Any hint on when some kind of kit or even better ready made board (i can't solder smd) will eventually be available and where?

Nice project btw!

    Thank you. No kits or pre-stuffed boards available ATM, I'm afraid. (If you hear of any, please post it here.)

    If this is only about soldering skills, though, don't let that stop you: You don't need any.
    (Just in case you haven't seen the video:

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=DTTEZJDEUIA

    )

    If you still feel that this requires too high a skill level, you can alternatively try to build the BASIC Engine Shuttle. It's a bit of a dodgy system (see the project page for details: https://basicengine.org/hardware_shuttle.html), but it does away with the 0.5-mm pitch chips, and it has components on one side of the board only.

    What that means in practice is that you can put the board on a stove top, arrange the components for as a long as it takes you, and when they are where they are supposed to be, you simply turn on the heat and leave it there until the board is well-done.

    You also only need two orders (board and parts), because it replaces the ESP8266 + VS23S010 with an ESP32 that does both video and computation. The catch is mostly that the hack that accomplishes this doesn't work with every TV. The Shuttle improves on the original in a number of ways, but it has a number of disadvantages as well, so I wouldn't really consider it a successor, but more of an alternative for people with specific requirements.

    Someone put together a package on the aisner site. But it looks quite expensive and I don't see all the parts included. I found it on Hacker News

    15 days later

    I ordered that kit and indeed I had the following issues:

    • Received 0.001 ohm resistors instead of 1M
    • Received 22R instead of 75R (note https://basicengine.org/hardware.html errata regarding R6 being mislabeled)
    • MicroSD socket included was unusable due to wrong footprint
    • Not included:
    • RCA connectors
    • Push buttons
    • Micro USB connector
    • PS/2 keyboard connector
    • Pin headers
    • USB A connector
    • PlayStation controller connector

    After placing orders with DigiKey, Amazon, and AliExpress, I was eventually able to put the kit together.

      11 days later

      Hi, I've been ordering in total 40 boards for czech 8bit/vintage computing community and I had some boards spare, so I placed one on eBay if anyone's interested.
      See my auction here.

      I have boards and components for another four BasicEngines, so I will be listing them on eBay or if anyone wants, we can do deal outside eBay.

      4 months later

      Hi. Found the project some days ago (looking for the SDRAM video adapter) and very interested in the project.

      Is somebody going to make it now? (both shuttle and VS version) if somebody has the components and is going to wire them up. i am interested. if not, i think we can open a new thread and make a group buy.

      -Ramon-

      3 months later

      I have made 50 boards in matte black. I have all of the parts coming and I can make kits for those that are interested.

        JimDrew That's a great initiative! I'd be interested in 3 kits, if possible.

          17 days later
          7 days later

          bitartrate - Picked one up from you on eBay and it just arrived. Thanks for offering them! While I not entirely ancient, well unless you ask my niece, my hands and eyes aren't what they used to be so it's great to be able get them prebuilt... I'm sort of old school so through hole I can still handle, but I end up launching smd parts all over the place. Look forward to playing with it!

          -John E. Bielak-

              Questarian You are very welcome. Thank you John. I hope to do my little part to grow the following of this fun little computer. i hope you enjoy yours. I hope to read about it from time to time here. I am in the same boat; not very ancient but my nieces and nephews would probably totally agree with your niece.

                  bitartrate bit of a problem with the board I got. I stated using it today, and was making some good headway discovering the "\b" & "\f" color changing in print... everything was working perfectly until I tried to use EDIT. I go in and press a key, it locks up and, as best as I can describe
                  It, makes a rapid clicking/8 bit motor sound. If I go in and hit Ctrl-S a save prompt comes up, if I go in and hit Ctrl-C it prints "beep!". I try EDIT "Filename" it just does the clicking right from the get go.

                      Questarian I know we already discussed this elsewhere but I wanted to get the fix out there for everyone else. It has been discovered that the EDIT command in latest nightly build "basicengine-firmware-default-v0.88-alpha-346-g4d5b" has a bug where it locks up the BASIC Engine. The regular firmware "default-v.088" does not have this bug. However, the command PLAY does not function with firmware "default-v0.88" so there is a catch 22 until someone can figure out and debug the problem. I have posted an error report on Uli's Github.

                        9 months later
                        10 days later

                        bitartrate Thank you for putting these kits together and offering them for sale! I ordered one from you and it will be here on April 23rd.

                        I hope to port some of my Atari 8 bit stuff over to the BASiC Engine this spring and summer.

                            I sent a request to join the user group on Facebook.It looks like the USPS has had a delay, but I will be typing away on it this weekend, with videos coming in the near future on one of my YouTube channels. I have also registered a domain to use for the BASIC Engine, as well as my 8 bit computer stuff.

                              19 days later
                              7 days later

                              bitartrate 8bitforlife.com 🙂 I know it won’t receive any traffic to speak of, but I’ve wanted my own virtual home again for a long while. I used to have a rack with quite a few servers in it serving up a relatively busy e-commerce site, SQL server, mail server, etc. In a month or three I will have a 1U box sitting in a colo facility. Being a man of little means, as well as a frugal old bastard, I was going to send it to Kansas City @ Joe’s Data Center. I got to thinking...Facebook and Google have data centers about 35 miles from me, surely there is at least a small facility sitting on some of that fiber near one of them. Sure enough, there is a small center that takes single 1U colo customers for about $40 per month (10TB of traffic, I think). I have another project that I started last year and hope to do much more on this year, if the virus stuff lets up, of documenting this area (the southern Appalachians) with info, photos, videos (especially interviews with old timers), etc. Seeing how much YouTube (understandably) further compresses my over the road videos (especially the 360 videos), I want to be able to serve up the videos straight out of the camera if I got the urge. Meh, even with all of that, this hobby is cheaper than drinking 😂

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