FabGL VS tinyusb

Some ideas can be borrowed from here: https://github.com/fdivitto/FabGL

I would like to use TTGO VGA32 as a programming environment for children to learn how to code like it's 1999. Only basic tools, a code editor and a compiler/interpreter, no web browser, no Stack Overflow, no code completion. See this article for a rationale. Now, what developer environment would be the best fit? FabGL provides PC Emulator with a selection of OS-es: CP/M, FreeDOS, MS-DOS, SvarDOS, ELKS, GEOS, GEM. Which would be the best OS? Apart from BASIC and Turbo Pascal/C++ or Watcom C++, which useful dev tools for 80186 should it contain? Micropython, Lua, Wasm3? What do you think of it?

You will want to follow the advice given by u/Stitch10925 and u/Ikebook89. If you take a look in the src/fonts folder in the FabGL library you will find many bitmapped fonts including a 5x8 and a 6x8 font. Either of these sound like exactly what you need.

https://github.com/fdivitto/fabgl is pretty much everything you'd ever want from an ESP32

Implementing the required USB host interface is another hurdle, but tinyusb seems to have sorted most of that out, except that UAC2 is implemented as a device while you need a host.

Have a look at TinyUSB. It supports the STM32WB and demo programs for the Nucleo-WB55RG. It even offers an example for dual CDC ports, so very close to what you're looking for.

Second: Distrust, misunderstanding, and out of date opinions of C++ in embedded spaces. I often see "compatibilty" thrown around as a goal for using C and not C++, but for most modern embedded systems, C++ compilers exist and are (usually) well tuned. Arm is a shining example here*. C++ is more optimizable than C as the intent can be clearer to the compiler. C++ constexpr and templates are a godsend for embedded systems, and I used both heavily in my recent arduino and pico testing. I combined both of them for a really cool experimental USB interface descriptor builder that runs at compile time and avoids the need to count byte sizes, but I gave up on it when the maintainer said C only, despite the fact that C can't do that. I was similarly disappointed when the pico "C++" was C only, as there was no backwards compatibility necessary.

I looked at this but the fork seems to have had a lot of problems from looking at the PR: https://github.com/hathach/tinyusb/pull/1219

I think a better solution might be to use a USB flash drive in the usbc port. Unfortunately micropython and circuitpython don't support this (yet), so you'd have to use c++ https://github.com/hathach/tinyusb

It's possible to make the s3 be a mass storage device via TinyUSB. https://github.com/hathach/tinyusb/tree/master/examples/device/cdc_msc_freertos