Raspberry Pi mounted inside Clone?

[wheagy]

Not sure why the second picture didn't show up....here it is.

http://imgur.com/WWxEMbq

Win

[AltairClone]

This is making me want to pick up a Raspberry Pi and start playing! Probably should finish all my other half-finished projects first though!

Mike

[wheagy]

A little more messing around today with Minicom. I uploaded the CPM 2.2 dsk image into a floppy slot on the Clone using Xmodem in Minicom. See pic...
http://imgur.com/Lb0XSL9
This pic shows Minicom running in an xterm in the Raspian window manager, but it works just as well from a command line without the WM.

It took a bit of fiddling. If you're not used to Minicom (which I'm not), Minicom is not quite as easy to use as Tera Term or other GUI type term applications, but the basic functionality needed appears to be there. I also transferred the Clone support package to the RPi, started CPM 2.2 and MBASIC and used the paste file function in Minicom to send/type a BASIC program into MBASIC. Again, it took a bit of fiddling to get it working, but after you understand Minicom, it's fairly straightforward. You can navigate around Minicom relatively fast using key combinations after you learn the basics. I haven't tried cassette or paper tape transfers yet, but I expect they will also work.

I plan to customize the RPi software a little more and then mount the whole mess inside the Clone case. I might also try using the GPIO pins instead of a USB/Serial adapter, as discussed earlier in the thread.

Win

[wheagy]

Another quick update for those interested. I did a little more configuration of the RPi software today so that when power is applied, it boots to a login prompt, but also starts wifi and a tightvnc server. You don't need to login to the RPi at the console. VNC and wifi will work after it boots. This allows you to essentially use the RPi as a headless box and then connect to it from any machine with a vnc viewer, that is on your network. A little more config would allow you to connect from outside your network. VNC requires you to start a window manager, so if you do this from a client machine, you're going to see something like this...
http://imgur.com/s3ylJkB
From my Mac desktop, I also have the RPi configured so that I can see the RPI filesystem and copy files to and from the RPi using the OS X finder. That's Minicom running in an Xterm in the Raspian desktop in the Screen Sharing app on an iMac. If you don't want the Raspian desktop, then I suppose you could just SSH into the RPi from your choice of OSs, but you're likely going to have some kind of WM wrapped around your terminal window anyway, but it would likely be a little more responsive than a VNC session. For the retro purists, you're probably better off connecting a display to the RPi and running Minicom from the command line, as discussed in earlier posts. You probably also want to configure the RPi for a static ip address rather than letting DHCP assign whatever.

This is the current hardware configuration.
http://imgur.com/zayWAot
A powered USB hub is plugged into an RPI USB port. The same hub also supplies power to the run the RPi (yes, this does work). Connected to the hub is a keyboard, mouse, USB/Serial adapter and WIF dongle. If you want to reuse the hub and other peripherals on other projects, you could leave the hub and WIFI dongle, USB/Serial adapter, etc., outside the Clone case and just run a power cable and USB cable out the back of the Clone...or, hide everything inside. You can also substitute ethernet for WIFI if you have an ethernet RPi.

Win

[mham]

Looks like you made a lot of progress this weekend!

I really like the last idea you posted about, remoting into the Pi from another computer. I think i might give that a shot, in which case I would actually consider mounting the pi inside of the clone...