A Unique, High-Tech (Family) Computer | Hacker News Reader

A Unique, High-Tech (Family) Computer

nicole.express

65 pointszdw9 comments

I bought one of these a couple decades ago. The story I got was they were mass produced in Shenzhen and sold (cheaply) to poorer sections of China, India and SouthEast Asia. As for the "educational" aspect... The one I got did come with an English vocabulary program, and a few other games in what looked like simplified Chinese (couldn't tell for sure, I don't read or speak any of the Chinese dialects.)

But it looked very similar... I'm guessing some of the old fab equipment was completely depreciated and picked up for a song and stuffed in the corner of someone's warehouse and was cranking out 6502 clones by the thousand.

I remember some of the limitations: zero networking (not even RS232), no mass storage (not even a cassette port), 8-bit sound (no voice samples for language lessons) and something like a 252x240 screen resolution.

I've often wondered how (in)expensive you could make something with a better built-in screen, the ability to play VP9/AV1 video and opus samples and Bluetooth to connect to mouse / keyboard and PC as a net and storage device.

> I've often wondered how (in)expensive you could make something with a better built-in screen, the ability to play VP9/AV1 video and opus samples and Bluetooth to connect to mouse / keyboard and PC as a net and storage device.

I’ve been doing this, and the answer if you have a 3d printer is $10 US(pi zero 2 w) + the cost of whatever display you want to use. This won’t do AV1 but it’s good enough for my use cases. I’m slightly cheating on the cost as I have plethora of LiPo batteries in reserve.

I’ve been wanting to do something like this to make a modern iPod / audiobook reader.

For an iPod style device you could even go lower down the line and use Pico W along with the addition of some i2s/amp combo.

Hardware wise that sounds a lot like basic tablet, which sell around $100 price point. On the other hand, Raspberry Pi 400 costs $80.

Right. The Raspberry Pi 400 (or 500) is in line with what I was thinking about. The only caveat I can think of is I am very much not a fan of the keyboard that comes with the 400. And you have to add your own monitor, but you can get a cheap 720p HDMI monitor from Amazon for less than $100, probably cheaper from Ali Express (assuming we can still import things from China by the time you read this.)

I didn't mention anything about software... Raspbian is a passable spin of Leenucks, but not really what I was thinking about for an "educational" or "casual" computer. But that's a completely different day-dream.

I remember some sort of OLPC/Raspberry Pi-like initiative in India to build a "teach the kids how to program" type computer based on a Famiclone. The idea was that "famicoms on a chip" were readily available in a way that would make it cheap enough even for the dirt-poorest of Indian families to afford, and the software could theoretically be ported to the more bootleggy famiclones already out there on the market.

I think that was “PlayPower” http://playpower.pbworks.com/w/page/17230477/About%20the%20$...

In Russia we had Subor, LIKO and Magistr. Magistr also did 16-bit SEGA with keyboard, and this is unique. SEGA had no 16-bit original hardware with keyboards. SEGA only had 8-bit keyboard and then 32-bit Dreamcast.

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