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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Comparison Chart
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muddy0409 Senior Member  Joined: 15/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 125 |
A bloke tends to be a bit confused with all the different MMs around the place. Is there a comparison chart available showing all the variations of the MM and its many variants by different manufacturers. About the only necessary requirement would be the OS MMBASIC. I have bought 3 different MMs, different manufacturers (2 of which I couldn't make work at all) but have not had any one that will do everything I want/need for a given project. All very confusing for an old fart. I dread the thought that I may have to try a PI for what I want, but then I gotta learn a whole new language (I think). A bit scary. My big objection to the PI is that id don't do anything "out of the box", ie you gotta muck around with OS loading to make it do anything. This is a little like MM. It would be good if a MM would fire up "out of the box" in stead of having to muck around getting it to start. Don't poo poo conspiracy theories. Remember that everything ever discovered started somewhere as a theory. |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9308 |
MM does fire up right out of the box. 
Connect KB, VGA and power, and you should see the MM greeting screen, and have a nice welcoming command-prompt cursor blinking happily at you. I know what you mean about the PI though - I have one, and yeah, it is a lot more intensive getting it working. Although to be fair, it has improved in leaps and bounds since it was first released, and you can make an SD card on Windows now, which will boot up on the PI, and ask what OS you want to install or load - all pretty painless, and a great improvement on what was there in the beginning. But I digress... For true compatibility, you should only go for the true MM clones, by the likes of the original Silicon Chip articles, or Circuit Gizmos, as these are 100% compatible with the original firmware etc, so a program written on one board, will work perfectly well on another board. The exception tends to be the Olmix boardds, which are customized a lot more, don't have the same number of I/O pins, and many are not on the same pins on the PIC32, so I understand(might be wrong on that one), and they have a customized firmware. They are perfectly good product, but not 100% compatible if you see what I am getting at. About the only serious changes are that of the IO pins. All the sound, SD card and VGA + KB should still be exactly the same. [quote]Is there a comparison chart available showing all the variations of the MM and its many variants by different manufacturers. About the only necessary requirement would be the OS MMBASIC.[/quote] Not sure if there is any such chart, and it would PROBABLY be useless with respect to the OS version anyway, as this is constantly being developed and updated, and anyone can update the OS version when Geoff releases a new version, so that would be forever wrong, as the new versions became standard. So long as you are running the latest version at any given time, that should be enough. [quote]I have bought 3 different MMs, different manufacturers (2 of which I couldn't make work at all) but have not had any one that will do everything I want/need for a given project.[/quote] When you say you could not make them work, does that mean you could not even get a response from them on the screen of any kind, or just that you could not work out how to program them to make them do what you wanted? Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| MOBI Guru  Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
I got the CGM off circuit gizmos (a previous version ago) and it worked "out of the box" I'm sure ( a bit long ago now) but I don't remember having to do anything to it first other than plugging in the keyboard and display and of course, the power supply. A list of mutations might be useful however I imagine most of them were/are bug fixes. Unless you are after a list of hardware variations? David M. |
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| muddy0409 Senior Member Joined: 15/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 125 |
The CGM I got from Circuitgizmos (I think I ordered one of the pre release ones) was simply unreadable on the screen, (no brightness or contrast) so it now lives in my bottom drawer, awaiting further investigation, which probably will never happen. The other one was an Olimex Mini MM from Don, in this case the documentation was too far over my head to work out, (Written for engineers rather than tinkerers.) so that too is in the bottom drawer. I s'pose "not working out of the box" may be a bit erroneous, but the simplest point is that I can't make 'em go. (For whatever reason.) Don't poo poo conspiracy theories. Remember that everything ever discovered started somewhere as a theory. |
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| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
If you are willing to try and get the CGM unit going, I'm sure we can pool our collective wits and do it? Just need to establish a starting point. David M. |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9308 |
Hmmmmmmm - very interesting. CGCMM1 or 2 have always worked right out of the box for me... 
True, I have had, and still have a KB error or two, but other then that, everything has always just worked fine. As MOBI has said, between us all, we should be able to get them working to at least command-prompt with little or no issues, really. Have you tried another screen? It is POSSIBLE that the screen you tried them out on, does not like the taste of the VGA from the MM, as it is not a true-VGA - another monitor would isolate that for you, and allow us to detirmine if the MM is outputting something to the screen or not. Most screens should not have an issue, but it is a possibility that your particular screen does not like the taste of the MM for some reason. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| muddy0409 Senior Member Joined: 15/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 125 |
There is something there, just no brightness or contrast. Pretty much totally see-thru. (If that's a technical term) As far as getting it going, not really interested in fault finding. Eyes aren't what they used to be as far as soldering is concerned. So there is a CGMM version 2 now? Is it still totally MM equivalent? Hmmm.....might get one to play with. Don't poo poo conspiracy theories. Remember that everything ever discovered started somewhere as a theory. |
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| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
Hi Muddy, can you tell if what you can "see" on the screen is valid information or just light? If it is real info, it shouldn't be too hard to chase down. sounds like a bad joint or crook component to me. I guess as Groggy says, you have tried a different display? Whereabouts do you live these days? Is there any other forum member in your sector? David M. |
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| MOBI Guru Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 819 |
My eye sight has long deteriorated to the point that reading glasses are no good either, but these dual lens stereo vision magnifiers are a wonder. Without them, I would have given up long ago. They don't need batteries and are only a few dollars at the cheap shops. 
David M. |
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James_From_Canb Senior Member Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 265 |
And there are ones with batteries and high intensity LEDs available from Deal Extreme for not much more. Wonderful things. As to the original question, if different pin assignments is a problem there is a case for using the MM.variable that defines the hardware (can't recall the exact name right now) to look up a table defining variable names like pin1 or p1 and assigning them the appropriate number based on the hardware type. Of course, the variable names would have to be used instead of numbers in the actual code. This all falls apart when there are add-ons like SD cards and extra UARTs that cannot be remapped, but it's a start. James My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. Hedley Lamarr, Blazing Saddles (1974) |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9308 |
Yes, CG have released the new CMM2 for a while now. Still 100% MM compatible, mostly cosmetic changes, such as change of RTC battery type, and location changes etc. More sturdy VGA socket instead of the the little thin surface-mount one, etc. CMM2 Link Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3805 |
Sounds like a bad screen or cable. The 'mites I've tried (Olimex ones) just plugged in and worked. To be fair to the RPi if you don't really want to do setup things (writing SD card etc), just buy ready-made. Again, plug in and go. If you prefer BASIC then a 'mite (or ByVac or other BASIC pre-programmed device) is easier than RPi. John |
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| paceman Guru Joined: 07/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1329 |
Muddy, The very first set of CGCOLORMAX1 boards had the wrong R6 resistor placed at the board 'factory'. They placed a 1K (marked 10B, which is 1K) instead of what should have been 120K. That resulted in the power supplies not working with a 9v input, but being OK with a 12v input or powered by USB. The most obvious problem it caused was MMBasic's RTC not starting properly because the DS1307 wasn't getting it's proper 5v. If you follow the thread Supply fix starting at my post (paceman) on 4th Dec 2012, 5:57pm it'll show you how to fix it - otherwise just use USB or a 12v input. Another issue was that the MMBasic firmware versions 4.0, 4.0A & 4.0B had a timing problem which caused fuzziness and reddish edges on the monitor characters. V4.0 was the current MMBasic version when the original CGCOLORMAX's came out. Geoff fixed the timing issue starting at V4.1. The boards with the incorrect resistor were the very first set and had the RS232 and RS485 chips included - with the later boards those chips were not included. If you have one of these check whether you get the 5v supply coming up properly when it's powered with 9v Vin. If so the fix can be just to use 12v Vin or USB for power and upgrade MMBasic to the latest V4.4. Greg |
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