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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Let’s discuss Agon Light
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| hhtg1968 Senior Member  Joined: 25/05/2023 Location: GermanyPosts: 123 |
you are right. the pucomite is incredible fast. but compiled c is faster. |
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| ChrisJournoud Newbie  Joined: 12/10/2020 Location: FrancePosts: 20 |
I got an AgonLight2 from Olimex. I like it as I like Picomite, my CMM2 and BBC basic on Pico. Picomite is faster on usual basic benchmarks but it is not the point. About what I read on this topic, I think that it is often prevalent in human community's/microcosm behavior to be "conservative" and a little contemptuous against foreigners (things or beings), without real basis or knowledge. In french we call this behavior "entre-soi". I like those communities for what they bring to each others and I found the "tone" of this topic annoying. Bashing X does not value Y. I suppose that the name of Olimex is not for nothing in this journey ! Best wishes |
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Mixtel90 Guru  Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6799 |
@Stanleyella The point of teaching kids to program in BASIC isn't to teach them BASIC, it's to teach the fundamentals of programming. The language is immaterial. The chances are that by the time they get into industry the programming languages may be so far ahead of C and Java that just knowing those would be as useful as Fortran is now, fine for old code support but that's all. Scratch does the same thing for very young kids - it teaches problem solving and programming skills even if they can barely read and write. ------------------------- Chris, The Agon Light hardware is fine, I don't think any of us have a problem with that. We will even admit that it's display capabilities are better. :) The advertising is the problem - it's just wrong. "Agon light™ is the fastest and cheapest 8-bit microcomputer ever made." Lie. The *user* space is being run by an 8-bit processor (with much extended registers and triple pipelining so it has little in common with the Z80 apart from being code compatible). All the IO is connected via a high speed serial link to a 32-bit system, which is handling all the sound, video and IO. "Agon light™ is the world's sole standalone, instant-on, BASIC-programmed microcontroller that dispenses with a host PC and sketch compilation. This allows projects to be controlled from the immediacy of a BASIC interpreter's prompt." Lie. The first to run a proper BASIC rather than a Tiny version was probably the Micromite, which has been under continuous development since. The PicoMite is the current platform of choice if low cost is required - and it is far more powerful than the Micromite. Both have controlled their GPIO pins from BASIC since day one. "The fastest and cheapest 8-bit microcomputer ever made, by a large margin." A grey area. :) It *might* be the cheapest "8-bit with 32-bit IO handler" computer, but the PicoMite is cheaper by about $46 and runs at a guaranteed 133MHz, most will overclock to well over twice that. If they had toned down the hyperbole and done some fact checking first I don't think anyone would have bothered. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| ChrisJournoud Newbie Joined: 12/10/2020 Location: FrancePosts: 20 |
 No. it is true based on the benchmarks you can find somewhere on the website ; in those benchs there is no impact of the graphic partYou can be right on this point, if you take apart the fact Agon is an 8-bit micro-controller while Micromite is not. Well, Picomite is faster but is not 8-bits. I think that "Lie" is too much of a big word to qualify what is said on the Agon website. Like I said before, the point I honestly feel "annoying" in this topic is that there is as much emphasis to bash "around the Agon" as there is emphasis to praise it on the website (if not more), and in my opinion it is a little biased. That said, I am not going to wrote a book on this. Best wishes Edited 2023-05-30 05:44 by ChrisJournoud |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6799 |
You can prove anything with benchmarks - as numerous computer and microprocessor manufacturers have shown us already. :) Raw processing speed on a microprocessor with no IO involvement isn't really of much use. It's IO that makes the difference between *computers* rather than *microprocessors*. That's certainly where the user sees any difference. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3805 |
Whether C is faster or not wasn't my question, which was attempting to find out what (on a Picomite) isn't fast enough from your viewpoint. I thought maybe you'd hit a particuar problem where it wasn't and you'd say what the problem is. John |
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| ChrisJournoud Newbie Joined: 12/10/2020 Location: FrancePosts: 20 |
It is only proving what is done, with those benchmarks and with those machines, no more. That said, fundamentally you are right about benchs in general, so why making tons about that while none of the way you can take this is really significant ? |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6799 |
TBH I like the way the Agon Light has been done. It's a neat idea and the construction looks good. I've no idea what the performance is like in the real world - i.e. without running highly optimised games and demos. I *suspect* that things like initially loading sprites, backgrounds and music will be relatively slow if done by the user program because of the serial interface, but a running program may appear to be fast. If they are loaded directly by the ESP32 then they will be much faster to load, of course. I do feel that labeling a machine as an 8-bit retro computer when the hard stuff is actually being done by a 32-bit super-chip on a high speed serial terminal is a bit of "creative marketing" though. LOl! There are several reasons why I wouldn't buy one now: * It isn't a machine for the home constructor. Working with SMD is something that occasionally I have to do, but it's not something that I would usually choose to do. That means buying a partially constructed board. You can't usually buy those as single units from a PCB supplier so it gets expensive. The alternative is to buy ready built, which takes a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me. :) * I think I've now been spoiled by having a more powerful processing system, even if the display system is less powerful in some ways. (but the PicoMite VGA system runs virtually invisibly and without loading the user's CPU). If I feel that the PicoMite is under-performing then there's always my CMM2! * Although BBC BASIC was good, I'm not sure that was as good as MMBasic is now. Both BBC BASIC and MMBasic are pretty well structured (or can be). * The PicoMite makes extensive use of its flash memory. It doesn't need to be loaded by an OS or boot system - it *is* the OS so does truly run on boot. You literally load MMBasic onto the Pico, it reboots and MMBasic is running. Do some programming. Power off without saving anything. Power on - and your program is still there ready for editing. * The cost. Here in the UK the Agon Light is 58.50 UKP as a pre-assembled PCB. When you look at what you are getting that's not particularly expensive as there's quite a lot of components on there. However, a Raspberry Pi Pico costs 3.90 UKP or 6.30 UKP for the version with wi-fi built in. As a constructor I have no problem in designing PCBs to suit what I want (and I've done a few), but there are tons of hardware add-ons for those who prefer not to roll their own. You can get quite a bit for the remaining 50+ UKP! IIRC the recent VGA 1.1 design by matherp works out at about half the cost of the Agon Light, ready built with the RP2040 on-board. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9130 |
For me the big issue here is the "8-bit" label and the irrelevance of "8-bit" to computing. It would be no big deal to take the z80 code on the Agon and move it to the esp32 eliminating cost and improving performance but that wouldn't then be "8-bit" The latest ESP32 have both external RAM and external flash over octal-spi (they have separate chip select) - see ESP32-S3-WROOM-2 These are cheaply available (GBP14.89) as a ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N32R8V (32Mb flash and 8Mb RAM) If I was ever to do another port it would be to this module which would blow the Pico and Agon out of the water. Of course that wouldn't satisfy the 8-bit purists who would rather pretend that there is something magical about the Z80 even though it can't do anything without modern supporting components. In fact all the old "8-bit" computers had considerable supporting technology for graphics and sound so were never "pure" 8-bit unlike the MMBasic range from the Maximite and then MM2 up which are genuinely single chip designs - albeit not "8-bit" Edited 2023-05-30 17:32 by matherp |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6799 |
This is true. I know this as one who has soldered the chips onto a Nascom-1. :) The ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N32R8V is a vicious-looking wee beastie. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3150 |
Da da da dum, da da da dum, ... PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2129 |
The rpi pico is as cheap as an arduino uno or even nano 328p and has similar hardware drivers for displays. 8 bit ucontrollers don't have much ram so can't do the graphics mmbasic can. A ssd1306 needs a 1K buffer. You're not going to get blit or sprite with ili9341. Point- ili9341 with arduino uno gcbasic 2 for next loops to read data and plot a "sprite" but 8 moving and unplotted with background colour and gcb is visually faster than same code using mmbasic but using blit and box filled for erase and mmbasic is much faster than gcb. When I was in school as a teen French was mandatory to learn but German or Welsh was a choice, I chose German. When I speak German I think in English then convert to German what I want to say. I found I think in basic and if using another language, like Delphi years ago, I convert basic to the new language. I converted basic to assembler when I tried it. If I learnt c I would be thinking how to convert from basic. As pointed out, Basic teaches the ideas of programming... but in a high level language so more basic to convert. Converting basics is a big job with i2c or spi or everything, bbc basic to commode 64 to spectrum to amstrad 464 in the 80's... to picaxe to gcbasic to mmbasic now. Why does no one use basic anymore.. say for windows dev. What would you use? Visual Studio? I would use free basic :( |
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| hhtg1968 Senior Member Joined: 25/05/2023 Location: GermanyPosts: 123 |
you are right. in 1982 i learned to code in basic on a sinclair zx-81. a little bit later i coded in assembler (cause of the speed and the need for low memory programming). since this former times for me the combination of basic and machine code is the basis of programming for me if you are trying to find a ground based algorithm. for years i do not code any line of code. but when geoffg created the maximite i started to code night for night (like in my old school days in the 80s...), games, small editors, 3d graphic and so on... from this time on i started to code in c on my mac again... it was kind of a new initial starting a coding rocket... and now: i can use the 4$ pi pico to do this... it is wonderful |
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atmega8 Guru Joined: 19/11/2013 Location: GermanyPosts: 722 |
“If I was ever to do another port it would be to this module which would blow the Pico and Agon out of the water.” A fantastic argument to “just do it”👍😄 It would be a blockbuster!! |
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| al18 Senior Member Joined: 06/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 205 |
Whatever Peter and Geoff make, I’ll buy. My opinion, before embarking on a project with another chip, you may want to negotiate an agreement outlining price, delivery and production lifetime. Raspberry Pi is pretty transparent about this information. While Raspberry Pi’s have been hard to come by for the past 2 years, I believe scheduled shipments have been made to commercial customers throughout this time. |
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Hawk Senior Member Joined: 15/07/2021 Location: AustraliaPosts: 141 |
I would love to see an ESP32 port of MMBasic targetted at the FabGL hardware. I call it the FabGL hardware, only as it has become a pseudo-standard for an ESP32 stand-alone computer and can be bought for about AU$20. As far as I know, there has only been one version of BASIC that came close to being really useable, and that is "Eris" BASIC by Paul Scott Robinson. As for 8-bit, if I want to use 8-bit computers, I fire up one of my old computers, but when it comes to developing for them, I tend to use cross-compilers, as the original development environment is so difficult to go back to now. I love having a full-screen editor with syntax highlighting at the touch of a function key. Even the full screen editor in Engine BASIC (Atto) I find clumsy and unintuitive. I had to make a cheat sheet to help learn the cryptic commands. BTW, Fabrizio already includes a Z80 emulator in FabGL. Job done.  Hawk Edited 2023-05-31 13:30 by Hawk |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4250 |
Yes, the Iran drones run on Pi4's....  PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3150 |
I had many 5-minute C program compile times back in Z80 days. Reread The Aeneid (in translation) while waiting for compiles, and was happy with the turnaround compared to hours (if lucky) on the mainframe. Wouldn't want to go back to that now. Nothing magical about 8 bits for me--MMBasic makes the magic on the 'Mites. ~ Edited 2023-05-31 21:21 by lizby PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3150 |
Do you have a link for that? I've seen many manufacturers mentioned in connection with the Iranian drones (including Canadian Bombardier engines--also in Bayraktar TB2), but hadn't seen Raspberry Pi identified. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9130 |
Fabgl doesn't currently support the S2 or S3 chips and uses the Arduino IDE so that's two good reasons it isn't an option. |
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