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HP 200LX or ? to Learn Programming & Other Uses

stingraze Page Icon Posted 2021-03-21 6:02 AM
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Just a new thing I found.

Some Japanese guy who loves retro gadgets made MIDI play on his HP 200LX.
This video plays the Caste in the Sky music by Hayao Miyazaki.

He used an application called MIDIPLAY.




Edited by stingraze 2021-03-21 6:03 AM
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wyrm Page Icon Posted 2021-03-21 11:14 AM
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Cool!
But based on the title of the topic, I was hoping for a 200LX hooked up to a big brutal synthesizer via a home made midi interface and playing some 80s synthesizer music.
One can dream of something that
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stingraze Page Icon Posted 2021-03-21 9:47 PM
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That will have been cool!
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jorel101 Page Icon Posted 2021-03-24 10:03 PM
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This may interest you then. A 200lx with an MOD player.
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stingraze Page Icon Posted 2021-03-25 3:13 AM
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@jorel101

Thanks! Very interesting! I like these kind of music. I listen to those Commodore 64 Emulation music that's kind of cyberpunk / techno from time to time.

Edited by stingraze 2021-03-25 3:44 AM
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radiance32 Page Icon Posted 2022-02-24 2:24 AM
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Hey,

I agree with C:Amie about the C language.
Although it's a bit more difficult to learn than Basic, Pascal, etc...

It's VERY fast!
(easily 7x to 10x as fast as compiled Turbo Pascal and hundreds of times faster than interpreted BASIC)

An experienced C/C++ programmer can write C code that is *almost* as fast as assembly code.
Run AWAY as fast as you can from JAVA, it's terrible... Not only is it cumbersome and bloated but it's extremely slow. (and it won't run on an 200LX)

C/C++ is the most used language in the open-source world, and it's available on all platforms, from the 200LX to your PC, Mac, UNIX / Linux, microcontrollers like the arduino, ESP etc...
There are also a massive amount of 3rd party C and C++ libraries out there, many open-source, that allow you to easily add support for example handling images etc... to your program.
C and C++ have the most and best quality/speed 3rd party libraries available.

Even though basic, python, pascal etc... are easier to learn, personally, I don't think it's much of a hassle starting your programming experience with learning C.

I recommend to buy a good book, like this one: C Programming: Absolute Beginner's Guide:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789751984/ref=sr_1_5?tag=guru990f-20&keyw...

Start with the basics, write some text/character based programs to learn how the basics work,
how the include files for the standard C libraries that come with your compiler work, how the compiler and linker work, and how to debug your programs.

Once you know the basics, choose a good UI toolkit library (I'd recommend JUCE), learn C++ (it's an object-oriented "extension" of C, it resembles C's syntax, but has additional concepts added/modified for developing large applications more easily, through object oriented programming).
Then, you can develop large modern Windows applications with graphical UIs and compile/run super fast applications on your contemporary PC, that are easy to port to MacOS X and Linux

And, for retro purposes, if you want to develop for the 200LX, download a copy of Borland C++, and you can develop your application on your PC in DOSBOX using your comfortable keyboard and mouse,
and, when ready, just configure the compiler to generate an executable for a 80186 CPU, compile, copy onto your 200LX and you can run your application on it
Or, copy your C or C++ source code to your 200LX, and compile it with Borland C++ installed on your HP 200LX

I would definately recommend learning C, it's, for me, the golden standard of programming languages, and once you're fluent in it, switch to C++ to make the development process faster and easier (especially if your application starts to grow larger). You can even mix C and C++ in one application!

That's my advice If you're going to spend months on doing something, you should make sure you do something worthwhile... Why learn an easier language if you're going to learn the more difficult one later anyway, and the difference in difficulty is'nt even that big...

Cheers,
Radiance




Edited by radiance32 2022-02-24 2:28 AM
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ArchiMark Page Icon Posted 2022-02-24 3:14 AM
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, radiance32.

Greatly appreciate it!

Best,

Mark
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radiance32 Page Icon Posted 2022-02-24 3:29 AM
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Hey stingraze!,

Here's a video from my friend cloudschatze, with a 200LX connected to a bunch of MIDI synthesizers via wireless MIDI! (WIDI)




Check out his other videos on his channel, he has more like that one, and many more of early 90's DOS games connected to a real Roland MT-32 module with a serial MIDI interface from Serdaco...

Cheers,
Radiance

Edited by radiance32 2022-02-24 3:31 AM
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