Retro/Open Hardware/Modding: BBC Micros, Acorn Electron, Purism, and Raspberry Pi
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Andrew Hutchings ☛ BBC Micros: Pre-restoration discovery
In 2024 I’m going to be setting up a small class to teach local children how to program the same way I was taught back in the 80s, all on BBC computers. For this I need BBC computers to teach with. I already have my Master 128 and a couple of years ago I acquired a faulty BBC B to restore, I needed two more machines and this week another turned up. This particular one has a bit of a story, so warrants a blog post before I even start restoring them.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Almost getting an Acorn Electron
I missed bidding on a near-immaculate Acorn Electron yesterday, complete with a Plus 1 expansion interface, floppy disk drive, and a copy of the educational Acornsoft Workshop.
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Purism ☛ Nasty Software
Many data-collecting apps try to make you feel safe by telling you your data will be anonymized before it’s sold. Anonymized data means names, addresses, and telephone numbers are not tracked. But often, what is tracked is where and when a particular device uses a data-collecting app. These location logs let you build up profiles on where a device goes and how often it’s used. Home addresses, places of work, and even restaurants become data points to de-anonymize you from the crowd.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi project is well done, uses Hey Hi (AI) to cook meat to perfection
Simon is using both a Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi Pico to power his custom meat cooking project along with a little help from Chat GPT.
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Education
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Meet Allie Weber | #MagPiMonday
Some of my favourite Raspberry Pi projects I have made are Pimoroni kits, which are awesome projects for beginners to learn with or experts to utilise in their projects. My favourites include Scroll Bot and OctoCam. One of my fellow MythBusters Jr hosts, Elijah Horland, also gifted me a Jurassic Park-themed PiGRRL handheld gaming device that I have worked on over the years, and really love.
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