Is this the FASTEST and CHEAPEST 8-Bit Computer Ever?

I forgot to mention that you can get 50% off on their chair with E7 standing desk order. Thanks again to FlexiSpot for this amazing workspace!

Great to see you”re enthusiastic about the Agon. I’m the author of the Dezog debugger and ElectronHAL and ElectronOS. With this you have the concept of personalities so that it can assume the identity of a CP/M machine or a MSX1. I even have Kings Valley running on a virtual TMS9918.

On Europe, Olimex are a great option, and their Agon Lite variant has an extra port (their 'UEXT' port) that gives you access to some neat modules they provide, and exposes I²C, SPI, and RS232.

Typical: the peripheral controller is a 32-bit chip 20 times faster than the main CPU.

Nice overview, we've just sent h0ffman a Console8 and Steve has cranked the VDP up to 32 channels of audio so hopefully he can make it (and all Agons) sing!

I have an AgonLight, Maximite 2, and the Ultimate 64 and reflect on the niche for each one. The Ultimate 64 is exquisite -- its only downside is that there is not an Ultimate 128 with BASIC 7.0. The Maximite 2 is powerful and appealing, the ultimate in BASIC-all-the-things at amazing ARM speeds -- but BASIC is your whole world, If the Maximite 2 had the equivalent of Supermon and Turbo Macro Pro built in, it would be a Commodore 64 update for the 21st century. I haven't figured out the AgonLight niche yet -- but am enthusiastic.

I don't usually get excited by modern day recreations of 8 bit computers, but this one is very interesting. As someone who spent hours and hours programming on an Acorn Electron back in the 80s, the BBC Basic included on this is a big plus, for me at least.

You never mentioned the 'inline' assembler on the BBC Basic. I had a couple of models of the BBC, up to Master. The Basic experience was probably as good as it gets for Basic but the inline 6502 assembler was awesome. It could reference Basic variables and DATA lines and it could produce pure assembler applications. This flexibility made it wonderful for 'what if's in minutes and see the results in seconds.

Excellent review. I like your thoughts regarding the custom OS layer. The interview with the creator was very enlightening. Thank you.

USB-A for power? That's... bizarre. And completely non-standard.

Great video! At last, the sort of coverage the Agon deserves. I’m just surprised that you didn’t mention one of the most important aspects of the system, namely the GPIO, which is addressable from BBC BASIC. Great for hobbyist electronics tinkerers or people who want to use the machine as a super-easy to program microcontroller. What other system lets you address pins directly in interpreted BASIC? And again, this is very educational. I see the Agon Light as a spiritual successor to the BBC Micro (more so than the Raspberry Pi, actually). It’s an instant-on computer that you can just turn on and program; it uses BBC BASIC, which is the best and fastest 8-bit BASIC around (ignoring its 32-bit version!); and it can interface easily with all kinds of home-grown hardware projects, just like the BBC Micro was uniquely good at. Much as I’m excited by Console8, I’d love to see the Agon being taken up in schools and universities etc. and used as an educational tool there for both computing and hardware projects. I think it’s perfectly suited for that, in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1980s.

Thank you Noel for featuring my game Draegerman! Yes, it was my first learning basic game and it was a really fun way of learning on the Agon Light.

Nice content and a great video. Keep up the good job! Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

That's an eye-opener. Thanks for the complete overview.

Bernardo is a really talented individual who's created something special. I've watched all his videos on the development of the Agon light (although I didn't understand a lot of what he was talking about). I really love his restoration videos of old 8 bit systems, the Wang being a favourite of mine. He really goes the extra mile and his attention to detail is beyond belief. A really cool guy and a fantastic YT channel

Given this is open source, I feel like a single PCB with modern mechanical keyboard switches and this board's hardware all in one would be pretty easy to do.

James Sharman on Youtube made an 8bit pipelined CPU. I forget the clock speed but because it's pipelined the performance was impressive. I'm curious how his processor would do with your benchmark

It really surprises me that after almost 50 years z80 based processor cores are still being manufactured. The intel 8080 architecture really had some legs on it.

Hi Noel, and thanks for this video. I had already heard about the AgonLight, but after watching your video I ran to Mouser and got one - this weekend I will be tinkering with it. I've been thinking about designing/building my own retro (or not, just simple) computer for a few years without getting to a firm conclusion. But the architecture of the AgonLight is quite close to what I ended designing in my head - an ESP32 for video and I/O, and another CPU for the main work load. I already know the ESP32 from working on the ESPectrum emulator, and its tricks for generating video in software. As I am realizing that I don't have the time for all the things I wanna do, I've decided to take a shortcut and try the Agon. Maybe I could write a game for it - I just wrote a game for the Next, so who knows? Thanks again for your video, it has clarified a lot of things about the Agon.

I'm definitely interested in a follow-up video in the next year or two.