As part of $dayjob, I'm trying to think of five classic 8-bit or 16-bit computers that we could get hold of for educational purposes.
Yes, this really is for my day job. I can't believe it either.
Budget is the only issue. At the moment I can't justify spending more than £100 per machine. Even that is going to be a stretch. I realise how tough this is going to be, but I want to see how close we can get.
I want to avoid consoles if I can help it.
- ZX Spectrum
- C64
- Amiga 500
- BBC Micro or Electron
- "Early" PC - somewhere between 8086 and 386.
If you have any suggestions for swap-outs, then let me know.
@thelastpsion as much of an amiga fan as we are, don't think it would fit "educational" and "under £100" (the best basics were third-party commercial, it was far from a beginner friendly computer compared to something with basic-on-powerup in our opinion)
are portables an option? the amstrad NC100 is a bit terrible, but it has a decent basic you can even make to play music over the built in speaker and often goes for quite cheap on ebay
@mavica_again You do make a good point. I don't mind it being a bit complicated (it's meant to be a challenge of sorts). The plan is to have a range of machines over the ages, showing the different experiences that people had.
I'm so embedded in the Psion world I hadn't thought of the NC range! I agree, I don't like them much, but the BBC BASIC is good, and you can get them to run CP/M.
@thelastpsion p.s. if you need a vintage computer repair person in the UK we are in Devon and have resuscitated many a micro