Thanks Jan for this honest video review. The Agon is a great little board. It's been an absolute delight writing the official Quark firmware for it, and am pleased that it is generally being well received by the public - in a way it validate's the design decisions that we made early on. Am currently working on feature requests and bugs to make it even better.
Hey, glad you liked my little video (more to come, probably). Thanks for helping bringing this to life, it works amazingly smooth already! Can't wait for future updates and things the community (hopefully) is going to come up with down the line!
I think the greatest feature of this small micro-controller system is the easily programmable GPIO pins, ready to be used right out of the box even by beginners and tinkerers.
@@rog2224The Agon specs sound good, but that's only abstract potential. It doesn't do anything until people make software for it, and more people are making software for the X16.
Yep, there's a video on UA-cam basically mocking the 8-Bit Guy in a humorous manner with this Agon Light. lol They should have called it "A Gone Light" or "Argon Light" for a more memorable name. ;)
I like this aspect of it too: it's old school in that there is no memory caching in the CPU - all memory loads are done against external RAM memory. So if one is devising real time control task, then one's code will always execute with absolute determinism - non of the vagaries of modern CPUs where a cache miss results in an order of magnitude execution slow down.
The great thing with hobbyist computers and/or microcontrollers is that there's something for almost everyone. Full disclosure: I bought an AgonLight2 from Olimex, which is based on the Agon Light design but with a number of tweaks such as USB-C power connector and USB keyboard connector. Though the latter needs a USB keyboard that supports the old PS/2 keyboard protocols; finding a brand new USB keyboard that works with the AgonLight2 is a challenge. Thanks for the video, Jan.
"Needs a USB keyboard that supports the old PS/2 keyboard protocols" So its actually a PS/2 interface with a USB connector? Why don't they just put a PS/2 connector there instead then?.
It looks like USB->PS2 converters exist for perhaps 5 bucks. I'd be careful though, it sounds like you need just a simple electrical converter, not an adapter with a chip in it that'll convert a true USB protocol to a PS2/2
Yeah, it's insanely impressive piece of hardware even before considering the price and how quickly it arrived. The only real "weakness" of the design is that the ESP32 (VDP/Audio) is connected to the eZ80 via a 384 kbps serial link, but it doesn't matter for most things and it's a large part of what allows making it simple and cheap - the other way would be to use double-ported memory like his Cerberus project, but that would have greatly increased both cost and complexity which was not suitable for this. AFAIK the audio functionality available via BASIC isn't very impressive yet and while the video capabilities have progressed further the ESP32 "VDP" is far more capable than what is available via BASIC right now, it's very much work in progress (if you want you can run the ESP32 directly temporarily and test the "full" capabilitities of FabGL+ESP32-Pico-D4 including some games, then go back to the "VDP" firmware). I have the Olimex version, it's "cost reduced" (including sligtly less ESD protection though the connector is better proected) but also include some minor physical improvements but is 100% compatible - the original maker has a walk through of the Olimex changes where he discuss the tradeoffs they did and confirms this. He also have design and PCB walkthrough of the original design and several other information videos, really good stuff.
Bought one from Olimex in Bulgaria, thanks for the video! :) 50€ for the board + 10€ for their metal case + 15€ for express shipping (I think their lowest rate was 9€) + 19% VAT on top = ~90€, still quite affordable.
I wonder if the folks behind the creation of the BBC's Computer Programme would ever think that their Basic was still going to be used in the 2020s... :P
7:56 - MOS is a reference to the OS of the BBC Model B, not the chip manufacturer. The Agon's surface personality is very similar to that of the Beeb. It stands for Machine Operating System.
Yes, in terms of architecture, I pay homage to the BBC Micro (and Tatung Einstein). Most of the low level stuff is handled by the MOS, such as file IO, and then there is a thin interface for apps programmers, including BBC BASIC for Z80. The VDP itself accepts BBC BASIC VDU strings to control it.
That's a pretty neat system, especially since it's open source. The eZ80 is a pretty cool processor. Yes, it's 8-bit, but unlike the original Z80 that had a 16-bit address bus, which meant you had get into complex memory paging gymnastics when using more than 64KB of RAM. This means it can have 16MB of RAM in a flat address space. The Z80 used pairs of 8-bit registers for addressing. The eZ80 adds an an extra register to each pair to mail a 24-bit tripple. This vastly reduces the amount of work the processor needs to do to access the full address space. Offloading the graphics to the co-processor should take a lot of demand off the CPU too. I'd love to see someone package one in a keyboard like the Raspberry Pi 400.
@@thebyteattic I really, really hope that happens! And the Argon 'Heavy' - I'd love to see some joystick ports and maybe a nice sound chip?? Anyway, thanks for this 👍🏻
It's kind of a different approach (at least to what the X16 was aimed to be when project started). I like this one better for its "for the masses" and open source attitude but the X16 has a point in that it tried to be true to the old school systems in more ways (which obviously kind of failed at this point because of feature creep and unavailability of the intended old school chips).
The problem with the X16 is that it has too many chips and needs old chips as well. If I wanted to build something with old chips I would rather build a C64 with one of the new boards now available …
The currently available X16 is the developer board, while the Agon doesn't even have developers yet. The only way the Agon will come out ahead is if it can catch up to the X16's user base and software library.
Neat the eZ80 is running inside the latest Ti-84 Plus CE graphing calculators at 48Mhz. Its a 24-bit CPU with an 8-bit Z80 mode, which is probably what this board is using. Nice chip. Glad they still make it.
I remember seeing the original Z-Z-81 computer at a small electronics shop in Northern Ontario around 1980 or 81, and Ialso recall that every fledgling computer nerd from Lakehead University was lining up on a Saturday morning to buy the first 'home' computer. We've come a long way since those days.
Ok, so I started watching this video with my bowl of cereal and the banana scene took me off guard.. I laughed so loud, I almost choked... thanks Jan, brilliant..😀
Yeah banana has spiced it up! But now people has got used to it and now you have to eat something in every future episode Jan. 😉 Btw I still remember your celebration of passing some number of subscribers with a beer. 👍
Moin Moin! I really like the idea of this machine even though I'm not having the capabilities to learn BASIC and code programs myself. After all, this was the idea behind the BBC Micro too, having low cost machines that teach kids how to code. It's true that these days there are Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and yes even A.I. for that purpose but given how expensive the Pi line of computer has gotten, having this is a neat alternative for that very purpose.
You don't really need single board computers to learn programming though. I think most start with html, css and javascript these days since you hardly need to setup anything, most already have the bare minimum on their pc right now, a text editor, storage and a webbrowser. There are also plenty websites that allow you yo fiddle with html, css and javascript in real time as well. But learning with real hardware, interacting with the outside world has something special though, makes it more fun and real. Like getting the data from a joystick, reading an ADC or temperature, controlling a heater or motor etc.
I use to use the MOTOR ON / MOTOR OFF cassette drive command to control external hardware. I remember turning a cheap r/c car into a radio controlled firework igniter (by wiring a relay and nichrome wire up to it instead of the motor for r the wheels) and wrote some basic to have the computer light them off at midnight on new years. Old skool GPIO lol
It’s weird I just learned about the designer Bernardo Kastrup a few weeks ago, but not for computers. He’s also a leading philosopher studying the nature of consciousness. (Not a joke!)
Yep, I realized he was a well-known philosopher shortly after I checked out the previous Cerberus project. A true multi talented man! :D (I studied philosophy at uni for a bit, so I actually read some of his stuff in the meantime and it's good!)
another aspect of the Agon (that was not covered) is that the Zilog eZ80 CPU actually has 24-bit registers and a 24-bit enabled execution mode, called ADL. The CPU boots up by default into 8-bit Z80 compatible mode but an instruction will switch to ADL mode. With 24-bit registers it is then possible to address up to 16 MB of memory. Now the Agon has 512K of memory so if wanted to make use of all that, would switch into 24-bit mode to do so. In addition there is a special base addressing register. It is possible to set up multiple 64K areas in memory, load 8-bit Z80 programs into these, and when a given 8-bit program is executing, the register's base address is added onto the generated 16-bit adresses to arrive at 24-bit address which is then used on the memory bus. So can write 24-bit ADL program that acts as a multi-programming hypervisor for running multiple 8-bit Z80 program; with 512K there could be up to 8 such 64K Z80'zones
forgot to mention that Zilog has an SDK that can be used with the eZ80, which has a 24-bit C compiler, assembler, and linker. This is Windows 32-bit software but I was able to run it under WINE on my Linux PC. I was able to likewise invoke the C compiler, assembler, and linker fron a bash command line so I will be able to fashion a CMake file and do development with my Jetbrains CLion IDE. An Agon community member has developed a HexBin downloaded ad and execute utility that is available on github - is why is necessary to join the FaceBook Agon group so can stay up on things like that.
YESSS! This is a great idea! Maybe you can join us over at the developers forum? I can't post the link here (or UA-cam thinks I am spamming), but you can find it easily.
@@JimLeonard kind of seems to sit in that space sort of like the intel 8088. That CPU did 8-bit memory fetches yet could address up to 1MB. Because it broke the 64K memory address barrier and had 16 bit math operations it tended to be labeled a 16-bit CPU. The eZ80 is operating like a Z80 in its default mode, doing 8-bit memory fetches and such. The reason it out performs actual Z80 is due to internal pipelined execution of instructions. So when the Agon is turned on and boots up it very much is behaving as simply a faster Z80. It's kind of a nice bonus that it can switch into this 24-bit mode if one desires to dabble with that.
@@JimLeonard Whether a CPU is 8-, 16-, 32-bits and so on, is determined by the width of its data bus. Agon light has a very accurately and unreservedly 8-bit CPU.
Glad you ate the "Banana for scale" old chap! (That weak americanism gets right on my mammaries!) BBC Basic you say? The finest version of basic available, and the Basic I used in my first paying coding job!
That Animal game was one of my first experiences with a computer of any kind. My friend Bob's father was a High School teacher and he had brought home a Terminal of some sort, with a 300 baud acoustic coupled modem. It connected to the University of Irvine (California) computer. This was 1974 or so. I believe it was using one of the original multi user OS's. I remember Hangman was another program this thing would run. It was so slow filling the screen at 300 b. We sat there amazed.
Yes! I remember using a similar program on my C64 as a kid. I spent quite a bit of time with that, fascinated by the possibilities of those new "computer" things! (Although obviously it was only my personal first encounter with them.) :D
I enjoyed the “”getting nervous “ section. Maybe you must consider a frequent“news update” session regarding these hardware companies. Even short briefs / snippets will be interesting.
Excellent! After all this time it's still odd to me when I see BBC Basic starting in something other than Mode 7 or without the Beeb banner. PS: FWVLIW 'MOS' was the official name for post Basic 2.0 BBC firmware.
I remember the 'guess the animal ' program being used as an example of AI / machine intelligence in the BBC's TV series - featuring the BBC Micro, of course - Making The Most of The Micro.
Calling it AI is a bit of a stretch 😂 It was basically a binary decision tree populated with a few dozen animals, and if your one wasn’t one of the built in ones, you could enter your own question to distinguish your animal from the last guess (adding a new node to the tree).
Your video production has gotten quite good! The banana gag had me laughing. And this device looks pretty amazing, much more interesting to me than the other 8-bit retrocomputers that have come about lately. I'd be super interested to know if there's any provisions for games to provide alternate "firmware" for the Arduino as well, or if the intention is to keep the fiction alive of it being akin to a custom ASIC.
Thanks! I think the whole purpose of the Agon project is its complete openness and its friendly price point. Chances are there's going to be a lot of modified firmwares down the line if it catches on with the community (which I sincerely hope it does). :)
it's kinda common with these kind of systems to use some more modern microcontroller like that. it's also pretty common with some arduino peripheals, it's just the cheapest way.
Рік тому+4
Yeah, but not so much choice ... If you want to do a custom graphic/audio solution for your true 8 bit machine, you either use a legacy part (hard to get - especially in volume -, often expensive, unreliable, maybe can do only composite/etc not even VGA), your own logic from discrete chips (horrible large, expensive, limited capabilities - hey, even just doing a ZX Spectrum ULA in discrete logic is a mess ...), logic inside a CPLD/FPGA (not a bad choice, but probably more expensive), or maybe the cheapest and most common solution: do that with an MCU ... However for that it must be clocked quite high, indeed. Getting quite fast "true/real" 8 bit new CPU is not an issue even today, but things like these are ...
@ well one way would be to use a second 8 bit chip, or just doing the drawing on the main cpu zx80 style. would be easier at 18mhz anyway. the output from such a machine would be less interesting though.
Рік тому+1
@@lasskinn474 Still there is hardware needed to have a framebuffer to generate video signal from, now without anything to do with the actual drawing itself. That itself is already complicated enough without a custom IC for this purpose especially because of the nature of dual-access of that memory from both of CPU and the video signal generation. Dual-port RAM is still not so cheap to get, and would rise the cost of the project significantly. Yes, probably a ZX-81 like approach, where the CPU does the video signal generation as well (with basically only a shift-register or so being external component) would work, but it would seriously hurt the performance and usability. Indeed, this CPU is much faster than the one in the ZX81 but also VGA requires much higher pixel clock than a PAL or NTSC TV signal.
@ you can do 480p vga with an 8 bit atmel. the vert/hz blank timing is the same anyway as for composite. if you have faster ram the dual port ram isn't that big of a problem, you do just the same as c64 did to get around then, do every other clock. the problem is that none of these approaches will make basic games look as good as having something thats a command controlled gpu basically. you could do stuff like elite pretty well with just sharing the ram though, but it'd be still like doing elite well in the sense that a 8 mhz pc runs elite pretty well in cga.. I get it that some people want to code in the z80 or 6502 for learning hands on such a thing, but really what would they know if the 8 bit cpu was emulated on the esp32 as well. someone should make a nes based thing with extra ram through cartridge pins, have some custom loader on it with a switch/option to load code from sd card or emulated famidisk system and have it manufactured by the chinese NOAC factories. that would be the absolute cheapest 'new' 8 bit home micro with graphics capabilities built in if produced in some kind of scale, an actual way to get access to an era correct 80's graphics chip still in production.
Yes, thanks! One of the English words I ALWAYS struggle with. I think I pronounced it in approximately three different ways in this video... I'll try to remember for next time! :D
I’ve found copying data onto SD cards on a Mac a huge pain. They leave so many hidden files and junk on the cards. You have to do a dot_clean and or use cleaner utilities and it still only gets you part of the way there. The only way I’ve found that can delete the .Trashes folder is a pc. I’ve also had lots of problems with formatting the cards as FAT on a Mac. I just use a pc now for all things sd cards unfortunately.
This is maybe the first new 8 bit computer I might buy. It's cheap enough that it's in the inexpensive toy range. Any idea if the sound is capable of more than just a square wave? If so, it's a bit of a shame.
I guess it should be capable of doing more than square waves. The limitation is the BBC BASIC interpreter in this case, the ESP could do different wave forms when addressed directly I think. (But obviously I'm not the designer of the device and I'm not sure about how that works exactly!)
@@JanBeta That's exactly what I was hoping you'd say. I'm very impressed with whomever designed this. From what I can see this has the spirit of Commodore in it combined with a modern OSS soul. It's sort of what everyone hoped the successor to the C64 would have been with the graphics and sound.
@@messmer777 The X16 seems like a very different beast than this. From what I can tell the X16 is more like what a 8 bit machine would have been if it had an expansion bus ala the IBM PC. This is more along the lines of what an 8-bit computer would have been if a Raspberry pi had a child with a commodore 64. Both serve some different markets. I'm a bit more excited about this, especially given I can buy one _now_ for $50!
2 things I dont understand with all these new 8bit computers. Why use PS/2? I have not seen one of those keyboard for like 15 years. VGA, I have not had any VGA monitors for like 6 years. Ive heard HDMI is under some license, but ive seen people use HDMI connectors, and display the video anyway. Otherwise its a nice unit :)
This is really interesting, recently I have seen two other 8 bit computers on you tube that are new to the market like the AGON is. Maybe 8 bit systems are making a come back which would be nice to see. If other people are like me, they have grown tired of 32 & 64 bit machines that are really only suited to videos and gaming and not much else.
@@BreakIntoProgram didn't know that Tatung Einstein has used BBC basic... Was there some connection between Amstrad CPC Locomotive Basic and BBC basic too?
@@rastislavzima I'm not sure about any link. Amstrad CPC BASIC was from Microsoft and BBC BASIC from Acorn. Or am I misunderstanding your question completely?
@@SteveTeeIridium-Plus Amstrad CPC Basic was from Locomotive software not from Microsoft. I got the impression that in the past I have red about some connection and now I looked at wikipedia and they say too that it was very much influenced by BBC basic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_BASIC
We use only the ESP32-PICO-D4 core, without the antenna and the other stuff. This is cheaper and makes some extra GPIO lines available for other purposes.
Does that BBC Basic have assembler compatibility? If so, that would be a full Z80 assembler instead of 6502? BTW, the triangles demo so reminds me of my Amiga A1000. Those were the days!!
Be interested to see you review the Picomite VGA and maybe make some comparisons. It uses one ARM CPU to run the graphics and the other to run MM Basic, so it's pretty quick.
I had a BBC Model B which run BBC Basic and had a MOS Technology 6502 cpu that cpu was around 2 mhz, I remember the double track double disk drive unit cost more than the BBC model B lol I bet this would play Elite
Actually quite cool. It would be even cooler if a "compile" feature was implemented for BBC Basic. Make it similar to GfA Basic, in that you can develop code for it interpreted, and when finalized, you can compile it and run your code as a fast binary. The eZ80 is a 16 Mb linear addressed CPU. Increasing the size of BBC Basic should only be minor even with 512K RAM. There should also be a direct bus interface to the address, data and control lines to the eZ80 instead of just GPIO, so you can expand it. Also, why not add a network interface? The eZ80 has most of the hardware to implement a network interface. It just needs a minor amount of parts to fully implement one. Heck, the prototyping board has one, schematics and all. ZiLog's developers kit even has the code to implement many types of interface devices. Perhaps a "AGON Max" could be made with many more features? I'd pay for it.
🙂👍 We are tentatively calling the next one 'Agon Heavy™'. We really wanted to bring Agon light down to $50 cost. As it turns out, we beat that goal, as Olimex is _selling_ it, margins and all, for EUR50. So maybe we will follow (some of) your suggestions in the next one and give ourselves a little more latitude! Thanks.
The current BASIC runs in a 64K segment on the Agon in traditional Z80 mode. A 24-bit version is planned. No plans for an official BASIC compiler, though someone may take up that challenge.
@@BreakIntoProgram About ten years ago, I was working on a project to create a superset of Sinclair Basic on the eZ80 (eZXSparky). I had a lot of it done, and it was running great, but I never had a chance to finish it. Life kind of interrupted. I was using the original eZ80 development kit.
This might have legit uses outside a hobbyist scene. The low power consumption and not needing a lot of cooling could make it ideal as a datalogger or a controller for industrial machinery when something more advanced than an arduino is needed or desirable.
there is no onboard CPU memory caching - all memory loads are directly against external RAM memory. For real time programming this means that one's task will execute with absolute determinism - contrast to modern CPUs where a cache miss means an order of magnitude performance degredation. For real time programming, absolute determinism is far preferrable as to reasoning about and dealing with time sensitive operations. Me thinks the Agon, with its GPIO, could be superb for some maker control projects
20:57 How do you have the XP style Open/save dialogue box in W10. I hate the new version in W7 and later. The XP style one is much easier to use. Did you do a registry modification?
If I remember correctly I just disabled all the graphics effects etc in the preferences. The notebook is rather old and I had to turn off a lot of things to make it run half-way snappy in Win 10. I definitely didn't do any registry modifications.
Thank you for sharing this project, I plan to give it a go via the the EU Olimex version. What is the name of your yellow doll sitting on top of the hot air SMD w/s?
Where does the SRAM come from? There are many projects I've had to abandon because there seems no such thing any more as large SRAM. All of the FPGA-based boards now use DDR, which is a BIG pain to work with. Probably I'm asking the wrong person, but I thought I'd try.
@@kwanchan6745 It is indeed, given that Richard Russell wrote that BBC BASIC too (along with most other non-6502/Arm versions of BBC BASIC). Another exception is BBC BASIC for the Mac, which I wrote the first version of, for David Johnson-Davies' company, Human Computer Interface.
Thanks! It's a 2020 M1 model (I previously used a hackintosh but it was kind of tricky to keep it updated as my main production machine so I finally took the plunge, sold the components of that and got myself a real Mac M1. No regrets so far!)
Nice video and looks like a cool micro. My only questions are, why use a full size USB A port for power? That is never recommended. Why not a regular old barrel jack? Why not also make it easier to update firmware on the microcontroller like a boot loader or something that allows you to drop a update file on a SD card, insert, power on and the system is updated. It would be a cool device to use BBC BASIC which is something in the US we did not experience back then.
using a barrel jack is the worst idea. Too many power supplies with barrel plugs exists that will blow up your AGON, and these jacks are also know for their inability to keep a solid connection when the cable is moved around. using (any kind of) USB connector is much beter, as it guarantees the right voltage and polarity, and with gold plated contacts it is much more reliable than barrel jacks.
@@martindejong3974 Barrel jacks are not that bad. If someone is dumb enough to plug in a random power supply then they deserve to blow up their device. Generally, by now I don't think people are that dumb LOL The worst idea is to use a USB A port like this that people use to plug in mouse, keyboards and printers and yet that is not what you use it for here. A USB C or a mini or micro port is what is generally used as a power jack on stuff like this. That said I think it was the worst idea ever to use USB micro as a power/charge port. It is fiddly and i have had far more of those have flaky connections then barrel plugs...
@@RacerX- - As an IT consultant for over 25 years, I can guarantee you that people ARE still that dumb. Now, to another reason why you'd avoid a wall wart power supply? Voltage inconsistencies. Your standard USB power supply tends to be predictable between 4.5 and 5.3 volts. Wall warts? I've seen 5 volts at 4.5, but more often, I see them as high as 8 volts. The designers (Chinese copy artists) depend on the load being enough to pull down the voltage - but the initial start voltage is still pretty high. A system like this could be run off of a decently sized USB power bank (such as my 5, 18650, power bank). So, by using a USB connector, you hopefully keep the voltage range down to the point to minimize excess voltage control component counts.
@@tbelding That is because the wall wart is not always regulated at the jack but at the device. A 9v supply that puts out 10-11v without load is normal and that is the design of these turds for decades. By people I meant the target audience for this device. They are generally not going to have a problem getting a PSU correct. But I agree with you average people that don't have a clue will mess it up. I have been involved with IT as a career for over 30 years and have seen some really stupid things. But those people would not have a clue what this device is even for, not to mention use it.
In German (and many European languages) the letter G is always pronounced that way. Phonetically "Gee" is very rare, its almost always "Geh" and that will be what Jan learned from a very young age. Just an FYI, the letter W is German is pronounced V which is why he also says things like "Wersion", again its simply because he was taught that from the beginning. Pretty obviously, German kids are taught German before anything else. IMO, as long as you understand what someone means there's no real need to correct them.
@@dungeonseeker3087 Disagree. I've spent time learning another language and I always appreciate being told by a native speaker when I'm pronouncing something wrong. It's helpful and fine as long as they are not using it to ridicule me.
@@dungeonseeker3087 I was trying to be helpful, not ridicule him, if I were trying to speak another language I would hope that people would help me to learn how to pronounce certain words if I didn’t quite get it right.
@@TheDefpom Oh don't misunderstand me, I never thought your intention was to ridicule him, its just that, honestly it doesn't matter. He likely already knows these things but as I said, its hard to undo something that was taught to him since he was capable of learning and as native english speakers we should be able to interpret and understand. I guess I just think its rude, that's a personal issue I guess.
okay, here is another potential of the Agon to explore: The eZ80 CPU communicates with the ESP32 microcontroller via SPI, which is a clocked, bi-directional serial link. This means that things like graphics operations are sent as display list operations to the ESP32. Also, PS/2 keyboard input comes to the eZ80 over this SPI link plus the ESP32 has a pinned core that is used to implement sound capabilities, so any audio programming is sent over the SPI. Well, the Atari 8-bits had a comparable display list architectue (they were 6502, though), but so does MSX, which used a Z80 CPU. Consequently, it's conceivable that the ESP32, via some inspired FabGL programming, might be able to implement MSX2 graphics and sound. If so, then the Agon could conceivably be booted up to behave as an MSX2 computer and the catalog of MSX2 games would become available. Is just a fantasy envisioning of what might be feasible with this very nice little board latent with so much potential.
The eZ80 and the ESP32 actually communicate via serial UART, not SPI (the latter is used with the uSD card and exposed to the GPIO pins, along with another UART). But for all practical purposes it is the same, so you are right. Everything else you said is also correct, I think! Because the firmware of both eZ80 and ESP32 is programmed in C using freely-available IDEs, anyone can hack into it and make MSX-like variants, even in the look-and-feel. There are already fully functional CP/M variants out there.
Das letzte Mal, daß ich damals mit Basic in Verbindung kam, war 1986 mit dem Commodore VC20..Gott sei Dank hatte ich dann 1989 meinen ersten Amiga 500 😃 liebe Grüße aus Braunschweig.
Wow, this takes me back to my TRS 80 days. Did anyone run the benchmarks on a color maximite 2. Just bought a Intel NUC for home automation. The basic project has to wait, pitty.
Fascinating. I had no idea that BBC Basic was still actively developed. Personally, I'd love to get an Agon Light and load Forth onto it (some bright spark has ported Forth already.).
@@JanBeta I don't know if it's all the rage, I just know I'm very enthusiastic about it! I've been using durexForth on the C64. I think it's more fun to program when you know it will execute at a decent speed!
@@cryptocsguy9282 I think that's possible, although maybe with cross compilation at this stage. Additionally, both BBC Basic and Forth allow you to write assembly language directly in your program.
Actually, I see on the website that there is both a native assembler and a cross assembler available for the Agon Light. I haven't seen any specific examples in C, but it is probably possible?
Yes, it's the port for programming the eZ80's built-in flash memory for the first time. Once that is done, all further updates can be done without that port. The port then only becomes useful again if someone finds a way to brick the eZ80 while fooling around with the firmware (hasn't happened yet).
There's not too many examples yet, the only things machine code are the actual BASIC, FORTH and an implementation of CP/M, linked on the Agon homepage. The whole project is in its early stages still, I hope there's going to be more coding in the future for it.
Great project, great video. Thanks Jan! I still have some questions: 1.-only 640x480x64 graphics mode? 2.-Do exist any plans to make a C compiler or an assembler?
Yes, there are more modes. I'm currently working on an updated VPD with higher resolutions at the expense of # of colours per pixel. This wasn't quite ready for the last release. There is a C compiler - the Zilog ZDS II Tools include an eZ80 and C compiler. Much of the MOS is written in C (apart from the speed critical stuff, which is in asm). This was a design decision made by myself as it is much quicker to code and debug, not just for me, but for others who may want to fork MOS and roll their own version.
@@BreakIntoProgram The C compiler is a great thing. Regarding gfx resolutions, I was thinking in a lower resolution like 256x192 to port ZX Spectrum games to the Argon, reprogramming them in C but getting the graphics from original game data. That would improve graphics quality without the colour clash problem in Sinclair computers while sound is totally compatible. Thank you very much for your reply!
There is 512k SRAM, but could you desolder and put like 16 Meg SRAM? It does say it has a 24 bit address bus. Also can you buy this from some shop in USA/CANADA. Just wondered thanks....
We struggled with what would be the right amount of SRAM, so to trade-off performance and price optimally. Desoldering isn't recommended. Moreover, a larger SRAM chip would require extra address lines that aren't routed in the board. The next Agon, Agon Heavy™, will have (significantly) more SRAM.
I'm wondering how to run a Basic without line numbers, such as CBasic which was eventually owned and distributed by Digital Research which also put out the famous CP/M operating system. Since CP/M and also CBasic ran on the Z80, can they also run on this?
Technically yes, but there are no ports of those BASICs for the Agon yet. There is a port of CP/M already though, linked on the main Agon project website!
BASIC rules! I was quite surprised how much I still remembered after several decades of not using it (I last used it on my C64 and Amigas back in the day before I re-started my retro computer hobby a couple of years ago). :D
frankly this was not whole program in basic interpreted real-time vector graphics animation because data command means that cube mesh wasn't calculated by basic real-time but pre-calculated and only lines were drawn using basic.
The used ESP32 doesn't have Wifi functionality afaik. The team is working on a less cost-reduced variant of the Agon though that might have that feature. Would be cool indeed!
Jan is right, we use only the core of the ESP32, without antennas and the other stuff for Wifi. It takes a few things like this to be able to make it available for EUR 550 :)
@@thebyteattic so adding an antenna would be 500 Euros? or did i missunderstood? maybe we'll see one day an addon with a esp8266 or such. just thought since theres anyway a esp32 "on board"... was just curious. still waiting for my package from olimex, then i can also start "tinkering" arround with it.
well the less you have to have transistors, the faster you can get the running, higher clock frequency, and the less heat from transistor switching/toggle/power (most stuff is in memory cells, in parallel, cross point)
Thanks Jan for this honest video review. The Agon is a great little board. It's been an absolute delight writing the official Quark firmware for it, and am pleased that it is generally being well received by the public - in a way it validate's the design decisions that we made early on. Am currently working on feature requests and bugs to make it even better.
Hey, glad you liked my little video (more to come, probably). Thanks for helping bringing this to life, it works amazingly smooth already! Can't wait for future updates and things the community (hopefully) is going to come up with down the line!
@@JanBeta @BreakIntoProgram you have both convinced me that I NEED this, now I just need to figure out which one to buy :)
I think the greatest feature of this small micro-controller system is the easily programmable GPIO pins, ready to be used right out of the box even by beginners and tinkerers.
Love the triangles demo. I used to set this running on the BBC Micros in Boots and WHSmith back in the day.
So essentially the 8-bit guy's original dream computer. Well done.
How come this makes the round? A Z80 is clearly no 6502 derivative.
@@cr1cetus the initial X16 spec was bare metal, current chips, no FPGA old-school BASIC. This is closer than the X16 is, save for the CPU.
@@rog2224The Agon specs sound good, but that's only abstract potential. It doesn't do anything until people make software for it, and more people are making software for the X16.
Yep, there's a video on UA-cam basically mocking the 8-Bit Guy in a humorous manner with this Agon Light. lol
They should have called it "A Gone Light" or "Argon Light" for a more memorable name. ;)
@@customsongmakeryou're missing the point, you want software use a modern computer this is to learn computer architecture and coding
You can run MOS commands from BASIC by prefixing them with an asterisk. You'll find yourself doing that a fair bit for navigating the SD card volume.
Very nice overview Jan :) I like this little system, especially because of lots of GPIO pins, it's like an 8-bit Raspberry Pi.
I like this aspect of it too: it's old school in that there is no memory caching in the CPU - all memory loads are done against external RAM memory. So if one is devising real time control task, then one's code will always execute with absolute determinism - non of the vagaries of modern CPUs where a cache miss results in an order of magnitude execution slow down.
@@TheSulross Yes, Yes and Yes :)
@@TheSulross There is some instruction pipelining and branch prediction in the CPU, though, which makes counting cycles quite challenging.
I love this! Finally getting BASIC back to simple devices for learning! no sdk's no special libraries. just turn on and play
BASIC is utterly unsuitable for learning anything.
@@IkarusKommt I have to disagree. Back then it helped me understanding how these new computer things work.
The great thing with hobbyist computers and/or microcontrollers is that there's something for almost everyone. Full disclosure: I bought an AgonLight2 from Olimex, which is based on the Agon Light design but with a number of tweaks such as USB-C power connector and USB keyboard connector. Though the latter needs a USB keyboard that supports the old PS/2 keyboard protocols; finding a brand new USB keyboard that works with the AgonLight2 is a challenge. Thanks for the video, Jan.
"Needs a USB keyboard that supports the old PS/2 keyboard protocols" So its actually a PS/2 interface with a USB connector? Why don't they just put a PS/2 connector there instead then?.
It looks like USB->PS2 converters exist for perhaps 5 bucks. I'd be careful though, it sounds like you need just a simple electrical converter, not an adapter with a chip in it that'll convert a true USB protocol to a PS2/2
Cool. I had no idea this thing existed. It looks super simple (hardware wise) compared to some similar projects. Thanks Jan 👍
Yeah, it's insanely impressive piece of hardware even before considering the price and how quickly it arrived.
The only real "weakness" of the design is that the ESP32 (VDP/Audio) is connected to the eZ80 via a 384 kbps serial link, but it doesn't matter for most things and it's a large part of what allows making it simple and cheap - the other way would be to use double-ported memory like his Cerberus project, but that would have greatly increased both cost and complexity which was not suitable for this. AFAIK the audio functionality available via BASIC isn't very impressive yet and while the video capabilities have progressed further the ESP32 "VDP" is far more capable than what is available via BASIC right now, it's very much work in progress (if you want you can run the ESP32 directly temporarily and test the "full" capabilitities of FabGL+ESP32-Pico-D4 including some games, then go back to the "VDP" firmware).
I have the Olimex version, it's "cost reduced" (including sligtly less ESD protection though the connector is better proected) but also include some minor physical improvements but is 100% compatible - the original maker has a walk through of the Olimex changes where he discuss the tradeoffs they did and confirms this. He also have design and PCB walkthrough of the original design and several other information videos, really good stuff.
At 23:47 "So let's try some more sophisticated demos...." and a nice 3D spinning LG cube pops up... impressive! lol
Bought one from Olimex in Bulgaria, thanks for the video! :) 50€ for the board + 10€ for their metal case + 15€ for express shipping (I think their lowest rate was 9€) + 19% VAT on top = ~90€, still quite affordable.
Does it come with the Firmware loaded?
@@Brian-vs9sdI have not received it yet. I will let you know.
@@Brian-vs9sd Latest firmware (1.02) was installed. All you need is a small microSD with FAT32 for the BASIC interpreter and the samples.
@@RainerK. Thanks so much for the update. Thats great it's already loaded. Now I just have to convince myself the 35 Euro for shipping is worth it :(
I wonder if the folks behind the creation of the BBC's Computer Programme would ever think that their Basic was still going to be used in the 2020s... :P
7:56 - MOS is a reference to the OS of the BBC Model B, not the chip manufacturer. The Agon's surface personality is very similar to that of the Beeb. It stands for Machine Operating System.
the Beeb is the BBC Micro - the computer aimed at schools and that was built as solid as a Chieftan army tank?
@@TheSulross Yes, Beeb = BBC Micro 🙂
Yes, in terms of architecture, I pay homage to the BBC Micro (and Tatung Einstein). Most of the low level stuff is handled by the MOS, such as file IO, and then there is a thin interface for apps programmers, including BBC BASIC for Z80. The VDP itself accepts BBC BASIC VDU strings to control it.
Ah, thanks! That makes more sense. And it show just how much of a Beeb noob I am. :D
Yep! MOS was pretty sophisticated! It even ended up serving as the basis for Acorn's later RISC OS.
Yea olimex, my all-time favorite they are from Bulgaria. Been using their boards for development for at least 15 years.
Ah, Bulgaria! I wasn’t sure where they were located. The shop looks super interesting, might buy a thing or two from them in the future! 👍
Indeed! My first stop for any dev board.
That's a pretty neat system, especially since it's open source.
The eZ80 is a pretty cool processor. Yes, it's 8-bit, but unlike the original Z80 that had a 16-bit address bus, which meant you had get into complex memory paging gymnastics when using more than 64KB of RAM. This means it can have 16MB of RAM in a flat address space. The Z80 used pairs of 8-bit registers for addressing. The eZ80 adds an an extra register to each pair to mail a 24-bit tripple. This vastly reduces the amount of work the processor needs to do to access the full address space. Offloading the graphics to the co-processor should take a lot of demand off the CPU too.
I'd love to see someone package one in a keyboard like the Raspberry Pi 400.
There are ideas to do that by a company somewhere in the British isles... but it's just an idea at this point.
@@thebyteattic I really, really hope that happens! And the Argon 'Heavy' - I'd love to see some joystick ports and maybe a nice sound chip?? Anyway, thanks for this 👍🏻
It’s been said before - but this beats and best to market the Commander X16.
It's kind of a different approach (at least to what the X16 was aimed to be when project started). I like this one better for its "for the masses" and open source attitude but the X16 has a point in that it tried to be true to the old school systems in more ways (which obviously kind of failed at this point because of feature creep and unavailability of the intended old school chips).
The problem with the X16 is that it has too many chips and needs old chips as well. If I wanted to build something with old chips I would rather build a C64 with one of the new boards now available …
The currently available X16 is the developer board, while the Agon doesn't even have developers yet. The only way the Agon will come out ahead is if it can catch up to the X16's user base and software library.
The GPIO demo reminded me of using the user port on a BBC B as part of my computer science degree in the mid 80s.
Neat the eZ80 is running inside the latest Ti-84 Plus CE graphing calculators at 48Mhz. Its a 24-bit CPU with an 8-bit Z80 mode, which is probably what this board is using.
Nice chip. Glad they still make it.
We also use the extended 24-bit instructions and address lines to address the 512KB of RAM.
eZ80 has mlt instruction too 😊
I completely lost it at the banana. Well played Jan. Always love the content.
Wonderful video, Jan, thank you!
Glad you like it! I hope the Agon is going to get some more attention in the future! Thanks for making the little beast available to the world! :D
Finally it was the right decision to keep all those PS2 to USB Keyboard adapters.
An excellent video showcasing a very interesting piece of hardware.
I remember seeing the original Z-Z-81 computer at a small electronics shop in Northern Ontario around 1980 or 81, and Ialso recall that every fledgling computer nerd from Lakehead University was lining up on a Saturday morning to buy the first 'home' computer. We've come a long way since those days.
Love love love the bit where you started to eat the banana 😂😂😂
Banana for scale and also for breakfast.
Made me laugh as well 😂
Ok, so I started watching this video with my bowl of cereal and the banana scene took me off guard.. I laughed so loud, I almost choked... thanks Jan, brilliant..😀
Sorry for that! 😅
Yeah banana has spiced it up! But now people has got used to it and now you have to eat something in every future episode Jan. 😉 Btw I still remember your celebration of passing some number of subscribers with a beer. 👍
Toll! Sehr, sehr interessantes Projekt.
The sprites demos remind me a lot of the the TI-99/4A extended basic demo programs.
Hi Jan! Great video and a cool project. Thank you for showing us. Hope you're doing well, have a great day! :)
Moin Moin!
I really like the idea of this machine even though I'm not having the capabilities to learn BASIC and code programs myself.
After all, this was the idea behind the BBC Micro too, having low cost machines that teach kids how to code.
It's true that these days there are Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and yes even A.I. for that purpose but given how expensive the Pi line of computer has gotten, having this is a neat alternative for that very purpose.
You don't really need single board computers to learn programming though. I think most start with html, css and javascript these days since you hardly need to setup anything, most already have the bare minimum on their pc right now, a text editor, storage and a webbrowser.
There are also plenty websites that allow you yo fiddle with html, css and javascript in real time as well.
But learning with real hardware, interacting with the outside world has something special though, makes it more fun and real. Like getting the data from a joystick, reading an ADC or temperature, controlling a heater or motor etc.
Great video, thanks for covering this tiny beast
I use to use the MOTOR ON / MOTOR OFF cassette drive command to control external hardware. I remember turning a cheap r/c car into a radio controlled firework igniter (by wiring a relay and nichrome wire up to it instead of the motor for r the wheels) and wrote some basic to have the computer light them off at midnight on new years. Old skool GPIO lol
Amazing development for sure, it's lovely to see, I really loved my years of usage within the BEEB ecosystem as a kid.. I still BEEB now too :D
It’s weird I just learned about the designer Bernardo Kastrup a few weeks ago, but not for computers. He’s also a leading philosopher studying the nature of consciousness. (Not a joke!)
Yep, I realized he was a well-known philosopher shortly after I checked out the previous Cerberus project. A true multi talented man! :D (I studied philosophy at uni for a bit, so I actually read some of his stuff in the meantime and it's good!)
The origin of BASIC was a project to create a simple teaching language. The B in BASIC stands for 'Beginners'.
One of my favourite channels. Thank you.
Hey, thanks! :)
another aspect of the Agon (that was not covered) is that the Zilog eZ80 CPU actually has 24-bit registers and a 24-bit enabled execution mode, called ADL.
The CPU boots up by default into 8-bit Z80 compatible mode but an instruction will switch to ADL mode. With 24-bit registers it is then possible to address up to 16 MB of memory. Now the Agon has 512K of memory so if wanted to make use of all that, would switch into 24-bit mode to do so.
In addition there is a special base addressing register. It is possible to set up multiple 64K areas in memory, load 8-bit Z80 programs into these, and when a given 8-bit program is executing, the register's base address is added onto the generated 16-bit adresses to arrive at 24-bit address which is then used on the memory bus. So can write 24-bit ADL program that acts as a multi-programming hypervisor for running multiple 8-bit Z80 program; with 512K there could be up to 8 such 64K Z80'zones
forgot to mention that Zilog has an SDK that can be used with the eZ80, which has a 24-bit C compiler, assembler, and linker. This is Windows 32-bit software but I was able to run it under WINE on my Linux PC. I was able to likewise invoke the C compiler, assembler, and linker fron a bash command line so I will be able to fashion a CMake file and do development with my Jetbrains CLion IDE. An Agon community member has developed a HexBin downloaded ad and execute utility that is available on github - is why is necessary to join the FaceBook Agon group so can stay up on things like that.
YESSS! This is a great idea! Maybe you can join us over at the developers forum? I can't post the link here (or UA-cam thinks I am spamming), but you can find it easily.
With such specs, is it still correct to call this CPU an 8-bit CPU? Especially if the ALU is 24 bits wide?
@@JimLeonard kind of seems to sit in that space sort of like the intel 8088. That CPU did 8-bit memory fetches yet could address up to 1MB. Because it broke the 64K memory address barrier and had 16 bit math operations it tended to be labeled a 16-bit CPU. The eZ80 is operating like a Z80 in its default mode, doing 8-bit memory fetches and such. The reason it out performs actual Z80 is due to internal pipelined execution of instructions. So when the Agon is turned on and boots up it very much is behaving as simply a faster Z80. It's kind of a nice bonus that it can switch into this 24-bit mode if one desires to dabble with that.
@@JimLeonard Whether a CPU is 8-, 16-, 32-bits and so on, is determined by the width of its data bus. Agon light has a very accurately and unreservedly 8-bit CPU.
Glad you ate the "Banana for scale" old chap! (That weak americanism gets right on my mammaries!)
BBC Basic you say? The finest version of basic available, and the Basic I used in my first paying coding job!
That Animal game was one of my first experiences with a computer of any kind. My friend Bob's father was a High School teacher and he had brought home a Terminal of some sort, with a 300 baud acoustic coupled modem. It connected to the University of Irvine (California) computer. This was 1974 or so. I believe it was using one of the original multi user OS's. I remember Hangman was another program this thing would run. It was so slow filling the screen at 300 b. We sat there amazed.
Yes! I remember using a similar program on my C64 as a kid. I spent quite a bit of time with that, fascinated by the possibilities of those new "computer" things! (Although obviously it was only my personal first encounter with them.) :D
I enjoyed the “”getting nervous “ section. Maybe you must consider a frequent“news update” session regarding these hardware companies. Even short briefs / snippets will be interesting.
Excellent!
After all this time it's still odd to me when I see BBC Basic starting in something other than Mode 7 or without the Beeb banner.
PS: FWVLIW 'MOS' was the official name for post Basic 2.0 BBC firmware.
I remember the 'guess the animal ' program being used as an example of AI / machine intelligence in the BBC's TV series - featuring the BBC Micro, of course - Making The Most of The Micro.
I remember a similar program from my C64! Loved to play with it as a kid. :)
Calling it AI is a bit of a stretch 😂 It was basically a binary decision tree populated with a few dozen animals, and if your one wasn’t one of the built in ones, you could enter your own question to distinguish your animal from the last guess (adding a new node to the tree).
Your video production has gotten quite good! The banana gag had me laughing. And this device looks pretty amazing, much more interesting to me than the other 8-bit retrocomputers that have come about lately. I'd be super interested to know if there's any provisions for games to provide alternate "firmware" for the Arduino as well, or if the intention is to keep the fiction alive of it being akin to a custom ASIC.
Thanks! I think the whole purpose of the Agon project is its complete openness and its friendly price point. Chances are there's going to be a lot of modified firmwares down the line if it catches on with the community (which I sincerely hope it does). :)
I somehow find it kinda hilarious that the ESP32 used for video/audio is so much more powerful than the main CPU. :)
it's kinda common with these kind of systems to use some more modern microcontroller like that.
it's also pretty common with some arduino peripheals, it's just the cheapest way.
Yeah, but not so much choice ... If you want to do a custom graphic/audio solution for your true 8 bit machine, you either use a legacy part (hard to get - especially in volume -, often expensive, unreliable, maybe can do only composite/etc not even VGA), your own logic from discrete chips (horrible large, expensive, limited capabilities - hey, even just doing a ZX Spectrum ULA in discrete logic is a mess ...), logic inside a CPLD/FPGA (not a bad choice, but probably more expensive), or maybe the cheapest and most common solution: do that with an MCU ... However for that it must be clocked quite high, indeed. Getting quite fast "true/real" 8 bit new CPU is not an issue even today, but things like these are ...
@ well one way would be to use a second 8 bit chip, or just doing the drawing on the main cpu zx80 style.
would be easier at 18mhz anyway.
the output from such a machine would be less interesting though.
@@lasskinn474 Still there is hardware needed to have a framebuffer to generate video signal from, now without anything to do with the actual drawing itself. That itself is already complicated enough without a custom IC for this purpose especially because of the nature of dual-access of that memory from both of CPU and the video signal generation. Dual-port RAM is still not so cheap to get, and would rise the cost of the project significantly. Yes, probably a ZX-81 like approach, where the CPU does the video signal generation as well (with basically only a shift-register or so being external component) would work, but it would seriously hurt the performance and usability. Indeed, this CPU is much faster than the one in the ZX81 but also VGA requires much higher pixel clock than a PAL or NTSC TV signal.
@ you can do 480p vga with an 8 bit atmel. the vert/hz blank timing is the same anyway as for composite.
if you have faster ram the dual port ram isn't that big of a problem, you do just the same as c64 did to get around then, do every other clock. the problem is that none of these approaches will make basic games look as good as having something thats a command controlled gpu basically. you could do stuff like elite pretty well with just sharing the ram though, but it'd be still like doing elite well in the sense that a 8 mhz pc runs elite pretty well in cga..
I get it that some people want to code in the z80 or 6502 for learning hands on such a thing, but really what would they know if the 8 bit cpu was emulated on the esp32 as well.
someone should make a nes based thing with extra ram through cartridge pins, have some custom loader on it with a switch/option to load code from sd card or emulated famidisk system and have it manufactured by the chinese NOAC factories. that would be the absolute cheapest 'new' 8 bit home micro with graphics capabilities built in if produced in some kind of scale, an actual way to get access to an era correct 80's graphics chip still in production.
Hey Jan, just a heads up, the English word _legacy_ begins like _leg,_ not _ledge._ Cool little device btw!
Yes, thanks! One of the English words I ALWAYS struggle with. I think I pronounced it in approximately three different ways in this video... I'll try to remember for next time! :D
I’ve found copying data onto SD cards on a Mac a huge pain. They leave so many hidden files and junk on the cards. You have to do a dot_clean and or use cleaner utilities and it still only gets you part of the way there. The only way I’ve found that can delete the .Trashes folder is a pc. I’ve also had lots of problems with formatting the cards as FAT on a Mac. I just use a pc now for all things sd cards unfortunately.
Looking forward to the Agon Heavy™. Uses a 50 MHz (super scaled to 150 MHz) eZ80F91A instead of 18 MHz in the light.
This is maybe the first new 8 bit computer I might buy. It's cheap enough that it's in the inexpensive toy range.
Any idea if the sound is capable of more than just a square wave? If so, it's a bit of a shame.
I guess it should be capable of doing more than square waves. The limitation is the BBC BASIC interpreter in this case, the ESP could do different wave forms when addressed directly I think. (But obviously I'm not the designer of the device and I'm not sure about how that works exactly!)
@@JanBeta That's exactly what I was hoping you'd say. I'm very impressed with whomever designed this. From what I can see this has the spirit of Commodore in it combined with a modern OSS soul. It's sort of what everyone hoped the successor to the C64 would have been with the graphics and sound.
@@stevesether Jan is correct. It can do more.
Seriously, eating the Banana was a nice touch of comedy! 11/10.
Just install the mouse driver and make it a portable laptop by adding 4:3screen and a slim keyboard!
Looks like the x16 has competition.
@@messmer777 The 8-bit guy's retro computer. According to the Agon Light website the AL has about twice the CPU power.
@@messmer777 Iirc, he recently said it was almost ready (at the end of one of his videos).
@@messmer777 The X16 seems like a very different beast than this. From what I can tell the X16 is more like what a 8 bit machine would have been if it had an expansion bus ala the IBM PC. This is more along the lines of what an 8-bit computer would have been if a Raspberry pi had a child with a commodore 64.
Both serve some different markets. I'm a bit more excited about this, especially given I can buy one _now_ for $50!
2 things I dont understand with all these new 8bit computers. Why use PS/2? I have not seen one of those keyboard for like 15 years. VGA, I have not had any VGA monitors for like 6 years. Ive heard HDMI is under some license, but ive seen people use HDMI connectors, and display the video anyway. Otherwise its a nice unit :)
I just ordered one. Would love to see symbos ported to the agon, I bet it would run so well.
Sorry for speaking your own language ^^
See you sitting and clucking for your self made me buy the Agon Light2
thanks for a good video!
I want one, if it comes with documentation for BBC BASIC. That BASIC version is excellent but it's uncommon in the U.S.
oh very interesting, i wonder if people will develop some software for it?
I sure hope so! I guess the open source nature is going to help a lot!
This is really interesting, recently I have seen two other 8 bit computers on you tube that are new to the market like the AGON is. Maybe 8 bit systems are making a come back which would be nice to see. If other people are like me, they have grown tired of 32 & 64 bit machines that are really only suited to videos and gaming and not much else.
A Z80 running BeeB BASIC, sacrilege! 😉
Well, not really, Acorn produced a BBC BASIC for the Z80 second processor module back in the day.....
@@IanSlothieRolfe It's found on a lot of classic systems. Tatung Einstein, Sinclair Z88, and so on.
@@BreakIntoProgram didn't know that Tatung Einstein has used BBC basic... Was there some connection between Amstrad CPC Locomotive Basic and BBC basic too?
@@rastislavzima I'm not sure about any link. Amstrad CPC BASIC was from Microsoft and BBC BASIC from Acorn. Or am I misunderstanding your question completely?
@@SteveTeeIridium-Plus Amstrad CPC Basic was from Locomotive software not from Microsoft. I got the impression that in the past I have red about some connection and now I looked at wikipedia and they say too that it was very much influenced by BBC basic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_BASIC
ESP32 chip has wifi, so it could make use of it. There are wifi addons available even for old 8bit computers.
The version of ESP32 they used does not have Wifi.
We use only the ESP32-PICO-D4 core, without the antenna and the other stuff. This is cheaper and makes some extra GPIO lines available for other purposes.
Does that BBC Basic have assembler compatibility? If so, that would be a full Z80 assembler instead of 6502? BTW, the triangles demo so reminds me of my Amiga A1000. Those were the days!!
Looks like the Z80 version of BBC basic has a Z80 assembler according to Russels's website.
There is a built-in Z80 assembler indeed. And it accepts inline assembly within BASIC code.
Be interested to see you review the Picomite VGA and maybe make some comparisons. It uses one ARM CPU to run the graphics and the other to run MM Basic, so it's pretty quick.
I didn't try the Picomite yet but would love to! I made a video about the Color Maximite a while back though. Lovely machine indeed!
Alliance memory baby! Same chip the ZX-UNO uses.
I had a BBC Model B which run BBC Basic and had a MOS Technology 6502 cpu that cpu was around 2 mhz, I remember the double track double disk drive unit cost more than the BBC model B lol
I bet this would play Elite
Oh yeah ;-)
An Elite port would be awesome indeed! :D
I think that this could do Elite easily.
@@JanBeta the source code for 6502 elite is available, and annotated
theoretically someone could port that to z80 code
Actually quite cool. It would be even cooler if a "compile" feature was implemented for BBC Basic. Make it similar to GfA Basic, in that you can develop code for it interpreted, and when finalized, you can compile it and run your code as a fast binary. The eZ80 is a 16 Mb linear addressed CPU. Increasing the size of BBC Basic should only be minor even with 512K RAM. There should also be a direct bus interface to the address, data and control lines to the eZ80 instead of just GPIO, so you can expand it. Also, why not add a network interface? The eZ80 has most of the hardware to implement a network interface. It just needs a minor amount of parts to fully implement one. Heck, the prototyping board has one, schematics and all. ZiLog's developers kit even has the code to implement many types of interface devices. Perhaps a "AGON Max" could be made with many more features? I'd pay for it.
🙂👍 We are tentatively calling the next one 'Agon Heavy™'. We really wanted to bring Agon light down to $50 cost. As it turns out, we beat that goal, as Olimex is _selling_ it, margins and all, for EUR50. So maybe we will follow (some of) your suggestions in the next one and give ourselves a little more latitude! Thanks.
The current BASIC runs in a 64K segment on the Agon in traditional Z80 mode. A 24-bit version is planned. No plans for an official BASIC compiler, though someone may take up that challenge.
@@thebyteattic At the very least give it an expansion bus connector. Someone can always add the extra hardware themselves.
@@BreakIntoProgram About ten years ago, I was working on a project to create a superset of Sinclair Basic on the eZ80 (eZXSparky). I had a lot of it done, and it was running great, but I never had a chance to finish it. Life kind of interrupted. I was using the original eZ80 development kit.
This might have legit uses outside a hobbyist scene. The low power consumption and not needing a lot of cooling could make it ideal as a datalogger or a controller for industrial machinery when something more advanced than an arduino is needed or desirable.
there is no onboard CPU memory caching - all memory loads are directly against external RAM memory. For real time programming this means that one's task will execute with absolute determinism - contrast to modern CPUs where a cache miss means an order of magnitude performance degredation. For real time programming, absolute determinism is far preferrable as to reasoning about and dealing with time sensitive operations.
Me thinks the Agon, with its GPIO, could be superb for some maker control projects
@@TheSulross I believe ARM has the instruction & data cache disabled by default.
20:57 How do you have the XP style Open/save dialogue box in W10. I hate the new version in W7 and later. The XP style one is much easier to use. Did you do a registry modification?
If I remember correctly I just disabled all the graphics effects etc in the preferences. The notebook is rather old and I had to turn off a lot of things to make it run half-way snappy in Win 10. I definitely didn't do any registry modifications.
Thank you for sharing this project, I plan to give it a go via the the EU Olimex version. What is the name of your yellow doll sitting on top of the hot air SMD w/s?
Bert from Sesamestreet
Yep, it's an old Bert puppet I've had since my childhood and that mysteriously survived. :D
@@JanBeta It would explain the Banana in this video.....🤔.
That is great, thank you.
Where does the SRAM come from? There are many projects I've had to abandon because there seems no such thing any more as large SRAM. All of the FPGA-based boards now use DDR, which is a BIG pain to work with. Probably I'm asking the wrong person, but I thought I'd try.
Hi Jan, how does it implement 6502 assembly code embedded in BBC basic programming and transform it into Z80 code? I'm fascinated by this new machine.
No, Richard Russell’s BBC BASIC has a Z-80 assembler instead.
@@PeteC62 its probably an evolution of the bbc basic bundled with the acorn z80 second processor, that incorporated a z80 assembler
@@kwanchan6745 It is indeed, given that Richard Russell wrote that BBC BASIC too (along with most other non-6502/Arm versions of BBC BASIC). Another exception is BBC BASIC for the Mac, which I wrote the first version of, for David Johnson-Davies' company, Human Computer Interface.
Very cool!! BTW, which Apple Mini model is that?
Thanks! It's a 2020 M1 model (I previously used a hackintosh but it was kind of tricky to keep it updated as my main production machine so I finally took the plunge, sold the components of that and got myself a real Mac M1. No regrets so far!)
@@JanBeta thanks! I may need to get one of those also.
Have not used Basic since my Amstrad CPC 464
The name and case-design triggered something in my head. It took some time but it finally came to my mind, there is some similarity with Agilent ;)
Agonlent! 😅
Great Video! Where can I find the firmware for CP/M?
Hey @Jan Beta, where'd you get that Atari Logo thingy on your wall?
Nice video and looks like a cool micro. My only questions are, why use a full size USB A port for power? That is never recommended. Why not a regular old barrel jack? Why not also make it easier to update firmware on the microcontroller like a boot loader or something that allows you to drop a update file on a SD card, insert, power on and the system is updated. It would be a cool device to use BBC BASIC which is something in the US we did not experience back then.
The Olimex version uses USB-C. USB A full size is much more sturdy, but it is indeed not standard.
using a barrel jack is the worst idea. Too many power supplies with barrel plugs exists that will blow up your AGON, and these jacks are also know for their inability to keep a solid connection when the cable is moved around. using (any kind of) USB connector is much beter, as it guarantees the right voltage and polarity, and with gold plated contacts it is much more reliable than barrel jacks.
@@martindejong3974 Barrel jacks are not that bad. If someone is dumb enough to plug in a random power supply then they deserve to blow up their device. Generally, by now I don't think people are that dumb LOL The worst idea is to use a USB A port like this that people use to plug in mouse, keyboards and printers and yet that is not what you use it for here. A USB C or a mini or micro port is what is generally used as a power jack on stuff like this. That said I think it was the worst idea ever to use USB micro as a power/charge port. It is fiddly and i have had far more of those have flaky connections then barrel plugs...
@@RacerX- - As an IT consultant for over 25 years, I can guarantee you that people ARE still that dumb. Now, to another reason why you'd avoid a wall wart power supply? Voltage inconsistencies. Your standard USB power supply tends to be predictable between 4.5 and 5.3 volts. Wall warts? I've seen 5 volts at 4.5, but more often, I see them as high as 8 volts. The designers (Chinese copy artists) depend on the load being enough to pull down the voltage - but the initial start voltage is still pretty high. A system like this could be run off of a decently sized USB power bank (such as my 5, 18650, power bank). So, by using a USB connector, you hopefully keep the voltage range down to the point to minimize excess voltage control component counts.
@@tbelding That is because the wall wart is not always regulated at the jack but at the device. A 9v supply that puts out 10-11v without load is normal and that is the design of these turds for decades. By people I meant the target audience for this device. They are generally not going to have a problem getting a PSU correct. But I agree with you average people that don't have a clue will mess it up. I have been involved with IT as a career for over 30 years and have seen some really stupid things. But those people would not have a clue what this device is even for, not to mention use it.
Excellent review!
There's no access to the Z80's control/address bus? It's just a Raspberry Pi? I don't want to use the PICO co-processor for I/O, I want to add my own
FYI Jan legacy is pronounced Leg a see, but your English is still a lot better than my German.
In German (and many European languages) the letter G is always pronounced that way. Phonetically "Gee" is very rare, its almost always "Geh" and that will be what Jan learned from a very young age. Just an FYI, the letter W is German is pronounced V which is why he also says things like "Wersion", again its simply because he was taught that from the beginning. Pretty obviously, German kids are taught German before anything else. IMO, as long as you understand what someone means there's no real need to correct them.
@@dungeonseeker3087 Disagree. I've spent time learning another language and I always appreciate being told by a native speaker when I'm pronouncing something wrong. It's helpful and fine as long as they are not using it to ridicule me.
@@Felice_Enellen that is exactly what I was trying to do, allow him to know how it is pronounced to further improve Jan’s already excellent English.
@@dungeonseeker3087 I was trying to be helpful, not ridicule him, if I were trying to speak another language I would hope that people would help me to learn how to pronounce certain words if I didn’t quite get it right.
@@TheDefpom Oh don't misunderstand me, I never thought your intention was to ridicule him, its just that, honestly it doesn't matter. He likely already knows these things but as I said, its hard to undo something that was taught to him since he was capable of learning and as native english speakers we should be able to interpret and understand. I guess I just think its rude, that's a personal issue I guess.
okay, here is another potential of the Agon to explore: The eZ80 CPU communicates with the ESP32 microcontroller via SPI, which is a clocked, bi-directional serial link. This means that things like graphics operations are sent as display list operations to the ESP32. Also, PS/2 keyboard input comes to the eZ80 over this SPI link plus the ESP32 has a pinned core that is used to implement sound capabilities, so any audio programming is sent over the SPI.
Well, the Atari 8-bits had a comparable display list architectue (they were 6502, though), but so does MSX, which used a Z80 CPU. Consequently, it's conceivable that the ESP32, via some inspired FabGL programming, might be able to implement MSX2 graphics and sound.
If so, then the Agon could conceivably be booted up to behave as an MSX2 computer and the catalog of MSX2 games would become available.
Is just a fantasy envisioning of what might be feasible with this very nice little board latent with so much potential.
The eZ80 and the ESP32 actually communicate via serial UART, not SPI (the latter is used with the uSD card and exposed to the GPIO pins, along with another UART). But for all practical purposes it is the same, so you are right. Everything else you said is also correct, I think! Because the firmware of both eZ80 and ESP32 is programmed in C using freely-available IDEs, anyone can hack into it and make MSX-like variants, even in the look-and-feel. There are already fully functional CP/M variants out there.
Das letzte Mal, daß ich damals mit Basic in Verbindung kam, war 1986 mit dem Commodore VC20..Gott sei Dank hatte ich dann 1989 meinen ersten Amiga 500 😃 liebe Grüße aus Braunschweig.
Wow, this takes me back to my TRS 80 days. Did anyone run the benchmarks on a color maximite 2. Just bought a Intel NUC for home automation. The basic project has to wait, pitty.
I wonder if you could make the Argon run software for systems that had Z80 CPU's in them like the Sega Master System.
The pure assembly would probably run with some modifications, but graphics and sound would need some serious reprogramming. :D
Fascinating. I had no idea that BBC Basic was still actively developed. Personally, I'd love to get an Agon Light and load Forth onto it (some bright spark has ported Forth already.).
I really have to dig into FORTH sometime. Seems to be all the rage these days (and I know bugger all about it)! :D
@@JanBeta I don't know if it's all the rage, I just know I'm very enthusiastic about it! I've been using durexForth on the C64. I think it's more fun to program when you know it will execute at a decent speed!
@Ian Witham I'm not familiar with forth & basic programming languages. I'd to be able to program the device in C & assembly languages 😀 .
@@cryptocsguy9282 I think that's possible, although maybe with cross compilation at this stage. Additionally, both BBC Basic and Forth allow you to write assembly language directly in your program.
Actually, I see on the website that there is both a native assembler and a cross assembler available for the Agon Light. I haven't seen any specific examples in C, but it is probably possible?
awesome
much more in the spirit of what I want vs cerebus or commander x16, whose price points are ludicrus
that is amazing I'm watching this second time
Excellent video! By the way, the "g" in Legacy is pronounce as the "g" in gerade or genau. Tschuss!
Eating the banana 🍌 is the best way of disarming your opponent when they attack you with soft fruit. See Monty Python's Art of Self-Defence. 😁👍
Man of culture!
Fantastic 🍌🍌🍌🍌
Yes!
An interesting video, nice to see the BBC Basic still working. Still prefer a system with GUI.
guis are for girls
Love Your channel Janek !
Why isn't it clokked at 50mhz? Why isn't there 16mb of fast dualported video ram as well as 16mb of ram?
What’s the “ZDI” connector on the board? You skipped over that when going over the hardware. Thanks for a great video. Cheers 😊
Oh is this the special Zilog programming port?
Yes, it's the port for programming the eZ80's built-in flash memory for the first time. Once that is done, all further updates can be done without that port. The port then only becomes useful again if someone finds a way to brick the eZ80 while fooling around with the firmware (hasn't happened yet).
Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that. Thanks Bernardo for jumping in. :D
Will this run the SymbOS GUI for Z80s CPUs? Someone should get that working. After that we need an 8-bit Steam and games like Terraria ported over!
Did I miss machine code demos? How many voices does it have. I think it is not a c64 killer ! Nice video btw
There's not too many examples yet, the only things machine code are the actual BASIC, FORTH and an implementation of CP/M, linked on the Agon homepage. The whole project is in its early stages still, I hope there's going to be more coding in the future for it.
Some of the sprite demos have inline assembly code in them, to illustrate how to use assembly.
Great project, great video. Thanks Jan!
I still have some questions:
1.-only 640x480x64 graphics mode?
2.-Do exist any plans to make a C compiler or an assembler?
There are other video modes, and more being added soon.
BBC BASIC has a built-in assembler.
It's basically a Z80, so there are already C compilers, I bet there's an LLVM compiler too so other languages (like Rust or Zig) could work
Yes, there are more modes. I'm currently working on an updated VPD with higher resolutions at the expense of # of colours per pixel. This wasn't quite ready for the last release. There is a C compiler - the Zilog ZDS II Tools include an eZ80 and C compiler. Much of the MOS is written in C (apart from the speed critical stuff, which is in asm). This was a design decision made by myself as it is much quicker to code and debug, not just for me, but for others who may want to fork MOS and roll their own version.
@@BreakIntoProgram The C compiler is a great thing. Regarding gfx resolutions, I was thinking in a lower resolution like 256x192 to port ZX Spectrum games to the Argon, reprogramming them in C but getting the graphics from original game data. That would improve graphics quality without the colour clash problem in Sinclair computers while sound is totally compatible. Thank you very much for your reply!
There is 512k SRAM, but could you desolder and put like 16 Meg SRAM? It does say it has a 24 bit address bus. Also can you buy this from some shop in USA/CANADA. Just wondered thanks....
Olimex sells them for the US.
We struggled with what would be the right amount of SRAM, so to trade-off performance and price optimally. Desoldering isn't recommended. Moreover, a larger SRAM chip would require extra address lines that aren't routed in the board. The next Agon, Agon Heavy™, will have (significantly) more SRAM.
I'm wondering how to run a Basic without line numbers, such as CBasic which was eventually owned and distributed by Digital Research which also put out the famous CP/M operating system. Since CP/M and also CBasic ran on the Z80, can they also run on this?
Technically yes, but there are no ports of those BASICs for the Agon yet. There is a port of CP/M already though, linked on the main Agon project website!
Probably. But what's wrong with line numbers?
would it be possible to do one of these with a 6502 (modern version)?
Kind of like a modern day Basic Stamp?
What do you like more, this or the Color Maximite 2? Are you considering revisiting the CMM2 and you coverage of it was rather limited.
BASIC rules! I was quite surprised how much I still remembered after several decades of not using it (I last used it on my C64 and Amigas back in the day before I re-started my retro computer hobby a couple of years ago). :D
@@JanBeta you can't forget it its same like riding the bicycle, what you learn as a child is carwed forewer. 😉
Very cool!
frankly this was not whole program in basic interpreted real-time vector graphics animation because data command means that cube mesh wasn't calculated by basic real-time but pre-calculated and only lines were drawn using basic.
Good point!
i'm curious if theres plans to use the wifi functions of the esp32 pico. might be nice to dial into some telnet bbs'es ;)
The used ESP32 doesn't have Wifi functionality afaik. The team is working on a less cost-reduced variant of the Agon though that might have that feature. Would be cool indeed!
Jan is right, we use only the core of the ESP32, without antennas and the other stuff for Wifi. It takes a few things like this to be able to make it available for EUR 550 :)
@@thebyteattic so adding an antenna would be 500 Euros? or did i missunderstood? maybe we'll see one day an addon with a esp8266 or such. just thought since theres anyway a esp32 "on board"... was just curious. still waiting for my package from olimex, then i can also start "tinkering" arround with it.
Yes would be really cool if it had Wi-Fi even if it could be only used for file transfer…
8-bit (even 16-bit) rom lookup table would be tiny, as processors, and super fast, in memory only, like dsp style processing at super high frequency
well the less you have to have transistors, the faster you can get the running, higher clock frequency, and the less heat from transistor switching/toggle/power (most stuff is in memory cells, in parallel, cross point)
thats a pic? 8-bit
if you write/read output to a memory, then adc/dac to get/push the signal out/in
but can it run d00m
doom 8-bit