The Rubber-Keyed Wonder - Pi 500 Edition

 

Growing up in the 80’s I cut my coding teeth on an EACA EG2000 Colour Genie, the problem that I had was that I could never get a tape recorder to work on the Genie, so my coding sessions were never saved so my programs were always “byte” size. 

 

At the time my dad had collected most of the issues of a magazine called The Home Computer Course and then later The Home Computer Advanced Course. 

 

I would page through ever issue reading about all the personal computers and look at the programs that I could not run on my Genie. 

 

A few weeks ago, I watched the documentary “Rubber-Keyed Wonder” which covers the history of the ZX Spectrum and has interviews with “Bedroom Coders”, all those old memories came rushing back. 

 

During COVID I went through a Retro Computer / Gaming phase and bought a Pi 400 which if you think about is an “Old Skool” computer running modern day Linux. 

 

I picked up Linux and Python coding skills again thanks to The Mag PI magazine and Wireframe. 

After watching the documentary, the “Retro Bug” bit again. I went on a “hunt” for the magazines I grew up reading and found every issue on the Internet Archive, which gave me an idea. 

 

I recently upgraded to a Pi 500 and am thinking of emulating those 80’s computers and getting the old "type-in" games working.

Then I want to convert the old game code into a modern equivalent and document the process.

I think I will call this Project Genie.