I’m a newbie and I’m trying to draw a simple circle in MMBasic. No Picocalc connected.
CLS ’ Clear the screen
x = 320 ’ X-coordinate of center (adjust for your screen size)
y = 240 ’ Y-coordinate of center
r = 100 ’ Radius of the circle
CIRCLE x, y, r ’ Draw the circle
END
I get an unknown command when the program gets to Circle. I also can’t find any reference to Circle, Pixel or any other graphic commands in the MMBasic 5.05.05 user manual. So I assume that graphics on the windows MMBasic isn’t there.
Is there any real documentation on the graphics on the Picocalc?
Windows MMBasic is quite old and hasn’t been updated. (Not sure when, or if, it will be updated, as it is apparently abandoned.) PicoMite (and PicoCalc) also doesn’t support everything available in MMBasic due to the platform constraints. The PicoMite manual (linked from here) discusses all the commands available on PicoMite/WebMite which are also available on PicoCalc. Not everything is available on PicoCalc though, since it doesn’t support any of the HDMI or VGA stuff.
There are also a few extra commands available on PicoCalc, mentioned here.
Unfortunately, there’s no really good, 100% compatible option to develop MMBasic code for PicoMite without either a Pico module and custom hardware (like people use on TheBackShed) or a Pico module inside a PicoCalc. MMBasic for Linux is probably closer to covering most of the the MMBasic language available on the PicoCalc, but it’s still going to be missing some things (like WebMite functionality) and will support some commands that don’t exist on PicoMite. It’s at least more up to date than the Windows version though. And it has provisions for “simulating” some PicoMite compatibility.
It’s a shame there’s no “emulator” or truly compatible desktop version available, but weirdly it seems like the folks on TheBackShed have no interest in such a thing and would rather just use the hardware itself.
The MMBasic for Windows situation is confusing, there are two artifacts that purport to be MMBasic for Windows:
Artifact 1
This is v5.05 and should really be called MMBasic for DOS; honestly I thought it was, but it looks like under some (all?) circumstances its banner may call it “MMBasic for Windows” despite what the screenshot on the site shows.
This version was developed by Geoff Graham, has no graphics capabilities and is based upon the old MicroMite MMBasic “standard”.
I do not believe this has received any recent love.
This is v5.07.03-b24 and was developed by Peter Mather. For the most part is a “simulation” of the Colour Maximite 2 version of MMBasic. It does include extensive graphics commands but they are not 100% the same as those of the PicoMite with different handling of modes/surfaces/pages/framebuffers.
Peter doesn’t seem to have updated the github repository in 2 years, but I believe the latest beta that I linked is newer than that.
MMBasic for Linux is probably closer to covering most of the the MMBasic language available on the PicoCalc, but it’s still going to be missing some things (like WebMite functionality) and will support some commands that don’t exist on PicoMite. It’s at least more up to date than the Windows version though. And it has provisions for “simulating” some PicoMite compatibility.
I’m trying, but real life is getting in the way .
It’s a shame there’s no “emulator” or truly compatible desktop version available, but weirdly it seems like the folks on TheBackShed have no interest in such a thing and would rather just use the hardware itself.
With some exceptions (such as myself) TheBackShed community is largely made of electronics engineers rather than programmers so there aren’t many people “mucking in”. As a result MMBasic is largely Peter’s labour of love and he does not appear to be hugely interested in desktop development beyond the initial challenge of creating Artifact 2.
I had c-64s back in the day. I went through a few of them. Hell they were only $125. But I finally figured out to use a terminal and write using the basic on the Picocalc when I get it. Thanks to you guys for patience with a newbie. And OLD newbie
.