EMinEx, videotex CEPT-2 emulator

Hi!

Here is my new project.

EMinEx allows you to display pages in the CEPT-2 Videotex format, a standard used in particular by French Minitel terminals from 1980 to 2012.

The Minitel was a true precursor to the consumer Internet, offering a wide range of online services as early as the 1980s. It reached its peak in 1990, with several million users.

Once the Micro-8 has the ability to connect to the Internet, EMinEx will make it possible to access Videotex services that are still running today, including MiniPavi ( www.minipavi.fr ).
And who knows... why not a service dedicated to the Micro-8 one day?!

EMinEx for Micro-8 already allows you to display pages in the Videotex format.

The Videotex format can display 25 lines of 40 characters, in 8 colors!

EMinEx reproduces this display using the EF9345 chip character fonts, which were used at the time in Minitel terminals, as well as in several home computers such as the Matra Alice 32, Matra Alice 90 and Philips VG-5000.

The display is rendered on the fly on the bitmap layer.

A few dozen pages are included with the software.

Enjoy those big pixels and beautiful 8-color graphics!

EMinEx also includes a small "library" for displaying different types of windows: alerts, confirmations, item selection, etc.

This part of the code, located between lines 10 and 680, can easily be extracted and reused in your own projects.

The code is commented (I've done my best!), and you can see this library in action in EMinEx starting at line 2284.

GitHub :  github.com/ludosevilla/EMinEx-for-Micro-8

Short video : 








 

Once again an amazing job ! That is really cool 

Wow...just amazing !

( I’m working on a library for the ESP32-S3 to add Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB connectivity to the Micro 8. I originally wanted it for multiplayer games over the Internet and PC ↔ Micro 8 file transfers, but access to minipavi  ( and Telnet  ) could be very fun !  ) 

The main obstacle to getting the Micro-8 connected to the Internet is, in my opinion, twofold or even threefold:

The first issue is connecting an external device.
There isn’t really a simple way to connect a peripheral with a serial interface to the Micro-8, such as an ESP32, for example.

I had discussed this with Franck, particularly the possibility of using the MIDI ports with an interface like this:
www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/Shields/SH...open-source-hardware
www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/Shields/SH.../SHIELD-MIDI-sch.pdf

The idea would be to connect an Arduino or ESP32 and then use it as a more versatile interface while keeping its original goal.

Alternatively, Franck also mentioned the possibility of connecting directly to the USART TX/RX lines via the SPI connector. But this seemed a little more complicated to implement.

Even though the MIDI port is relatively limited in terms of speed, I think it would still be more than sufficient for small applications on the Micro-8, where the bandwidth requirements would probably be fairly low.

But then again, electronics isn’t my field, so all of this still needs to be confirmed. There may well be simpler ways of doing it... We’ll see!

The second issue is accessing this interface through LOFI.
While it seems to be possible to send pretty much any kind of data (midiSend() function), it is not currently possible to retrieve incoming data in its raw form.

The incoming data is indeed “filtered” (midiUpdt() function), so that only MIDI messages are retained.

So, on the LOFI side, we would need the ability to directly access the data being received, without any processing or filtering.

Finally, the third issue would be making the whole thing actually accessible to the end user.
Ideally, we would eventually have a “simple” box that could be plugged directly into the Micro-8’s MIDI port, without the user having to get out a soldering iron!

The goal would therefore be to have a plug-and-play solution that is as simple as possible to set up.

Unfortunately I cannot work on any IO atm while being in Belgium because I don't have access to the adequate equipment here. As soon as I'm back home I will look at this to help find a working solution.

Here’s a little video for those unlucky folks who don’t have a Micro-8 yet!