Hello Everyone,
Some time ago I started a little project to make a serial terminal on the RP2040 and then the project grew and I added a simple operating system and then a C programming language interpreter. It seemed like at the time the project was growing out of control and it never lived up to what I wanted. Things just didn't work the way I hoped. You can read about that project in this thread viewtopic.php?t=308154
Well after years of work at this point I've got something that works like I want though it isn't finish yet I wanted to start a new thread for this project so I can continue to update and get ideas how to bring this project in to completion.
The PT52-Lua uses the vgaboard with SD card and the Pico 1 but I am working toward support for the Pico 2. The bricks are in place I just need to wait for the hardware.
What is it exactly? Well it's a modern re-imagining of an 80's computer, So long as you have a keyboard and a VGA screen you have a computer. Like any good computer it can run programs in this case Lua programs. There are enough tools built in that you can develop right on the device without any other computer. The system lets you expand and replace programs so if you don't like how a command works you can replace it with a Lua version. The Lua compiler is also now working on the PT52-Lua so you can compile programs to get a little more speed out of them. The original project had 80 x 26 character display with 256 colours. This new version takes things to the next level and features the original mode plus a faster 32 colour text mode with 16 different colours for each back and fore ground layers. Then there are the graphics modes 640 x 200 Monochrome; 320 x 200 4 colour; 320 x 100 16 colour; and 160 x 100 256 colour. 16 sprites are available these can be any of the colour depths the graphics modes support and there is the ability to scale them. Sprites use there own colour look up table unless in 256 colour mode then those in that mode have to share colours with the screen. Sprites can display over graphics and the 32 colour text mode. I've just recent added a new overlay system call it a large sprite this is fixed at 16 colours and has it's own colour table. The overlay is currently only used during boot and I plan to use it for a system menu via the SysRq Key. The overlay can only display over the graphics modes and replaces the sprites, so one or the other not both. It uses too much processing time to work over the text modes.
I've been using this project on and off over for over a year now to teach and learn Lua coding. Lua was a suggest from a forum member for another project I was working on now I can say it's quite powerful for what it is and I've used it to make games and silly little commands to make things easier for myself.
These are just some horrible pictures I could get from my monitor to show things in action.
This is still a passion project and very much unpolished. The docs are behind and well I'm one person plugging away when I have some free time. But if you want to give it a go and try it out it's there on gitlab https://gitlab.com/DarkElvenAngel/pt52-lua
As of this post the RP2350_support branch is the most current and also the most annoying to compile since I have SDK ver 2.0.0 installed temporarily to my tmp folder and that's where the build wants to find it. Once I have my Pico 2 I should be able to fix this and get support working for it properly and everything will merge to the default branch.
I had some time today I wanted to share about this project it's far from dead.
Thanks for checking this out maybe you'll even give try the project let me know if you do.
Some time ago I started a little project to make a serial terminal on the RP2040 and then the project grew and I added a simple operating system and then a C programming language interpreter. It seemed like at the time the project was growing out of control and it never lived up to what I wanted. Things just didn't work the way I hoped. You can read about that project in this thread viewtopic.php?t=308154
Well after years of work at this point I've got something that works like I want though it isn't finish yet I wanted to start a new thread for this project so I can continue to update and get ideas how to bring this project in to completion.
The PT52-Lua uses the vgaboard with SD card and the Pico 1 but I am working toward support for the Pico 2. The bricks are in place I just need to wait for the hardware.
What is it exactly? Well it's a modern re-imagining of an 80's computer, So long as you have a keyboard and a VGA screen you have a computer. Like any good computer it can run programs in this case Lua programs. There are enough tools built in that you can develop right on the device without any other computer. The system lets you expand and replace programs so if you don't like how a command works you can replace it with a Lua version. The Lua compiler is also now working on the PT52-Lua so you can compile programs to get a little more speed out of them. The original project had 80 x 26 character display with 256 colours. This new version takes things to the next level and features the original mode plus a faster 32 colour text mode with 16 different colours for each back and fore ground layers. Then there are the graphics modes 640 x 200 Monochrome; 320 x 200 4 colour; 320 x 100 16 colour; and 160 x 100 256 colour. 16 sprites are available these can be any of the colour depths the graphics modes support and there is the ability to scale them. Sprites use there own colour look up table unless in 256 colour mode then those in that mode have to share colours with the screen. Sprites can display over graphics and the 32 colour text mode. I've just recent added a new overlay system call it a large sprite this is fixed at 16 colours and has it's own colour table. The overlay is currently only used during boot and I plan to use it for a system menu via the SysRq Key. The overlay can only display over the graphics modes and replaces the sprites, so one or the other not both. It uses too much processing time to work over the text modes.
I've been using this project on and off over for over a year now to teach and learn Lua coding. Lua was a suggest from a forum member for another project I was working on now I can say it's quite powerful for what it is and I've used it to make games and silly little commands to make things easier for myself.
This is still a passion project and very much unpolished. The docs are behind and well I'm one person plugging away when I have some free time. But if you want to give it a go and try it out it's there on gitlab https://gitlab.com/DarkElvenAngel/pt52-lua
As of this post the RP2350_support branch is the most current and also the most annoying to compile since I have SDK ver 2.0.0 installed temporarily to my tmp folder and that's where the build wants to find it. Once I have my Pico 2 I should be able to fix this and get support working for it properly and everything will merge to the default branch.
I had some time today I wanted to share about this project it's far from dead.
Thanks for checking this out maybe you'll even give try the project let me know if you do.
Statistics: Posted by DarkElvenAngel — Sun Sep 15, 2024 8:43 pm