink on it. And the numpad works too! Thanks Uli.

Latest build (basicengine-firmware-h3-v0.89-427-gfc46.zip) works for my board + monitor combination. It's quite amazing seeing the pixels so crisply rendered!

I haven't tried out other monitors to see if I can find a combination that doesn't work.

There are some areas where things don't work, which I guess is expected at this stage. Eg programs I had written for the original BE will make the H3 lockup completely and need a full power-off and power-on to ressurrect. Will see if I can track down a narrow repro.

Exciting!

9 days later

Yeah, and this one also has a(nother) fix for a crash when switching to lower resolution screen modes, so that might help here...

7 days later

Wow! I haven’t logged into the forum in many months and BAM! This is awesome!

Has anyone tried this on a 1600x1200 display, by chance (I have a device to decouple the sound)? In particular I have one old Dell 2007FP that has a BASIC Engine, Color Maximite, and Color Maximite 2 all adhered to the rear of the monitor with Velcro. The Orange Pi has a corner waiting on it 🙂

I’m ordering the Orange Pi Lite from Amazon (more expensive, but I have a gift card...so less expensive for me) as soon as I submit this post.

On a semi-related note: when following a link above to firmware releases, I see an x86 folder. Is there a BASIC Engine release for x86?

Regards,
Mark

    painintheworld On a semi-related note: when following a link above to firmware releases, I see an x86 folder. Is there a BASIC Engine release for x86?

    As per @uli at this thread: https://betest.freeflarum.com/d/16-nightly-builds

    There are nightly builds of the Git master branch available at https://basicengine.org/git_builds/

    There are four flavors:

    BASIC Engine default firmware (basicengine-firmware-default)
    BASIC Engine network-enabled firmware (basicengine-firmware-net)
    BASIC Engine Shuttle firmware (basicengine_shuttle-firmware)
    Hosted build for Linux/x64 (basicengine-hosted-x86_64)

    I should try running the hosted on my Intel Mac, to see what happens... 😆

    Edit: I get an exec format error 😝
    Edit 2: if somebody has the knowledge to adapt the build scripts to Mac OS (or has done so) let me know. I'd love to be able to run it on my Mac, for faster testing of the programs.

      The hosted build is something I have used for debugging the ESP8266 implementation. It tries to use as much as possible of the ESP8266 codebase (including the video driver). It's not really useful unless you are interested in further developing the ESP8266 platform firmware, and I should probably stop building it.

      If you want to use something on your PC that works more or less identical to the H3 build, you should look at the nextgen branch and Makefile.sdl. Building this version requires SDL 1.2, and the probability that it also works on whatever system you have depends on how close your system is to Linux. 🙂

      I am heavily using this version for debugging and development, but I don't want to spend my time supporting a million platforms, so I am not going to provide builds of it, at least not while there is development to do on the H3 platform.

        Thanks for the replies, guys 🙂 As much as I wish that I could help develop BE firmware, that is beyond my abilities, @uli 🙂 I’m so far behind that I’ve only now finally started playing about with the Atari Assembler Editor cartridge I bought in 1983 😂 I reckon I need to go to the storage building and find the Pi-Top that I bought and never used, and make a BASIC Engine laptop in a couple of weeks 🙂

        Hello to all!

        My name is Mauro Xavier and I develop retro games just for fun (hobby). Currently, my main platform is CMM2, and I have seen the BASIC Engine website several times and now with the H3 version, a new world opens up for me.

        I have now bought one and am waiting for it. I hope to be able to contribute with new games, and porting some that I already made for CMM2.

        Soon I will upload some videos about Basic Engine to the H3 platform, but for now, if anyone is interested, check out my YouTube channel:
        https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyIateg9jQoA_hhLCYtR1hA

        uli,

        Thank you very much for all your effort! Now I’m finally going to use the BASIC Engine.

          Mauro_Xavier Oh! Wow! Mauro! You're the one who ported Gautlet to the CMM2!
          Awesome to have you around! 😄
          Hope to hear more from you soon. Welcome to the community! Bemvindo!

            uli Can you make additional documentation for the extra commands and parameters for the BASIC Engine for the H3?

            I will receive my board today and I want to test some things and try porting some games.

            • uli replied to this.

                Mauro_Xavier This whole thing is still very much in development, and creating documentation for stuff that will change tomorrow anyway has not been a priority for me.
                That said, I am doing my best to keep the "basicdoc" documentation up-to-date, which is used to create the reference manual and for the built-in help system. To find out what new features exist, this thread and the new "Development updates" thread are your best bet. When it comes to using the new features, the HELP command will hopefully be able to give you the details you need. I'll see if I can put out a preliminary new manual soon.
                If anything is unclear, just ask (in a new thread).

                    uli Sorry, I do not saw the HELP command, it's perfect for me!

                    I will read all the documentation to not bother you again with obvious questions :p

                    Now my board has arrived and I will test some things.

                      15 days later

                      Great to see you here, Mauro! I look forward to see what you do with this version of the BASIC Engine!

                      I can’t wait until to get my Orange Pi in and get BE loaded up on it. It is running several days behind 🙁

                        uli locked the discussion .

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