There are some cool short videos showing various PicoMiteVGA output on Peter Mather's channel here: www.youtube.com/@petermather3049/videos If you are an ExplainingComputers channel member, I also discussed the wider implications of the PicoMiteVGA in Member Video #11 -- and it generated some great disussion: th-cam.com/video/aaBKSpyyV4s/w-d-xo.html
I'm sorry you couldn't order the Silicon Chip kit from the UK. As a small business, it is difficult for us to comply with foreign VAT laws. If there is enough demand, we might be able to arrange for Practical Electronics magazine to sell kits locally.
@@Daveyk021 yes there are plenty of digital inputs and outputs, analog inputs,.PWM outputs, frequency measuring inputs, serial ports and more. All controlled via BASIC. I/O is via a 40-pin header but not all 40 pins are I/Os. There are some powers, grounds etc.
This is what we should be teaching kids in High School. This is an entire curriculum - basic electronics, soldering skills, breadboarding, and then programing.
@@Weegeeguy208 Yeah, and in its country of origin, TikTok’s content is much different, more restricted and more educational/informative than what our kids in the West are subjected to 😠
Is it just me or wouldn't we "gentlemen of a certain age" have given our right arms away just to have BASIC running at this kind of speed back in the days of the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, etc.? Thanks for an inspirational video and the resources, I shall be off to source the parts this very instant to build a PicoMite. What a great, great, great project and amazing work by Geoff Graham and his team.
So true -- I had just the same thought. Runs fast, boots very quickly into BASIC -- and the ability to load and save programs to the micro SD card is so much easier and more reliable than using tapes!
take a look at the Colour MAxiMite2 - >400Mhz clock - amazing results and language compatible (with idiosyncracies between the platforms) with the PiPicoMite, and various MicroMite flavours - over a dozen platforms of various capabilites & speeds, all running the same MMBasic with excellent code portability
There's already someone who turned the pico into a micro C64 with a tiny 320x240 display and hand-made mini keyboard/joystick. VGA timings and data were generated on-the-fly too due to lack of memory for a frame buffer. He's on YT somewhere just can't remember the channel name. It was an impressive little thing and nicely done too. I suppose it's not really hard to make a frame buffer out of an external 256 or 512 k memory chip. SOmeone will be working on that right now I expect, or even finished it.
You can order a kit from several vendors like Silicon Chip in Australia or Budgetronics in the EU. I have seen kits on tindie as well even including the circuitry for audio.
Another nice little project! It's amazing what one can do with a Pi Pico. Also, I was singing the Tetris theme (do, do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do, etc.) when you were demonstrating the Blocks game. All in all, 'twas a very good journey.
@@ExplainingComputers Better than imagining me swearing at Tetris! Nothing like playing a online multiplayer game of it, doing so well, then you goof up, try to recover, then before you know it, you're out and dropping an F-bomb. 😅
The latest release of the firmware V5.07.06 includes a full file system on the flash chip - no sdcard needed, and many other enhancements. Also note the PicoMiteVGA has extensive support for sound. Details of suggested wiring are given in the manual.
Thanks for this Peter, and for all your work bringing this to reality. It is very much appreciated. I will check out the latest firmware. :) I already have another PicoMiteVGA project planned . . .
Thanks to you and everyone involved in bringing fantastic projects like this to fruition. I'm going to have to try and build one, even if my soldering skills are nonexistent. 🙂
Chris, you have a gift for explaining things. You are a wonderful teacher. This was one of my many favorite videos you have made. I look forward every time a new video from EC shows up in my feed.
Back in the day when filling out an application form for an electronics course, one of the questions was “Why do you want to study electronics” my mother said “ So you can learn to put everything back together” 😁
Not enough memory for a frame buffer, yet still it produces a picture, that's pretty astounding for such a small CPU. I have a few picos and have used them for all sorts of things. It's a surprisingly powerful little thing.
The PicoMiteVGA has a framebuffer and the option of adding two extra framebuffers in Basic memory. One of them acts as an overlay area allowing objects to move over a background and the other can be used to get artefact free updates by copying it to the main buffer during screen blanking
@@petermather3049 Yes, but what what was worth mentioning is that the pico can even do it without a frame buffer. this guy did it and made a pico C64 with mini LCD and custom mini keyboard: th-cam.com/video/hgLhGpbC6E4/w-d-xo.html Although the code for generating VGA timing signals and data was not developed by him. He did make the first pico C64 :)
The DVI display out library can handle two color display out because each display out takes less than half the resources. Wouldn't have room for other IO but that's exceeding our expectations of microcontrollers by a landslide
Greetings from across the pond near Albuquerque, New Mexico. This video reminds me of my Radio Shack TRS-80, including the expansion interface containing an extra 32KB of memory to add to the original 16KB internal memory. Many people trashed the TRS-80, but not me -- I learned BASIC, good programming techniques, some assembly language programming for the Z80 processor, and even had a Fortran compiler for it. Had a Radio Shack dot matrix printer to go with it, too. Even the computer table came from Radio Shack. My boss had one too, so it made for great collaborations. We routinely ran 6-degree-of-freedom ballistic trajectory simulations in BASIC for work. Fun times! Oh to have an RP2040 dual-core 133MHz processor back in the late 1970s / early 1980s era. This video also reminds me how thankful we should be for USB, HDMI, Bluetooth, wireless and wired networking, gigabytes of on-board memory, terabytes of external storage, multi-core processors (still admire the Z80 processor, though), SBCs, 8K resolution, etc. Absolutely great video. Well done, Prof. Barnatt! 😀
Something similar is the Agon Light. This uses a modern, fast, Z80 variant and runs BBC Basic out of the box, but can also be switched to run Forth. It has colour VGA, a PS2 keyboard interface, an SD card for storage, and also has sound output from a 3.5mm jack or a small on board buzzer.
This is the kind of EC videos I like! Keep it up, Chris! I love these boot-to-basic machines, even though my programming skills are somewhat lacking. I have another of Geoff Graham's creations, the Colour Maximite 2, which is a fantastic liittle machine, and a lot of fun to program. Now all we need is to build a nice keyboard case to put them in, just like back in the 80s!
Just wanted to say, Chris, that you’re not like a lot of TH-camrs out there. You show no arrogance in your character in the content you produce.I get put off a lot by content creators because they produce content with the primary aim to promote themselves. You on the other hand, enjoy educating and to give inspiration; and it’s because of this, that I can enjoy your videos, taking confidence in what you are sharing with us. Thank you for all of the efforts that go into your plethora of content! Also, here’s to the upcoming 1 million subscribers!
This is a really nice design, using one of the PICO's core for VGA output is something I wasn't really expecting, I wonder what else one can dedicate extra cpu cores to?! Thanks Chris, that was really interesting video (as usual)
Well, the PICO has only two cores. So one for VGA and one for your code. Sound could be another option. But that could probably be handled by the PIO's. The RP2040 in the PICO is a great MCU.
Your first PicoMite video got me started! Now, I own a PicoMiteVGA board and enjoy programming and tinkering with it. The online user's forums have been invaluable in learning this system's wonderful capabilities. Thanks for your informative videos!
I love the way you create bookmarks of the video chapters and take advantage of TH-cam features. Sort of like how the proper creation of a DVD would have been done back in the day. Awesome and thanks!
Thanks Chris for a very interesting video. This takes me back to the 80's, following circuit diagrams, soldering components (neatly) to a pcb the correct way round. The components were really cheap & more easily accessible back then.
Are you sure they were really cheaper back then? The prices and availability in the modern, global electronics market are generally better (at least pre Covid). The low cost microcontroller and SBC markets are incredible. The fact you can pick up a Pi Pico for around £5 is amazing.
@@another3997 I totally agree with you a Pi Pico for £5 is amazing. The components were cheap in the early 1980's, that's how we built a lot of projects back then! The things that were expensive were micro-computers i.e The Sinclair ZX81 an introductory kit in 1981 was £49.95 which would equate to £204 ($279) in 2023. The BBC micro model A was £235 & the Micro model B £335 in 1981 & equates to £1152 (A) & £1642 (B) today, how things have changed.
This build reminded me of the old Phillips Electronic Engineer where you could build various items but without having to solder. A hairpin went through the board and then a spring went over it to secure it. Wires and components were secured to these posts and you could make radios, intercoms, burglar alarms, morse code set and electronic organ.
Generally valid advice for both software and hardware: build it in the smalledt possible stages, test after each, and if it stops working, the cause is whatever you just did, In interesting challenge would be to fold up the design into as small a form factor as could be conveniently constructed, preferably in a generally-available container. The sockets would likely be the major constraints there. It could be a way to build test points into a larger system or piece of machinery, if a Wifi data stream isn't suitable for some reason.
I love the way he is able to explain the technical issues so well, feel like entering into the world of creativity and failure is just another opportunity to learn. I also would like to thank, all those who spend many hours creating documentation to give us an opportunity to go further. If you have the extra funds; just know it goes to advance our futures.
You do a great job explaining and demonstrating all aspects. More kids need to learn this stuff. I wish I had someone like you explaining this kinda stuff when I was younger. Thanks.
Best video you ever made!!! By the way you can use hydrochloric acid and a q-tip to remove black oxides before soldering. Also remember flux is your friend - my favorite is ruby fluid flux. It's good practice to remove rosin afterwords with acetone because sometimes metal salts will grow across the rosin and cause intermittent shorts. One day I will be making a TH-cam video about an invention I have been working on for over 20 years. Tuning in all the way from the jungles of Belize.🌴🌴🌴🌄
Hello, fellow Christopher! Back again.... How cool that you made a small little project! I like using the pico and arduino and various other microcontrollers with with extra components like resistors and potentiometers and transistors and diodes, and... the possibilities are nearly endless! I like the maker side a lot. Very cool you've got all those small programs running on it! 👍
Brilliant video again Chris - And what a fantastic showcase for the amazing Pi Pico - another inspiring project explained in your usual simple and enthusing way ! So many thanks :)
My PicoMiteVGA is now built on a solderless breadboard and is working just fine. All thanks to this video Chris, I wouldn’t have noticed this entertaining project without you highlighting it. Maybe I’ll order a PCB to make a proper job of it.
Great Find, Anne Robinson. I love the nod to retro computers. I have a maximite somewhere from the same people. This could be a great project to get in on.
Love this video I can source many components from existing bits attached to previous projects . can't wait to get going once I've cleared a space on my project table!
All that performance from a £4 board. Pretty amazing really. I like your "output" overlayed on the monitor in post production. Can hardly see the join.
Chris, I just wanted to thank you again for this video. It inspired me to attempt a build. I decided on design 2, with the additional I/O, SD card and the real time clock. Ordered the PCBs from JLCPCB and the components from various sources. I got it finished at the weekend, and it works!!
3:15 Something I noticed about the schematic is that the color uses this weird "RGB-121" color space. I tapped it out in GIMP and it's pretty good. It has orange and pink and a light blue. It's just missing grey and purple.
I just sit here thinking it's cool AF! Christopher, you're the man! Edit: That handling of VGA signal is a game changer. As a person who toys with Arduino/ESP32/Raspberry, i know that making of clear interference can often defeat the sole purpose of the prototype's existence. This bypasses the issue entirely and allows newbies to get sucked in seeing the potential of their projects without going through (often) painful design and implementation of the interface.
Wow. Just looked at the specs for a BBC and it only had 64-128K ram and 32-128K roms and ran at 2Mhz. When you think of the amount of basic programs we shoved into those constraints back then (never mind brought games that were coded directly in 6502 assembler and the odd "poked assembler" game entered laboriously from a magazine) and this is multiple times more powerful. Its 2M "rom" and 264K ram are massive in comparison. It was only Friday that I ordered a pico-w; a temp sensor break out; and a motion detector breakout to have a play around so quite a coincidence that you did this video now. I love that the second core bit streams out the display, but I guess similar to how the display was multiplexed directly from the ram on the BBC (changing the displays ram "location" to running code was always fun to watch).
Wow! I have been inspired, motivated and energised into building this project. I learned basic more than 40 years ago when I got my first real computer, a ZX81. Thanks for the clear instructions. Everything I need to get busy.
I have a RetroMax (a clone of the Colour Maximite II) which is also an MM-BASIC machine. Geoff and the folks working with him did a fine job with MM-BASIC, and this design looks bang-on as well. I bet you had fun building this little board, and that's the whole thing right there - it's not work if you love what you're doing.
Perfect project! Already wrote a couple of short programs via puTTY in the MMBasic console. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Short form kit + an RTC has been ordered from SiliconChip.
Great fun Chris. Reminds me of the first few times I tinkered with the old Color Computer. As someone has already said, this would be an excellent exercise in a beginners electronics course. My experience is that they tend to throw beginners in the deep end when it comes to electronics and programming. Thanks for another great video.
Great video and an amazing project. I hope someone takes this to produce teaching notes taking students from components to programming. Exactly what ICT and DT lessons in schools need to transform the minds of children from solely consumers of technology to understanding what's behind it!
Great video! BTW, you can skip the sd-card slot breakout board and simply solder wires to SD-to-MicroSD adapter leads - that looks less sophisticated but this is such a good use for otherwise useless larger-older SD-adapters that till this day are shipped with majority of Micro-SD cards. When you started with 3D-printed parts, I thought you would go for printing the entire case for this build - since you've chosen the solderable breadboard, I suppose it is a permanent build ;) Thank you for the video! Top-quality content that is!
Excellent video demonstration. I built up some Color Maximites using the PIC32 and really thought MMBasic is a very powerful language. I always love Geoff's projects. I would suppose this also supports sound as well by using one of the PWM generators ... This also supports 16 colors which the Maximites only supported 8. Great work !
Great project Chris! I have a Colour Maximite 2, and Geoff’s basic interpreter is great. On the Pico, in colour mode 2, it almost looks VIC-20 like on your monitor. Fabulous that this can be done on a Pico. Now it just needs some sound output capability for maximum fun. 👍
Very informative video. I want to build one now. I built a varient PCB's for rhe first Color Maximite using rhe PIC32. This is even cheaper and sports two ARM CPU cores. Excellent 👌
What an amazing coincidence, Chris! I'm using a Teensy 4.1 synth to generate complex Lissajous waveforms, with 5 outputs; XYRGB. Just designed my 1st SMD PCB in Kicad, progressing from the previous bread board prototypes... Same process of sourcing parts from schematics, arranging them onto a board, then soldering them into a functional device. But, here's the kicker. I also need to feed my XYRGB into a secondary monitor, located at the control desk, to preview and set up imagery, prior to projecting them from the laser projectors. Been looking for an HDMI solution for ages, but have only found monochrome USB oscilloscope apps. The PICOmite VGA looks like a simple, but potential alternative, IF Basic on the PICOmite can keep up with 40K points per sec. 🤔
Great content - as always! Love the approach of using some of these incredibly inexpensive computers to build the things we want. Through serendipity, I've been using the Pico for some projects, building them out on the solderboard as well. Great fun, and glad to see see how you make these things approachable.
I like the DIY-videos most on your channel, especially when PICO related. Good to see u not wasting your time trying to become a better TETRIS-player ;-)
This is one of the best videos in a while on the Explaining Computers channel. British viewers my benefit by forming a club to make a group purchase of hardware for PicoMite projects that is over the $300 minimum, then redistributing the individual sub-orders within the UK.
14:21 what a missed opportunity for the great line "Please excuse the crudity of this model; I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it". Also, what a great video, I love projects like this!
Thank you for another great video. I think I am adding this to my todo list, which has sadly about 15 other entries. Keep up the good work I am enjoying it!
For all the horse power (I knew about its' ability to drive VGA) in the Pico, I wondered why someone hadn't it turned it into a micro computer. I like your approach. I am a real old fart who was messing around with micro computers (MC6800 Z80 8088 TMS9900) in the '70s, so your video gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. What we would have done to get a Pico back then.
This was a great video, lots of info. I like your simple bread board solution, thought it rather genius in its simplicity and very available from many sources for fairly cheap. Thanks!
Just came across this video, going to have ago, pity about Silicon Chip though. Or try the VGA Dev Board. Great video as always, so informative and easy to follow! 👍👍👍
Interesting choice of color arrangement in the video output. Traditionally RGBI arrangement was used, three bits was used as RGB channels and the fourth bit was used to select between darker and brighter version of the color. The number of needed components is similar, RGBI output requires six diodes and four resistors.
Built this last year. Super simple and it feels like messing with an 80s micro on steroids! My recommendation (if you want to build this) is cut out that chunk of circuit with the mosfets and just buy a tiny 4-channel level-shifter module from eBay. £1.89 with free postage ($2.50). Whilst you're at it grab a real time clock module too - supported. I built mine on a small perfboard but this would be even quicker on a standard breadboard. If it wasn't for the VGA output (resistor DAC) part of the circuit, you could just use hook-up (dupont) wires for everything. Even better, learn EasyEDA, spin your own board and gift the extras to your geeky mates!
BTW, Miroslav Němeček (Panda381, author of the used VGA source code of the PicoVGA driver) is an amazing programmer! In the 90s he built a complete DOS ecosystem around his DOS Manager (DOSMAN), created great games like TETRIX, VLAK or PLANETY, later created a very fast and easy to use tutorial program PETR for kids, for Windows, based on his own implementation of system services and 3D, and what's more, created a whole base OS called LITos. What's incredible about all this is that he wrote the vast majority of things in Assembler!
Nice project with the Pico as mentioned before putting in kit form would be a good idea, that way you wouldn't have to purchase parts separately. And would inspire young people to build this project. Great job Chris. 👍
Reminds me a bit of my early days in computing when I jumped from a Cosmac Elf that I had built up from an article in Aug 1976 issue of Popular Electronics and several follow-up articles, to a Heathkit IBM compatible (HS-151) and started messing around in BASIC that shipped in early versions of MS-DOS. Even that version of BASIC was limited to 640x480 in B&W or 320x240 in color. Great fun! Now I have dozens of computers around the house in a more "distributed computing" model. Many are older, but a most are Rpi's and Arduino's. Of course none of this includes things like my refrigerator, oven, wifi, various routers, and on and on. How things have changed!!!
There are some cool short videos showing various PicoMiteVGA output on Peter Mather's channel here: www.youtube.com/@petermather3049/videos
If you are an ExplainingComputers channel member, I also discussed the wider implications of the PicoMiteVGA in Member Video #11 -- and it generated some great disussion: th-cam.com/video/aaBKSpyyV4s/w-d-xo.html
I'm sorry you couldn't order the Silicon Chip kit from the UK. As a small business, it is difficult for us to comply with foreign VAT laws. If there is enough demand, we might be able to arrange for Practical Electronics magazine to sell kits locally.
@@nicholasvinen Yes, if you could, that would be very helpful. I have an annual subscription to your magazine, if that makes any difference.
Do you have any ports left for interface to the outside world and can the basic that comes with it do that?
@@Daveyk021 yes there are plenty of digital inputs and outputs, analog inputs,.PWM outputs, frequency measuring inputs, serial ports and more. All controlled via BASIC. I/O is via a 40-pin header but not all 40 pins are I/Os. There are some powers, grounds etc.
@@djsbriscoe I'll contact the editor of PE magazine shortly and see what we can organise, then let you know the result.
This is what we should be teaching kids in High School. This is an entire curriculum - basic electronics, soldering skills, breadboarding, and then programing.
I agree.
I agree with this
@@FoxWolfWorld and where does tik tok come from again i can never seem to remember
@@Weegeeguy208 Yeah, and in its country of origin, TikTok’s content is much different, more restricted and more educational/informative than what our kids in the West are subjected to 😠
Totally agree! I would have eaten it up.
Is it just me or wouldn't we "gentlemen of a certain age" have given our right arms away just to have BASIC running at this kind of speed back in the days of the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, etc.?
Thanks for an inspirational video and the resources, I shall be off to source the parts this very instant to build a PicoMite.
What a great, great, great project and amazing work by Geoff Graham and his team.
So true -- I had just the same thought. Runs fast, boots very quickly into BASIC -- and the ability to load and save programs to the micro SD card is so much easier and more reliable than using tapes!
True.
take a look at the Colour MAxiMite2 - >400Mhz clock - amazing results and language compatible (with idiosyncracies between the platforms) with the PiPicoMite, and various MicroMite flavours - over a dozen platforms of various capabilites & speeds, all running the same MMBasic with excellent code portability
The "team" needs to be named/recognised. It is Peter Mather and he churns out these new developments at an incredible rate 😎👍
There's already someone who turned the pico into a micro C64 with a tiny 320x240 display and hand-made mini keyboard/joystick. VGA timings and data were generated on-the-fly too due to lack of memory for a frame buffer. He's on YT somewhere just can't remember the channel name. It was an impressive little thing and nicely done too.
I suppose it's not really hard to make a frame buffer out of an external 256 or 512 k memory chip. SOmeone will be working on that right now I expect, or even finished it.
This needs to be packaged in to a kit form and sold as a project like the old transistor radio kits we had back in the day.
You can order a kit from several vendors like Silicon Chip in Australia or Budgetronics in the EU. I have seen kits on tindie as well even including the circuitry for audio.
If I remember correctly it was Heathkit that sold kits to make different projects.
4:00
@@richardpalmanteer9798 Yup. Tindie is like an open-source Heathkit for the modern age.
Another nice little project! It's amazing what one can do with a Pi Pico. Also, I was singing the Tetris theme (do, do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do, etc.) when you were demonstrating the Blocks game. All in all, 'twas a very good journey.
Thanks for your support. I am now imagining you singing to Tetris! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Better than imagining me swearing at Tetris! Nothing like playing a online multiplayer game of it, doing so well, then you goof up, try to recover, then before you know it, you're out and dropping an F-bomb. 😅
The latest release of the firmware V5.07.06 includes a full file system on the flash chip - no sdcard needed, and many other enhancements. Also note the PicoMiteVGA has extensive support for sound. Details of suggested wiring are given in the manual.
Thanks for this Peter, and for all your work bringing this to reality. It is very much appreciated. I will check out the latest firmware. :) I already have another PicoMiteVGA project planned . . .
Thanks to you and everyone involved in bringing fantastic projects like this to fruition. I'm going to have to try and build one, even if my soldering skills are nonexistent. 🙂
Peter, I've added a link to your channel (and the PicoMiteVGA videos there) to the video description, and in a pinned comment. :)
Such a brilliant little hack-up! Thanks Peter, and thanks Chris.
Just one word... AMAZING! Back in the 1980's, I never thought I would see a computer, the size of a stick of gum!! Great one Chris! Thanks!!
Chris, you have a gift for explaining things. You are a wonderful teacher. This was one of my many favorite videos you have made. I look forward every time a new video from EC shows up in my feed.
I like these projects it reminds when I was younger, I used to pull things to bits, strangely I could never reassemble them but it was fun trying. 😊
Back in the day when filling out an application form for an electronics course, one of the questions was “Why do you want to study electronics” my mother said “ So you can learn to put everything back together” 😁
I think it is amazing the Pico can directly provide a VGA signal. The resolution is not very high, but still. Getting the timings right is not easy.
Not enough memory for a frame buffer, yet still it produces a picture, that's pretty astounding for such a small CPU. I have a few picos and have used them for all sorts of things. It's a surprisingly powerful little thing.
The PicoMiteVGA has a framebuffer and the option of adding two extra framebuffers in Basic memory. One of them acts as an overlay area allowing objects to move over a background and the other can be used to get artefact free updates by copying it to the main buffer during screen blanking
@@petermather3049 Yes, but what what was worth mentioning is that the pico can even do it without a frame buffer. this guy did it and made a pico C64 with mini LCD and custom mini keyboard: th-cam.com/video/hgLhGpbC6E4/w-d-xo.html
Although the code for generating VGA timing signals and data was not developed by him. He did make the first pico C64 :)
The DVI display out library can handle two color display out because each display out takes less than half the resources. Wouldn't have room for other IO but that's exceeding our expectations of microcontrollers by a landslide
The Parallax Propeller chip did similar tricks, 15 years ago.
Greetings from across the pond near Albuquerque, New Mexico. This video reminds me of my Radio Shack TRS-80, including the expansion interface containing an extra 32KB of memory to add to the original 16KB internal memory. Many people trashed the TRS-80, but not me -- I learned BASIC, good programming techniques, some assembly language programming for the Z80 processor, and even had a Fortran compiler for it. Had a Radio Shack dot matrix printer to go with it, too. Even the computer table came from Radio Shack. My boss had one too, so it made for great collaborations. We routinely ran 6-degree-of-freedom ballistic trajectory simulations in BASIC for work. Fun times!
Oh to have an RP2040 dual-core 133MHz processor back in the late 1970s / early 1980s era.
This video also reminds me how thankful we should be for USB, HDMI, Bluetooth, wireless and wired networking, gigabytes of on-board memory, terabytes of external storage, multi-core processors (still admire the Z80 processor, though), SBCs, 8K resolution, etc.
Absolutely great video. Well done, Prof. Barnatt! 😀
Hail fellow Burqueno -
Thanks for this, and I agree -- we should be very thankful for the hardware we have today.
This explanation and build is totally brilliant. Clear and concise for any beginner.
Well done Sir.
Something similar is the Agon Light. This uses a modern, fast, Z80 variant and runs BBC Basic out of the box, but can also be switched to run Forth. It has colour VGA, a PS2 keyboard interface, an SD card for storage, and also has sound output from a 3.5mm jack or a small on board buzzer.
Very interesting, I had not come across the Argon Light. Link for others here: www.thebyteattic.com/p/agon.html
That sounds like exactly the kind of thing I’ve been dreaming of building, including the use of Forth
I just peeked at the project website. Well organized, clear and high quality documentation. it's downright impressive.
This is the kind of EC videos I like! Keep it up, Chris!
I love these boot-to-basic machines, even though my programming skills are somewhat lacking. I have another of Geoff Graham's creations, the Colour Maximite 2, which is a fantastic liittle machine, and a lot of fun to program. Now all we need is to build a nice keyboard case to put them in, just like back in the 80s!
A PicoMite VGA inside a keyboard is a great idea.
Just wanted to say, Chris, that you’re not like a lot of TH-camrs out there. You show no arrogance in your character in the content you produce.I get put off a lot by content creators because they produce content with the primary aim to promote themselves. You on the other hand, enjoy educating and to give inspiration; and it’s because of this, that I can enjoy your videos, taking confidence in what you are sharing with us. Thank you for all of the efforts that go into your plethora of content! Also, here’s to the upcoming 1 million subscribers!
Thanks for your kind feedback, most appreciated. :)
Both Dave and Christopher uploading computing electronics projects in the same week is wonderful
This is a really nice design, using one of the PICO's core for VGA output is something I wasn't really expecting,
I wonder what else one can dedicate extra cpu cores to?!
Thanks Chris, that was really interesting video (as usual)
Well, the PICO has only two cores. So one for VGA and one for your code. Sound could be another option. But that could probably be handled by the PIO's.
The RP2040 in the PICO is a great MCU.
the most education channel for IT , and engineers that explain things clearly
Your first PicoMite video got me started! Now, I own a PicoMiteVGA board and enjoy programming and tinkering with it. The online user's forums have been invaluable in learning this system's wonderful capabilities. Thanks for your informative videos!
This is great to hear. The online forums do indeed seem very good.
I love the way you create bookmarks of the video chapters and take advantage of TH-cam features. Sort of like how the proper creation of a DVD would have been done back in the day. Awesome and thanks!
I'm glad that you appreciate the chapters.
Thanks Chris for a very interesting video. This takes me back to the 80's, following circuit diagrams, soldering components (neatly) to a pcb the correct way round. The components were really cheap & more easily accessible back then.
Are you sure they were really cheaper back then? The prices and availability in the modern, global electronics market are generally better (at least pre Covid). The low cost microcontroller and SBC markets are incredible. The fact you can pick up a Pi Pico for around £5 is amazing.
Thanks for your support Alan, most appreciated. :)
@@another3997 I totally agree with you a Pi Pico for £5 is amazing. The components were cheap in the early 1980's, that's how we built a lot of projects back then! The things that were expensive were micro-computers i.e The Sinclair ZX81 an introductory kit in 1981 was £49.95 which would equate to £204 ($279) in 2023. The BBC micro model A was £235 & the Micro model B £335 in 1981 & equates to £1152 (A) & £1642 (B) today, how things have changed.
This build reminded me of the old Phillips Electronic Engineer where you could build various items but without having to solder. A hairpin went through the board and then a spring went over it to secure it. Wires and components were secured to these posts and you could make radios, intercoms, burglar alarms, morse code set and electronic organ.
I love MMBasic, so cool when a bunch of Aussies come together this is what we can pull off!
Generally valid advice for both software and hardware: build it in the smalledt possible stages, test after each, and if it stops working, the cause is whatever you just did,
In interesting challenge would be to fold up the design into as small a form factor as could be conveniently constructed, preferably in a generally-available container. The sockets would likely be the major constraints there. It could be a way to build test points into a larger system or piece of machinery, if a Wifi data stream isn't suitable for some reason.
It's always a balance between quality control and time, ain't it.
I love the way he is able to explain the technical issues so well, feel like entering into the world of creativity and failure is just another opportunity to learn. I also would like to thank, all those who spend many hours creating documentation to give us an opportunity to go further. If you have the extra funds; just know it goes to advance our futures.
You do a great job explaining and demonstrating all aspects. More kids need to learn this stuff. I wish I had someone like you explaining this kinda stuff when I was younger. Thanks.
Best video you ever made!!! By the way you can use hydrochloric acid and a q-tip to remove black oxides before soldering. Also remember flux is your friend - my favorite is ruby fluid flux. It's good practice to remove rosin afterwords with acetone because sometimes metal salts will grow across the rosin and cause intermittent shorts. One day I will be making a TH-cam video about an invention I have been working on for over 20 years. Tuning in all the way from the jungles of Belize.🌴🌴🌴🌄
Thanks for this. I enjoyed making this video. :) I always find it amazing how viewers watch from all over the world.
Are you ex-RAF?
@@liammhodonohue nope just a gringo who forgot to get on the plane home about 15 years ago. Got a cool friend who was a british soldier tho.
@@------country-boy------- 👍
Good morning, gentlemen. Have a blessed Sunday to all of you! ✌️
Greetings!
What about the women?
@@wouldbang6928 thank God She/He/They didn't write that on 🐦. He/She/They'd have been cancelled
Hello, fellow Christopher! Back again....
How cool that you made a small little project! I like using the pico and arduino and various other microcontrollers with with extra components like resistors and potentiometers and transistors and diodes, and... the possibilities are nearly endless! I like the maker side a lot. Very cool you've got all those small programs running on it! 👍
No Tech-Enthusiast's sunday is truly complete without a new video from Chris 💪🙏
:)
Thanks!
Thanks for your support. I thought you would like this project.
Thank you for this excellent breadboard project video. As usual, thorough information and great production values. Cheers from Wisconsin!
Quite the project. Not one I would try tackling myself (my soldering is terrible), but it's great watching knowledge like Chris' make it work.
Brilliant video again Chris - And what a fantastic showcase for the amazing Pi Pico - another inspiring project explained in your usual simple and enthusing way ! So many thanks :)
Very interesting video. Takes us back to 80s and 90s Home Computer era. Thank you very much Chris.
My PicoMiteVGA is now built on a solderless breadboard and is working just fine. All thanks to this video Chris, I wouldn’t have noticed this entertaining project without you highlighting it. Maybe I’ll order a PCB to make a proper job of it.
Great to hear! :)
Mind blowing .... a microcomputer with minimal external components. Brilliant job !!!!!
Great weekly video Chris. I remember fondly my Commadore 64 from the early 80's. Thanks for sharing.
Greetings Brian! :)
Great Find, Anne Robinson. I love the nod to retro computers. I have a maximite somewhere from the same people. This could be a great project to get in on.
Love this video I can source many components from existing bits attached to previous projects . can't wait to get going once I've cleared a space on my project table!
All that performance from a £4 board. Pretty amazing really.
I like your "output" overlayed on the monitor in post production. Can hardly see the join.
That was VERY cool Chris - it looked like you had a lot of fun building that!
I did indeed! :)
Chris, I just wanted to thank you again for this video. It inspired me to attempt a build. I decided on design 2, with the additional I/O, SD card and the real time clock. Ordered the PCBs from JLCPCB and the components from various sources. I got it finished at the weekend, and it works!!
Fantastic. Great to hear. This remains my favourite project of 2023.
3:15 Something I noticed about the schematic is that the color uses this weird "RGB-121" color space. I tapped it out in GIMP and it's pretty good. It has orange and pink and a light blue. It's just missing grey and purple.
I just sit here thinking it's cool AF!
Christopher, you're the man!
Edit: That handling of VGA signal is a game changer. As a person who toys with Arduino/ESP32/Raspberry, i know that making of clear interference can often defeat the sole purpose of the prototype's existence. This bypasses the issue entirely and allows newbies to get sucked in seeing the potential of their projects without going through (often) painful design and implementation of the interface.
your content just keeps getting better
Wow. Just looked at the specs for a BBC and it only had 64-128K ram and 32-128K roms and ran at 2Mhz. When you think of the amount of basic programs we shoved into those constraints back then (never mind brought games that were coded directly in 6502 assembler and the odd "poked assembler" game entered laboriously from a magazine) and this is multiple times more powerful. Its 2M "rom" and 264K ram are massive in comparison. It was only Friday that I ordered a pico-w; a temp sensor break out; and a motion detector breakout to have a play around so quite a coincidence that you did this video now. I love that the second core bit streams out the display, but I guess similar to how the display was multiplexed directly from the ram on the BBC (changing the displays ram "location" to running code was always fun to watch).
I always enjoy your videos, Chris. Thank you.
Thanks. :)
This is a very intriguing project Dr. Barnatt.
This is really interesting - it is nice to have a dedicated device to run BASIC on.
Wow! I have been inspired, motivated and energised into building this project. I learned basic more than 40 years ago when I got my first real computer, a ZX81. Thanks for the clear instructions. Everything I need to get busy.
Good luck. :)
The display output was rock solid and very nice. Great project
I have a RetroMax (a clone of the Colour Maximite II) which is also an MM-BASIC machine. Geoff and the folks working with him did a fine job with MM-BASIC, and this design looks bang-on as well. I bet you had fun building this little board, and that's the whole thing right there - it's not work if you love what you're doing.
Geoff and co have indeed given us some great stuff. :)
Perfect project! Already wrote a couple of short programs via puTTY in the MMBasic console. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Short form kit + an RTC has been ordered from SiliconChip.
Enjoy your kit. :)
That takes me back to using my first computer, a Radio Shack Color Computer, and a single sided floppy. Very cool.
So exciting to see another Picomite video! I will certainly follow the video to recreate this!
Good luck!
Fantastic project. Thank you so much Chris.
Have a nice week!
It is a treat for those stuck with the Basic.
boy did that bring back some memorys. thank you
Amazing video as usual! I love these electronics/circuit videos.
Great fun Chris. Reminds me of the first few times I tinkered with the old Color Computer. As someone has already said, this would be an excellent exercise in a beginners electronics course. My experience is that they tend to throw beginners in the deep end when it comes to electronics and programming. Thanks for another great video.
Awesome! I love the picomite but was pumped to see a stand-alone version that didn't need another computer to run
Well done, and a very clean breadboard build.
Great video and an amazing project. I hope someone takes this to produce teaching notes taking students from components to programming. Exactly what ICT and DT lessons in schools need to transform the minds of children from solely consumers of technology to understanding what's behind it!
Great video! BTW, you can skip the sd-card slot breakout board and simply solder wires to SD-to-MicroSD adapter leads - that looks less sophisticated but this is such a good use for otherwise useless larger-older SD-adapters that till this day are shipped with majority of Micro-SD cards. When you started with 3D-printed parts, I thought you would go for printing the entire case for this build - since you've chosen the solderable breadboard, I suppose it is a permanent build ;) Thank you for the video! Top-quality content that is!
I wish I had thought of that adapter hack! Great idea.
Your work produced a very professional-looking build, Professor! Thank you...🇺🇸 😎👍☕
Interesting, but don't know if I will ever build one of these!! Always growing, always learning from you Sir!! Keep up the good work!!
Excellent video demonstration. I built up some Color Maximites using the PIC32 and really thought MMBasic is a very powerful language. I always love Geoff's projects. I would suppose this also supports sound as well by using one of the PWM generators ... This also supports 16 colors which the Maximites only supported 8. Great work !
Have a good rest of your weekend Christopher. As Always, Be Smart and Stay Safe.
Greetings! Another Sunday with EC and a cuppa tea!
My grandmother always said _"Never trust a tea drinker."_
Greetings! :) And I like tea.
Great project Chris! I have a Colour Maximite 2, and Geoff’s basic interpreter is great. On the Pico, in colour mode 2, it almost looks VIC-20 like on your monitor. Fabulous that this can be done on a Pico. Now it just needs some sound output capability for maximum fun. 👍
I appreciate your simplicity. Consistent performance. Sharp explainaion.
Great as usual! Happy sunday
Amazing project and video !
And congrats on the nearly 900k subs 🎉
Thanks. :)
Very informative video. I want to build one now. I built a varient PCB's for rhe first Color Maximite using rhe PIC32. This is even cheaper and sports two ARM CPU cores. Excellent 👌
What an amazing coincidence, Chris!
I'm using a Teensy 4.1 synth to generate complex Lissajous waveforms, with 5 outputs; XYRGB. Just designed my 1st SMD PCB in Kicad, progressing from the previous bread board prototypes... Same process of sourcing parts from schematics, arranging them onto a board, then soldering them into a functional device.
But, here's the kicker. I also need to feed my XYRGB into a secondary monitor, located at the control desk, to preview and set up imagery, prior to projecting them from the laser projectors.
Been looking for an HDMI solution for ages, but have only found monochrome USB oscilloscope apps.
The PICOmite VGA looks like a simple, but potential alternative, IF Basic on the PICOmite can keep up with 40K points per sec. 🤔
Great content - as always! Love the approach of using some of these incredibly inexpensive computers to build the things we want. Through serendipity, I've been using the Pico for some projects, building them out on the solderboard as well. Great fun, and glad to see see how you make these things approachable.
I like the DIY-videos most on your channel, especially when PICO related. Good to see u not wasting your time trying to become a better TETRIS-player ;-)
I forgot that the pieces could be rotated . . .
This is one of the best videos in a while on the Explaining Computers channel. British viewers my benefit by forming a club to make a group purchase of hardware for PicoMite projects that is over the $300 minimum, then redistributing the individual sub-orders within the UK.
Thanks for this. A group purchase would indeed make sense.
So fun! Love these little Picos! Great video once again sir!
Very enjoyable project! Thanks for sharing.
I had a donut today.
Now I will watch the British gentleman talking about Basic & microcontrollers.
14:21 what a missed opportunity for the great line "Please excuse the crudity of this model; I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it".
Also, what a great video, I love projects like this!
:)
Thank you for another great video. I think I am adding this to my todo list, which has sadly about 15 other entries. Keep up the good work I am enjoying it!
Nice work Chris!
For all the horse power (I knew about its' ability to drive VGA) in the Pico, I wondered why someone hadn't it turned it into a micro computer. I like your approach. I am a real old fart who was messing around with micro computers (MC6800 Z80 8088 TMS9900) in the '70s, so your video gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. What we would have done to get a Pico back then.
Very Exciting video to watch Loved it. Really learned a lot and really enjoyed this THANKS
This was a great video, lots of info. I like your simple bread board solution, thought it rather genius in its simplicity and very available from many sources for fairly cheap. Thanks!
Just came across this video, going to have ago, pity about Silicon Chip though. Or try the VGA Dev Board.
Great video as always, so informative and easy to follow! 👍👍👍
Wow, this is a great presentation. Thanks!
This is amazing! 1980s style computing on a modern device. Imagine how good this would have seemed back then. It certainly beats my ZX81 ;-)
Thanks for this. We would indeed have marvelled at this back in the days of the ZX81. :)
Been waiting for this video. ;)
Excellent as always. Thanks for taking the time to build and play with this, Chris.
The project came out stupendous! Excellent video. This really spurs my interests.
:)
Interesting choice of color arrangement in the video output. Traditionally RGBI arrangement was used, three bits was used as RGB channels and the fourth bit was used to select between darker and brighter version of the color. The number of needed components is similar, RGBI output requires six diodes and four resistors.
Well done Sir.
What a great piece of kit.
Built this last year. Super simple and it feels like messing with an 80s micro on steroids! My recommendation (if you want to build this) is cut out that chunk of circuit with the mosfets and just buy a tiny 4-channel level-shifter module from eBay. £1.89 with free postage ($2.50). Whilst you're at it grab a real time clock module too - supported. I built mine on a small perfboard but this would be even quicker on a standard breadboard. If it wasn't for the VGA output (resistor DAC) part of the circuit, you could just use hook-up (dupont) wires for everything. Even better, learn EasyEDA, spin your own board and gift the extras to your geeky mates!
BTW, Miroslav Němeček (Panda381, author of the used VGA source code of the PicoVGA driver) is an amazing programmer! In the 90s he built a complete DOS ecosystem around his DOS Manager (DOSMAN), created great games like TETRIX, VLAK or PLANETY, later created a very fast and easy to use tutorial program PETR for kids, for Windows, based on his own implementation of system services and 3D, and what's more, created a whole base OS called LITos.
What's incredible about all this is that he wrote the vast majority of things in Assembler!
Nice project with the Pico as mentioned before putting in kit form would be a good idea, that way you wouldn't have to purchase parts separately. And would inspire young people to build this project. Great job Chris. 👍
Reminds me a bit of my early days in computing when I jumped from a Cosmac Elf that I had built up from an article in Aug 1976 issue of Popular Electronics and several follow-up articles, to a Heathkit IBM compatible (HS-151) and started messing around in BASIC that shipped in early versions of MS-DOS. Even that version of BASIC was limited to 640x480 in B&W or 320x240 in color. Great fun! Now I have dozens of computers around the house in a more "distributed computing" model. Many are older, but a most are Rpi's and Arduino's. Of course none of this includes things like my refrigerator, oven, wifi, various routers, and on and on. How things have changed!!!