On 26/11/2016 01:21, Paul Boddie wrote:
They actually have a room of BBC Micros at Bletchley Park for schoolchildren to use, showing them what computing used to be about and confronting them with things like BASIC and maybe even assembly language (although I doubt that they really have time for BASIC tuition let alone assembly language).
Oh, and there's a BASIC that runs on GNU/Linux also: http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html
It is actually possible to do new machines based on such CPUs because they are still in production. I guess that was originally the vague idea behind the Raspberry Pi - the instigator prototyped it using Atmel AVRs (similar to the ones used in the Arduino), I think - and the users would have had a "bare metal" experience similar to the microcomputers of old. However, the project picked up that Broadcom SoC and the rest is history.
Some ppl are doing it for ORIC: http://oric.club/atmostrat
There are other "microcomputer" or "retrocomputer" projects such as ELLO 2M: https://www.crowdsupply.com/yellow-beak-computer/ello-2m These employ relatively small amounts of memory and microcontrollers, but that's enough to run low-level code or some form of BASIC. Interestingly, and a reminder to everyone about the value of Free Software, that particular project experienced problems using a proprietary BASIC and an apparently uncooperative developer which could have had serious consequences for the fulfilment of the rewards of the crowdfunding campaign in question:
Oh and there are gaming consoles, like the Pico8, and the BitBox: http://bitboxconsole.blogspot.fr/p/blog-page.html François. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
