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Agon light™
Agon light™ is a fully open-source 8-bit microcomputer and microcontroller in one small, low-cost board, built with state-of-the-art 21st-century technology. It has two claims to fame, both of which are substantiated in the next sections. In a nutshell,
Agon light™ is the fastest and cheapest 8-bit microcomputer ever made.
In addition, 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.
Agon light™ is a true 8-bit microcomputer in that there are no FPGAs and no emulation in it. It also has no layers of abstraction such as virtual machines. The bare metal is exposed directly to the firmware programmer.
As a microcomputer, Agon light™ has VGA resolution of up to 640 x 480 pixels and 64 simultaneous colors. It supports sprites and scores best in all popular microcomputer benchmarks by a large margin (see the “Benchmarks” section below).
As a microcontroller, Agon light™ has a control port featuring SPI, I2C, 20 distinct GPIOs (including UART lines), a system clock output, as well as power (3.3V and 5V) and ground rails. It also features a separate ACCESS.bus header.
What sets the Agon light™ apart?
- The fastest and cheapest 8-bit microcomputer ever made, by a large margin.
- No host PC or sketch compilation required to control your projects: you can control your whole house from the immediacy of interpreted BASIC commands.
- A hardware canvas for you to make of it your own dream, customized microcomputer, with your own preferred look-and-feel and functionality. Agon is a laboratory for computer science experimentation.
- No more assembly programming to customize or personalize your computer’s firmware: Agon light™’s entire firmware suite, including the functionality of the Video Display Processor (VDP), is programmed in C with freely available tooling (compilers, IDEs, loaders, etc.).
- Agon™ is an open-hardware and open-source project through and through, so you get all the information about the system.
Official
- Agon light™
- This Snappy 8-bit Microcomputer Brings the Speed to Retrocomputing
- Emulator: Agon Light, Agon Light 2, Agon Console8 Emulator for Linux, Windows, any system with libSDL
- Emulator (Old)
- agon_light_midi: MIDI hard- and software for the Agon Light
- popup-mos: A batteries-included SDCard template for Agon Light / Agon Light 2 / Console8
Projects
- Oregon Trail
- CP/M
- Agon-rokky: Dungeons and Diamonds game for Agon Light