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!

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:

• AED: Another Text Editor – Another Text Editor.
• nano – Editor with nano-style key bindings.
• Vi – Vi for the Agon series of eZ80 computers.

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:

• Agon MOD – Agon .MOD tracker.

Utility:

• agon_64cfontloader – Load .64c fonts on the Agon in BBC BASIC.
• Agon Basic Header – Agon Light 2 Basic Header.
• Agon Bootlogo – Assembler MOSlet bootlogo of the Basic Header.
• Agon Flash – Agon firmware update utility.
• Agon Hex – Agon hex editor.
• Agon Light 2 Serial Printer – Mini Thermal Receipt Printer (Serial RxD).
• Agon Utilities – MOS utilities for Agon: copy, view, editor…
• Agon Utils – Utilities for the Agon Light computer.
• calc24 – 24 bit integer calculations in both hex and decimal.
• Console8 Recover – Console8 MOS recover utility.
• HEXLOAD utility – Utility for the Agon platform, to load Intel HEX files over one of its serial ports.
• More Agon Utilities – MOS utilities including gunzip, hexdump tools for interactive navigation of file or memory, strings to extract strings from a binary file

More Products with plastic boxes

The USB-GIGABIT s a popular USB to Gigabit Ethernet converter. Until now, we only offered this product as a bare board, which created some problems when used.

Sometimes, if too much force was applied by mistake, the USB connector could break. With the new box, this problem is solved.

The Cerberus 2100 is the latest open source hardware design from The Byte Attic, aimed at the education sector. It features two processors: the 6502 and Z80. To learn more, please visit the Cerberus2100 project page and Facebook group.

Now, Cerberus2100 comes with a beautiful protective box.

USB-NeoHub the compatible with RP2040 USB hub also got protection box:

Open Source Hardware VGA to HDMI converter board make all retro computers and game consoles modern and allow them to be connected to modern HDMI monitors and TVs

VGA2HDMI is small open source hardware board with VGA input and HDMI output.

So if you have AgonLight2, AgonOrigins or Cerberus2100 and want to use them with your home TV or modern monitors now you can do this with VGA2HDMI, all three are tested and works.

VGA2HDMI-BOXED is VGA2HDMI enclosed in nice black plastic box.

All design files are available on GitHub.

CPM65 porting progress for the Open Source Hardware Modern Retro Computer Neo6502

Neo6502 development continues at high speed, NeoBASIC very efficient tailored BASIC interpreter with special features for game development, CC65 C/C++ compiler, MadPascal – Turbo Pascal like compiler are available.

Lot of people have asked can CPM65 be also ported on it, so David Given took this challenge and as you can see from the picture above he posted on Neo6502 Discord developers server he is close to the goal 🙂

What CPM65 offers is: BASIC, vi-like Editor, Assembler, disk utilities etc.

With all these tools Neo6502 is becoming one of the most fun 6502 retro computers to work with.

I will post later how easy is to make Games with NeoBasic, Paul Robson made number of features which make it easy to handle events, sprites, keyboard, so to make something like this takes only 64 lines of code:

FOSDEM 2024 – the conference is totally recovered after the Covid hard years

FOSDEM 2024, the largest Free Open Source Software and Hardware conference in Europe, took place from the 2nd to the 4th of February.

This was the first time I attended after the COVID madness. There were three consecutive years when I couldn’t participate. The best part of FOSDEM is meeting face-to-face with people you’ve only communicated with online throughout the year.

This year, people were back, and things were even crazier than usual. With hundreds of tracks and thousands of attendees, the rooms were available for only one day instead of two, and they were consistently full!

On the last day (Sunday), I had to present two talks in two different rooms, with just a 30-minute gap between them. This was in the late afternoon, with a flight just hours away 🙂

The FOSDEM video team is quick, and the talks will be online soon. In the meantime, I’ve uploaded my slides on Slideshare.

Electronic boards production automation with KiCAD scripts – where I spoke about how we reverse engineered the file formats for our PCB assembly line machines and now generate the programming files directly from KiCAD

and

Neo in the Matrix – where I spoke about Neo6502 the modern retro computer with W65C02 processor and RP2040 co-processor which cost only EUR 30 and runs almost x3 times faster from the popular retro computers with 6502 built recently and x20-30 times faster than the original retromachines from 1980s with 6502

Unfortunately, my plans to organize an Agon/Neo group meeting fell through. However, there’s good news – TuxCon 2024 is coming on the 11th-12th of May in Plovdiv, where we’ll have plenty of space and time to meet. Everyone is welcome! There are direct Ryanair flights from London and Manchester to Plovdiv. Alternatively, there are plenty of options to fly to Sofia and then move to Plovdiv by bus. TuxCon is completely free to participate in, and on Saturday evening after the talks, there is a traditional free beer event sponsored by the conference sponsors – something that none of the other conferences offer 😉

Not at least at TuxCon, you’ll have the opportunity to meet some of the people who made AgonLight and Neo6502 possible.

Plastic boxes for ESP32-SBC-FabGL and USB-ISO

ESP32-SBC-FabGL and USB-ISO boards now have beautiful 3D printed boxes:

OpenFest 2023 is on November 4-5, mark your agenda and looking forward to see you there

The biggest Open Source Hardware and Software even in Bulgaria – OpenFest is on November 4th and 5th in Sofia Tech park.

The full Schedule is published here: https://www.openfest.org/2023/en/full-schedule/

Olimex will have two workshops:

On 4th of November:

The traditional soldering workshop from 11.00 to 13.00 o’clock. This is completely free to participate workshop. No need to have previous experience in soldering. At the end of the workshop you will have free board which you soldered yourself. Suitable for kids from age of 7 up to 70 years old.

On 5th of November:

The first Retro Gaming Competition from 15.00 to 17.00 o’clock.

We will provide Neo6502 modern retro computers where people can compete playing retro games on Apple ][.

The winner will receive free Neo6502 computer!

Looking forward to see you there!