Sometime last year I read a quote from Eben Upton, one of the creators of the Raspberry Pi, which really intrigued me. Foolishly however, rather than save the URL for future reference, I merely committed to memory the fact that the article contained the phrase quote “Eben Upton told CNN” and trusted that I would be able to find it again via the miracle of search engines¹. Upon attempting retrieval, I couldn’t find the quote as I had remembered it. I could only find this:

Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton told CNN. “So we kind of set out to recreate that feeling of the BBC Micro in the hopes it would spark a new wave of kids knowing how to program.” - https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/29/tech/raspberry-pi-launch/index.html

This is a lovely quote. Whatever else I might say on the subject, the Raspberry Pi is a laudable project which has done a great deal to broaden access to computing and electronics for children and adults alike. However, this is not the quote I remember. For one thing, it dates back to 2012, but I was sure the article I read was fresh in 2023!

I spent a bit of time fruitlessly toiling through search engine results, before a possibility dawned on me. Could I have misremembered the identity of the American news organisation to which Upton had spoken? Indeed, I had:

“It’s super important we teach kids about computers as they are now, rather than [how they were] 30 years ago,” Upton told CNBC. “While Raspberry Pi looks back, on the education, we hark back to the glory years of 1980s, we’ve got to be conscious we’re not trying to make faster versions of 1980s computers.” - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/12/sony-backs-raspberry-pi-with-fresh-funding-access-to-ai-chips.html

This is the quote I remember and the reason I find it so interesting is that while I accept there’s a good deal of truth in it, I’m not willing to completely buy into the sentiment. Is there some respect in which a 1980s computer is still better than a Raspberry Pi?

Tradeoff Time

The key drawback of a Raspberry Pi as I see it is that it is much harder to understand how it actually works. It firmly moves the user up the abstraction layer and atop the beast that is the Linux kernel. While it is possible to write bare-metal software, you’re working against the ecosystem and at least standing on the shoulders of reverse engineers. I don’t want to panic , but I think the Raspberry Pi has lost something which, while not important to everyone, shouldn’t be lost altogether.

By comparison, if you read the BBC Micro’s Advanced User Guide then you’ll be well on your way to understanding everything² about the machine. It’s a much simpler system, but nonetheless a complete one with a keyboard and a display and equally capable of working stand-alone. Its discontinuation as a hardware platform, if anything, works in its favour from the budding systems programmer’s perspective. It’s a stable unchanging target which will never get any more obsolete than it is today and it puts the onus on the programmer to innovate within the constraints on offer.

There is indeed a lot I really like about computers of that era. I like the tighter constraints and the relative simplicity. I like knowing that the hardware is real and, even if I’m running on an emulator right now, there is real hardware that my programs could run on. There’s just something about the instruction decoder being etched into real transistors, or failing that at least some programmable logic, that makes the whole experience so much more meaningful for me than software emulation or high-level fantasy machines³.

What I’m less keen on is actual vintage hardware itself. There are people who really enjoy the stewardship involved, who delight in desoldering a leaky electrolytic or who revel in fault-finding a giant PCB filled with long out-of-production ICs, but I’m not one of them. I can do hardware on a good day, but I’m in it for the software.

I’m also not especially nostalgic for the early 1980s. My first computer was an Amiga 500 bought circa 1990, which I feel is much closer in many respects to the modern laptop I’m typing this on than to a BBC Micro. I’m guess I’m trying to claim here that I’m arguing for aspects of the 8-bit golden age on their merits seen objectively.

Neo Retro

I think there’s a niche for a contemporary computer with a retro architectural aesthetic, but modernised enough to build with readily available parts, use readily available peripherals, and not be unduly difficult to use. A neo-retro-computer, if you will. The advantage of new design wouldn’t particularly be rooted in making it “faster”, as Eben suggested, but in making it more approachable and easier to use for a modern audience.

This idea is by no means novel. There are contemporary successors to classic computer systems which range between being recreations and upwardly compatible enhancements, such as the MEGA65 and the Spectrum Next . There are entirely new designs with a retro ethos, from modern twists like the Color Maximite and the Agon Light , to the ultra-nostalgic Commander X16 .

There’s a lot of really interesting stuff out there, but rather than dig into the specifics right now, I want to finish with a broad observation:

During the heyday of 1980s home computing, a vast amount of resources was poured into technical writing. Large numbers of manuals, books, and magazines were written for a large market using computers at what would now be considered quite a low level. The closer a neo-retro-computer design is to a vintage retro-computer, the greater extent to which it can leverage this existing library of written material. Add to this also the software library and perhaps some mind-share too. This is not a linear relationship. As you move away from being an upwardly compatible enhancement of a vintage design the utility of this drops off rapidly.

On the other hand, there are new ideas which have occurred and standards which have been set since the 1980s that could benefit a neo-retro-computer even given hardware constraints approximating those of the period. Furthermore, I think also that there’s scope to make hardware enhancements beyond what was possible in actual vintage retro-computers without sacrificing the ethos. However, both of these imply to some extent pushing a neo-retro-computer design further away from that of a vintage retro-computer and sacrificing the opportunity grasped by the previous paragraph.

This is an topic I would like to return to (but I wanted to post something before the end of February).