Current programming hardware..you'd be surprised...

[Douglas]

Hey everyone!

I wanted to discuss a hardware device that might be of some interest to the people here. Although this item isn't commodore related, per se, it does have an interesting origin that does in a funny way relate to the commodore.

Has anyone here ever heard of a "Basic Stamp" micro controller or know what one is?

In the current electronics program that I am going through, an entire semester was spent interfacing and programming a Basic Stamp and I was thrilled to learn how similar it was to using my old Commodore computers.

Anyways, a Basic Stamp is essentially a small computer on a circuit board that has it's own power supply and input/output ports (like the commodore user port) that you program and interface to devices to do things such as monitor a sensor, move a robot, etc. Although it may sound complicated, it is actually really easy to learn to use and program. Imagine that you took your commodore 128, shrunk it down to the size of a half of a paperback book, added a battery to power it, and removed the monitor....that is in essence what a Basic Stamp is.

Now here's the cool part...you program it in BASIC...yeah, that's right, the same type of BASIC that we all know from the Commodore.  And here is the really cool part, the company that makes the Basic Stamp was started by the same guy who programmed the legendary ISEPIC cartridge for the Commodore 64!  How Cool is that!  This is why the programming language reminded me so much of programming a Commodore, this guy got his start on a Commodore and the two BASIC'S are very similar.

Anyways, there are a million and one things that you can do with these things and they are an GREAT way to get your feet wet in electronics so if you are at the least bit interested, check out their website here...

http://www.parallax.com/

Click on "Basic Stamp" for more info (I suggest the BOE Basic Stamp). Also for fun click on "Company' and then "About Parallax" to read about the owners ISEPIC beginnings.

Too Cool!!!

Douglas

[RobertB]

Has anyone here ever heard of a "Basic Stamp" micro controller or know what one is?

I haven't heard of that one, but there are the "Propeller" (also done by Parallax) and "Serial Wombat" discussions on the PETSCII forums.

And here is the really cool part, the company that makes the Basic Stamp was started by the same guy who programmed the legendary ISEPIC cartridge for the Commodore 64!

Now there's a connection.  I still have the ISEPIC package sitting in my kitchen. 

           Prepping for the SCCAN meeting,
           Robert Bernardo
           Fresno Commodore User Group
           http://videocam.net.au/fcug
           The Other Group of Amigoids
           http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

[Douglas]

Yeah, I have one also!

Douglas

[brain]

There are lots of add-ons for the BASIC Stamp, as well.

Parallax also sells the Ubicom microcontrollers (75MHz top speed, 75MIPS) and there is SXBASIC for them.

There is an AVR BASIC for the Atmel AVR line as well, and development boards for them.

NOt that BASIC Stamp is not great, but there are literally dozens of cheap, full featured 8-bit controller options in the market today.  Many CBM projects, like uIEC, SD2IEC, and 1541-III are all possible because of cheap CPUs like the PIC, AVR, and Ubicom.

Jim

[airship]

I've got a BASIC Stamp 2.0 and some support hardware & software that I picked up and messed around with before I got back into Commodores a couple of years back. There's another connection - messing around with it made me nostalgic for the real thing.