I like how the explain what soldering is.

Since it’s impossible to develop anything in this world and profit from it without needing connections and getting lawyered up, a Second Realm Strategy of DIY and cheap underground production will be how we prosper in the future.

Any respect for DIY and hacking is good.

BTW: Forth? I thought it was dead.

I wonder if he has actually tried to type that lunar lander code with those 8 tactile switches.

Overall both the story and the project seem to be more about nostalgia than producing an actually viable computer, even for education.

Actually building a relatively fully featured (compared to early 8-bit home computers) computer around a MCU would be rather interesting exercise. A keyboard, bit better video output (color, lowres graphics), mass storage (recreating a tape recorder would be fun, but maybe SD cards would be more practical), maybe simple sound even.

Obviously such project would need few more parts, but I bet that it still would be far more simpler than that Compukit shown in TFA.

Perhaps it’s a good thing the term hacker wasn’t used in the story, the general public isn’t likely to differentiate between a malicious software hacker, and the mostly more benign hardware builder. Unless Don Lancaster trademarked the term hardware hacker, I feel it that term should be used more often hacker. Then again it really wouldn’t matter if the term is trademarked.

My suggestion would be to just keep the hacking activities and sort to our own self and to people with interests and similar understandings.

Putting too much publicity on our projects, especially the hacks, might bring more trouble such as the lawsuit.

For some people that should not be a problem but there is also some that would take take hacking up to extreme level that might offense some companies or cause new bills to ban.

“oh yeah, sure, he found out how twiddle with the internal registers of an x86 in debug to make it run faster.. big deal… tshh… shit. i’d like to see that work on other systems”

Hi folks,

Thanks for the comments! As the developer of FIGnition, I’d like to reply to some of the points raised here.

Firstly, is Forth dead? Well, not quite, it’s currently sitting as the 43rd or so most popular language… something like 0.43% of programmers use it.

Secondly, The BBC contacted me, because it somehow connects with the invention of the Microprocessor 40 years ago, I guess they’ll be running a series of articles there. In fact it was Makerfaire UK who put me in contact with the BBC, many thanks to everyone involved.

Thirdly, I know Hackaday covers machines and designs like this from time to time. FIGnition is primarily educational… an introductory machine to build code for and understand. Hence, it uses a simple keypad not even a phone keypad from Maplin nor a PS/2 keypad: I want people to see the code and understand it, so it must be compact. I want novices to be able to build it – fathers to show their sons, school kids to do workshop classes in it.

Fourthly, yes I originally typed the entire lunar lander game using the keypad – I need to prove the design is practical. That version was sent to be the BBC though at the time was undebugged. The keypad almost never requires more than 2 keypresses so it’s better than a cell phone and similar to a Sinclair style keyboard.

Fifthly, Uzebox is cool, it needs a proper RAM chip though – proper home micros were RAM dominated and that’s really what’s missing from most of the homebrew MCU type computers we see on Hackaday. Of course, Arduino is also a fantastic device – my early development for FIGnition was done using an Arduino given to me by the Manchester Madlab.

-cheers from julz @P

as much as things change with computers over the ages, one thing at least has stayed the same: forth programmers are a bit nutty (in a good way)

“why the BBC is covering a project not unlike the something that could be seen on hackaday once a week”

Are we talking about the same BBC that teamed up with Acorn to create a personal computer that introduced millions of children to computing?