nealcrook
commented
1 year ago Hi Peter, nice job! I tried a similar thing about 18 months ago (using the same mixture of BitLuni and FabGL libraries!) but got stuck on the keyboard support and then distracted by my "Nascom 4" project. I will need to go back to my old code to remember what the problems were, and then learn how you solved them. Also, I want to compare our approaches to the video setup with BitLuni's library.
I hope you will add a photo of the inside of your case. For my experiment, I used a TTgo board with VGA and PS/2 connector, but it had no SDcard which was a drag.
You and I seem to have travelled over lots of the same paths (both in the 1980s and recently).. see my "nascon" anything-to-anything format converter and wav2bin tape decoder (both in PERL rather than Python). Your tape decoder looks more sophisticated; the noise filter seems like a useful addition.
I've been experimenting with a raspberry Pi Pico for another project, and thinking about using one for a Nascom emulator (actually, I want to emulate the whole of Nascom 4 including the MAP80 video/disk board).
If you want to extend your design you'll find adding emulated floppy disk support quite straightforward and you can then run PolyDos (another Anders Hejlsberg creation). I even got it running in the browser with extensions to Tommy Thorne's javascript Nascom emulator (https://github.com/nealcrook/jsnascom).
If you want to talk Nascom things with more folk, come to Nascom-Computers on groups.io
I guess you are an ex-pat as I assume the NASCOM didn't sell in the US. I wonder if you have met Tommy as I suspect he's also in California? I hope your demo goes well at the VCF.
Neal.
PeterJensen
Hi Neal,
I couldn't find your e-mail, so I'm filing an 'issue', which isn't really an issue :)
I just came across your repo the other day. What you're doing (Nascom-4) is super cool.
Back in 1980, I built my own Nascom-2 and basically owe my career to this wonderful machine. Recently, I pulled it down from my Dad's loft, and powered it back up. It still ran! 40+ years later. The casette deck didn't. Rubber bands and acrylic gears doesn't last forever, I guess.
Anyways, a couple of months ago I decided to build a replica based on the ESP32 MCU. The project turned out better than I had expected. I'll be demo'ing it at the Vintage Computer Festival here in Silicon Valley tomorrow.
In case you're interested, I uploaded my code and a first cut at documentation today:
https://github.com/PeterJensen/nascom-esp
In case you're interested.
I forgot to mention, that I've also been trying to restore my stack of old casette tapes. Decoding 1200/2400 Hz audio reliably was a bit of a challenge. I wrote a bunch of python code to do it, and it seems to sort-of work:
https://github.com/PeterJensen/nascom-tape
All the best Peter Jensen