begun in 2007 by Jeff Ledger as a software “fork” of
FemtoBASIC — a version of tinyBASIC developed for the
Propeller in 2006 by Mike Green and Tomas Rokicki.
Over the next few years, Jeff added and improved
Color BASIC, with contributions from Green, Rokicki, and
other Propeller notables like
Marko Lukat, Jon Williams,
Johannes Ahlebrand, Michael
Park, and Andre’ LaMothe. By
2012, Color BASIC was in use as
the “operating system” of the
Pocket Mini Computer — a self-contained “retro computer” that
was a blast from the past for
oldsters and an interesting
technology throwback to
youngsters who got their hands
on it.
One thing that’s different
about the Amigo is that you can
control Propeller I/O pins from
Color BASIC instead of Spin — so
you can write simple programs to
control your homebrew circuits
with a keyboard and a monitor
without any other computer,
application, or programming
environment.
It’s not sophisticated, and it
certainly won’t replace C, Spin, or
Propeller Assembly Language, or
those really cool boards from
Parallax, but it is simple,
understandable, and fun — perfect
for a mentoring platform intended
to introduce programming and computer-controlled
hardware (Figure 3)!
Shown in Figures 3-5, all hardware subsystems in the
Amigo are open source circuit designs from various
Parallax boards or the PEB 2014 and its progenitors. So,
Vintage Computing
FIGURE 3: Amigo schematic, showing
Propeller pin assignments and
support devices. Circuit designs are
“standard” for these subsystems.
FIGURE 4: Schematic of Amigo
peripheral interfaces. Again, circuit
designs are standard.
December 2015 39
