The Pinecone DAISY-1 is a fantasy 8-bit computer that exists in reality

There was a time when computers were exciting and fun. Now most of them feel like commodity appliances — no more interesting than a washing machine or a toaster. Joe longed for the good ol’ days of 8-bit personal computers, so he used a trio of Arduino development boards to design his own “fantasy computer.”

This is reminiscent of fantasy video games consoles, such as the PICO-8. More than anything else, it is about recreating the feeling and experience of using an 8-bit personal computer. But unlike the PICO-8, which is really just software that can run on a wide range of hardware, the Pinecone DAISY-1 isn’t separable from its hardware. 

That hardware consists of three different development boards: an Arduino Due (runs the OS and BASIC interpreter), an Arduino Mega 2560 Rev3 (acts as a video processor), and an Arduino UNO Rev3 (does audio processing). The Due communicates with the Mega and the Uno via UART. There is also a separate ESP8266 board pretending to be a modem, giving the DAISY-1 access to Wi-Fi.

All of those fit inside the stripped enclosure of a VTech Laser 50, which was a very inexpensive 8-bit computer from the ‘80s that was like an even cheaper version of the TRS-80 Model 100 (though it was built around a Z80, so maybe the Epson PX-8 would be a more appropriate comparison). 

But the Laser 50’s internals were gutted to accommodate those Arduino boards and so Joe had to build his own system for the hardware. That is DaisyBASIC and it incorporates aspects of several of the classic BASIC implementations that first introduced so many of us to programming. It also has some nifty upgrades, including network access via that ESP32 modem and storage on a networked computer running a small Python server.

Joe even went through the trouble of creating an in-universe reference guide — actually usable in the real world — inspired by similar materials from the past.

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