Meet RVPC the world lowest cost Open Source Hardware All-in-one educational RISC-V computer with VGA and PS2 keyboard which will be available for DIY soldering workshop on Open Fest in Sofia this year!

The idea about EURO 1.00 Do-It-Yourself educational RISC-V computer came at TuxCon 2024 and I made lighting talk about it:

Then after the event I thoug some more and decided to use SO8 package and to drop the SD-card which would take too much resources.

So the idea came to this:

  1. Easy to solder DIY kit
  2. Complete all in one RISC-V computer with bare minimum Woz like monitor which will allow you to learn the RISC-V instructions by poking, peeking and disassembling the memory
  3. Price of EUR 1.00!

Here is the result:

CH32V003 in SO8 package – for easy soldering was choosen. It has just 6 GPIOs

PS2 takes two GPIOs

VGA takes three GPIOs – Vsync, Hsync and RGB

we left one more GPIO where Audio buzzer is connected

All done in beginner friendly PTH components

Now the fun part begins. There are already software resources for CH32V003:

  1. If you want to bare metal program CH32V003 there is PicoRVD where you can program it with single wire via any Raspberry Pi RP2040-PICO!
  2. ch32v003fun covers you with software support for every feature
  3. There is even Woz like monitor called Vmon
  4. There are also retro games made for ch32v003

Now the goal is to make PS2, VGA intergration to Vmon and have this bare minimum for OpenFest where interested people to learn the RISC-V architencture and instruction set will be able to build their very own One Euro RISC-V computer and play with it!

As CH32V003 have only 2K of RAM VGA resolution of 320×200 is possible in text mode 40×25 characters. The video will be generated without graphics video buffer, for the games user defined characters could be used.

It will be challenging but this makes it even more fun.

Next week we will have prototypes, so if you are interesting to join the software development sent me email to info@olimex.com and I can mail you one!

This board will be available as Soldering kit at our web www.olimex.com when complete.

The price will be EUR 1.00!

TuxCon 2024 soldering workshop – now we have more kids interested in soldering

Last weekend we had TuxCon the open source hardware and software conference in Plovdiv. In Saturday there were two rooms with talks. The stream is already on Youtube so you can watch these uncut: Room1 and Room2.

I didn’t know that Vitosha is the first Bulgarian computer, made back in 1961 with 5000 lamps and magnetic disc with 4096 words (40 bit long) of memory! Running at 1000 operations per second and using 12 kW of power! The input was 5 channel punch tape and the output was typewriter.

here is part of the team working on it:

In Room2 there were two more interesting talks.

Veselin Sladkov (Room2 time: 3:40:00) talked about the Reload emulator he wrote for Neo6502 emulating Apple ][+, Apple ][e+ and OricAtmos/Pravetz8D and his plans to add many more retro machines to it.

Paul Robson (Room2 time:4:37:00) talked about NeoBasic software development.

The second day at the soldering workshop we got lot of kids interested in soldering. I do remember the early days of TuxCon we had just lot of youngsters at the soldering workshops, but now year after year we get smaller kids participating. Their teachers already know about TuxCon and they waiting with anticipation to come and solder something.

And you can see how proud they are when the board they solder works!

Thanks to Vera Tutundjieva for the beautiful photos of the event.

TuxCon 2024 is this weekend – be ready for the Soldering workshop in Sunday and the Spinningtop competition!

TuxCon 2024 is this weekend with very interesting talks in Saturday

And the traditional Soldering workshop in Sunday!

This year we will solder SPINNINGTOPs and at the end there will be competition for the longest time spinner.

TuxCon is free to participate, no registration, no tickets, no charges. The soldering workshop also.

Looking forward to see you there!

New USB 2.0 cables with snap magnetic connectors in stock

USB-MAG-2-CABLE and the matching USB-MAG-2-PCB

are snap magnetic connectors for USB power supply delivery.

USB-MAG-4-CABLE and USB-MAG-4-PCB provide all USB signals and with easy snap magnet action for quick attach and detach.

ESP32-POE2 Open Source Hardware PoE IoT board provides up to 25W power supply to external circuits

ESP32-POE2 is modification of the popular ESP32-POE but capable to deliver up to 25W power from PoE connection. This opens up lot of more possibilities.

User selectable 24V / 0.75A or 12V / 1.5A is provided plus +5V/1.5A for external circuits.

From software side ESP32-POE2 acts exactly as ESP32-POE so all software will work on both.

Some of the ESP32-POE2 features are:

  • ESP32-WROOM-32 – WiFi and Bluetooth module
  • Low power design – 200uA consumption in deep sleep
  • Ethernet 100Mb interface with IEEE 802.3 PoE support
  • USB-C connector for power and ESP32 programming
  • MicroSD card working in 1 bit mode
  • LiPo battery charger with LiPo battery connector
  • Battery level monitor pin on ADC
  • External power supply detection pin on ADC
  • Provides 24V/0.75A or 12V/1.5A to external circuit
  • Provides 5V/ 1.5A to external circuit
  • UEXT connector
  • EXT1 connector
  • User button
  • Reset button
  • PCB dimensions: 59×90 mm

The ESP32-POE2 price start from EUR 16.76 for 50+ pcs order.

The board is designed with KiCad and all files are available at GitHub.

ESP32-POE2 is supported by all the popular platforms Espressif SDK, MicroPython, ESPHome, PlatformIO, Arduino.

Installing Linux on the external Flash modules for STMP157-BASE-SOM-EVB

The new external Flash modules Flash-e16Gs16M and Flash-e32Gs16M add eMMC and SPI Flash to the boards which supports them:

The latest OLIMAGE Linux distribution supports these two modules, so this is how you can install linux on the Flash-e modules:

  1. Install the module on the board while no power is applied;
  2. Download the latest image from images.olimex.com;
  3. Burn the downloaded image to SD card, we suggest to use BalenaEtcher;
  4. If you use STM32MP157 board make sure on-board jumpers are set for boot from the SD card (see the picture below);
  5. Apply 5V DC power supply to the power jack. Notice that first time boot takes longer than usual so wait patiently to reach the login prompt. Login with user root and password olimex;
  6. You can check if eMMC is visible now with fdisk. Then execute the script for SD to eMMC transfer: $olinuxino-sd-to-emmc
  7. Wait until it completes. Then turn off the board with command “poweroff”. Wait until the board powers off then remove the power supply;
  8. Remove the micro SD card and configure the jumpers for boot from eMMC. In the BASE-SOM board that I use I change the state of BOOT_SW1 from default positions “ON, OFF, ON” to “OFF, ON, OFF”. The fourth switch is not connected.
  9. Apply power supply and board will boot from the eMMC image.

The advantage of the removable eMMC is that you can easily scale your project and change between different Flash sizes, or if Flash got damaged you can easily exchange it.

Long Easter Holidays ahead!

This year the orthodox Easter is on May 5th, but there is also the Labour day on May 1st and the day of the Bulgarian Army May 6th, so when you connect all these Holidays together the whole country will not work from May 1st to May 6th.

During this period you can send your orders to us, but note that the couriers will not work, so all orders received during May 1-6 will be processed and shipped on/after May 7th.

Happy Easter!

Breaking news: We replaced all engineers at Olimex with AI, now the computers draw beautiful open Source Hardware Linux computers in minutes

What you see above is our latest mini open source hardware Linux computer, drawn entirely by AI. The complete design from the idea to Gerbers and BOM is done in less than 2 minutes!

Neo6502 – the Open Source Hardware Modern Retro Computer got incredible development in March

Neo6502 developer community on Neo6502 Discord server grow and so the results. There are some incredible news.

UEXT

NeoBasic now have full control on UEXT connector and supports GPIO, I2C, SPI, ADC.

What does this means? You can use all available UEXT modules with Neo6502 and also all boards from other vendors who have I2C, SPI, UART interfaces! All this available from BASIC, Assembler, C or Pascal. This makes Neo6502 capable to do everything Arduino does (RetroDuino?) but have one major advantage – Neo6502 do not need host computer to develop, it has USB Keyboard and HDMI output, so you can write and run your code, also you can make fancy graphics and animations based on the sensor modules input. Something which Arduino can’t do without additonal shields for video and keyboard support.

Chris Garrett blogged about using Microchip MCP23017 to add 16 GPIO to Neo6502 with the new I2C commands.

and MOD-WIFI-ESP8266 to connect to the web:

Pascal-M

Pascal-M is the first pascal compiler which can run natively on Neo6502 so you can compile and run code on Neo, actually for the fun of it David Given run compilation of Pascal-M (which is also written in Pascal) with the Pascal-M compiler on Neo6502, the result (after hours of compilation) is completely working Pascal-M compiler 🙂

LLVM-MOS

Asie added Neo6502 target to official LLVM-MOS SDK GitHub repository so not we have second compiler option beside CC65.

GAMEPAD

The Neo6502 firmware now have USB support for USB-GAMEPAD

so you can play your games with NES style 12 buttons USB gamepad. The first game which was updated is PacMad from Bocianu

MOUSE

USB Mouse support is add to the Neo6502 firmware, this allow mouse to be used and it immediately was targeted as tool in the Graphics editor Bocianu is worning on which will allow natively on Neo6502 to make your sprites for Games!

MUSIC

Neil_555 is working to add 3 channel Music synthesizer and here is some preliminary music. The new synthesizer slows down Neo6502 with only 2.6% so nothing to worry about when we got nice music for games.

Here is sample music played on Neo6502.

AgonLight2 the fastest Z80 retro computer development is remarkable

AgonLight2 is incredible small Z80 based retro computer which has 512KB of RAM, VGA display and PS2 Keyboard. The AgonLight2 community just in Facebook is over 1700 people.

For all beginners The Agon FAQ covers all most common questions asked in the FaceBook page.

The Agon Light Wiki is the official source for all documentation regarding the Agon Quark firmware and any third-party software development.

There is great tools and games developed during the last year. Here I will point to some:

Text editors:

Programming languages:

  • AgDev – Port to Agon Light of TI-84-CE C/C++ Toolchain which uses LLVM and generates eZ80 ADL code.
  • agon-ez80asm – ez80 assembler, running natively on the Agon platform.
  • Agon Forth – Forth for Agon computer.
  • BBC Basic – Official AGON QUARK Firmware: BASIC Interpreter.
  • BBC Basic ADL – Official AGON QUARK Firmware: BASIC Interpreter (ADL version).
  • Turbo Rascal Syntax Error – TRSE is a complete suite (IDE, compiler, programming language, resource editor) intended for developing games/demos for 8 / 16-bit line of computers.
  • Z88DK – The Development Kit for Z80 Computers.

Operating systems:

  • CP/M 2.2 for Agon Light – CP/M 2.2 port for Agon Light that didn’t require custom firmware. Use your Agon fully and have access to CP/M system.
  • TRS-OS for Agon Light – A bootstrap to run TRS-OS on Agon Light under MOS. TRS-OS is an eZ80 port of the LS-DOS TRS-80 operating system. No firmware change required.
  • Zeal-8-bit-OS for Agon Light – A bootstrap to run Zeal 8-bit on the Agon Light under MOS. No firmware change required.

Games:

  • AgonLight Game Library – Games for the BBC Micro and Electron converted for AgonLight.
  • Agon Light Invaders – Invaders for the Agon Light.
  • Dans la prison hantée – This prison is haunted. But this prison also hides a treasure. And finding treasures is your job.
  • Diamond Quest – eZ80 game on AgonLight. A simple game, built purely as a goal to learn z80 assembly routines on the Agon Light.
  • Draegerman – Draegerman for Agon Light.
  • Drug Wars – An adaption of the DOS version of the game, converted to BBC BASIC (Z80) for the Agon Light.
  • Escape the Mansion – Multi-room graphical adventure.
  • Game of Life – Conway’s Game of Life for the Agon Light.
  • Haunted_House – Agon Light2 Text Adventure Game, written in BBC BASIC.
  • Haunted House III – Haunted House Text Adventure Game for the Agon Light2.
  • Lunar Lander – Lunar Lander Game.
  • Pitman – Port of Pitman, written in BBC BASIC.
  • Realm – An adventure game for Agon Light.
  • Rokky – Dungeons and Diamonds game for Agon Light.
  • Sargon Chess – Port of the award-winning Sargon Chess program by Dan and Kathe Spracklen from 1978.
  • Sokoban – A custom port of the Sokoban game for the Agon platform.
  • Space Birds – A simple game written in C for the Agon Light retro computer.
  • The Valley – Agon Light conversion of The Valley adventure game.
  • TINACOT – An original game inspired by tower defense games and Tetris.
  • Vezza – Vezza is a tool for running Infocom compatible (Z-machine) text adventure games.
  • Wizard’s Castle – The Wizard’s castle modded for BBC Basic on the Agon Light.

Connectivity:

  • Snail – Fast gopher browser for Agon Light (and Agon Light 2)

Music:

Utility:

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