When a tipster came to us with the line “One dollar BASIC computer”, it intrigued us enough to have a good look at [Stan6314]’s TinyBasRV computer. It’s a small PCB that forms a computer running BASIC. Not simply a microcontroller with a serial header, this machine is a fully functioning BASIC desktop computer that takes a PS/2 keyboard and a VGA monitor. Would that cheap price stand up?
The board uses a CH32 microcontroller, a RISC-V part that’s certainly very cheap indeed and pretty powerful, paired with an I2C memory chip for storage. The software is TinyBASIC. There’s some GPIO expandability and an I2C bus, and it’s claimed it can run in headless mode for a BASIC program to control things.
We haven’t added up all the parts in the BoM to check, but even if it’s not a one dollar computer it must come pretty close. We can see it could make a fun project for anyone. It’s certainly not the only small BASIC board out there, it’s got some competition.
Thanks [Metan] for the tip.
A dollar seems doable for qty10k. Probably more like $50-$70 for the hobbyist board house MoQs and low-qty component orders. Been a couple of years since I’ve done a PCB like this but that’s always where they seemed to end up
From the usual Chinese assembly/fab houses, I’d expect $10‐15 in quantity 10 with careful parts selection, and not accounting for tariffs for some customers.
We just made an order for 10 large boards with almost 1000 parts per board (not all unique), and they came to not more than a few hundred dollars per board.
This stuff is getting silly cheap these days.
Is that including assembly? Wild.
Dope project, though. I haven’t done basic since my dad taught me back in the day. Not my preferred language, but it’s iconic and I know some people love it
Do those that love it still actually use it though? Or do they love it only because it was their first?
Don’t get me wrong though even if it is only for the nostalgic remembered joy that gives it enough value, especially when its so cheap a board to play with.
I love it, because it was my first, and I also use it regularly to this day. So, both (at least for me)
QBasic and QuickBASIC is still in use by retro computing community, I think.
Because you can quickly make a proto-type application or game.
It also doesn’t required line numbers, has lots of third-party support (DirectQB is like DirectX on DOS): http://www.petesqbsite.com/
There’s QB64 for modern computers, too.
Same goes for Visual Basic Classic, I think.
It has several free alternatives (DarkBasic; some run on Java) and allows easy RAD prototyping.
On Linux, there’s Gambas as a counterpart, I think.
The 8052AH-BASIC interpreter was (is) really, really sophisticated.
A lot of Tiny, Nano, Micro something Basics can learn from it how to do serious business.
I built a ‘BasicEngine’ once (https://basicengine.org/esp8266.html). Really fun project. But well, it ended up like my ZX81+38: in a box, having no time, motivation or incentive to actually do anything with it. The building was the fun part.
But then again, I’m already a software developer and already know the exhilarating feeling of when you write a program and the computer starts doing what you asked it. I had that in 1982, writing my first Tiny Basic program on a Nascom 1.
BASIC is great for your first time programming. There is nog formal anything, don’t have to think before you write, I would say that it was the prototype ‘vibe coding’ language. ;)
BASIC used to be a problem-oriented language, also.
Way back in the 1970s it was a serious tool.
Then the homecomputers arrived in the 1980s and it deteriorated to a funny kids language, like Logo.
But that’s not BASIC was meant to be, it never tried to be a toy computer language/command prompt in fitst place.
It had certain standards, too.
Here are two examples of serious 1970s era Basic computers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4050
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200
Serious Basic implementations are M-BASIC, QuickBasic/TurnboBasic or MS PDS 7.1, for example.
Or Locomotive Basic v2 (GEM), Amiga Basic, GFA Basic. Etc pp.
Modern BASIC languages have adopted certain Pascal language elements, also.
Early ’80s, I hacked a Program called AP Mail, this could do Mail Sorting by Zipcode or Alphabet, of 300 Names.. on a Single 5 1/4 Floppy.. Apple ][ MS Basic.
I took it to 2,400 Names and running 4 Disk Drives at the Same Time, made it a Linked Pointer File System to Speed things up. Could not afford a Hard Drive System. It was for Business Mailings I was doing..
Basic is a Great Language.. Later I was involved in using Basic as a Machine Controller Computer.. ended up Compiling it to get the Speed up..
Cap
When I was in the USAF our EW Shop got ahold of a surplus HP-85 than ran basic, so one of my coworkers wrote a BASIC program to calculate boresight constants.
I later used BASIC to solve a differential equation using the Euler method for a college course, everyone else already had FORTRAN and access to the computer lab, but being a active duty air force and part-time student, this was faster. And more important, it worked.
How about TinyFortran then? Or Turbo Pascal, the frenemy of BASIC?
Turbo Pascal 3, 4 had been popular on CP/M and DOS in the 80s.
Version 4 added EXE file format to break 64KB barrier (which had required use of overlay files previously).
There also was GRAPHIX TOOLBOX and BGI graphics drivers.
In the 90s, Turbo Pascal 6, 7 and Borland Pascal 7 were popular on DOS platform.
The Borland Pascal version was full version and had offered Turbo Vision library for your own programs.
Pascal/Turbo Pascal had been used by profs and students on colleague, I heard.
So highschool was more at BASIC level, while universities focused on Unix/C..
(Speaking under correction, it’s just meant as an analogy, no offense.)
On Windows 3.x, there was Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.0+1.5,
Borland Pascal 7 for Windows, Delphi 1.0..
On 32-Bit Windows, Delphi 3 Professional and Delphi 7 used to be classics for a very long time.
On Linux, Kylix used to be a fine Delphi port.
Now we have Lazarus IDE with Free Pascal instead.
Note that the computer described here has the capability of having up to two EEPROM memory chips of up to 512 kb each, an I/O expander, a 24 MHz crystal oscillator, and audio output, but all of that is optional and clearly not included in the $1 BOM. The $1 assumes the MPU, a single 32 kb EEPROM, and very little else. Two versions of the firmware are supplied, for either internal clock or external 24 MHz oscillator, and either one detects what hardware is actually installed to enable the optional instructions as appropriate.
It has an interesting (imho) VGA bit-bangging stuff. Displaying only characters and only in monochrome, but nicely done (aka: very simple and readable).
I did the same with less and with an actual product by Olimex: the RVPC
https://github.com/arduinousergroupcagliari/RVPC_TinyBasic
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/RVPC/open-source-hardware
It’s indeed very similar.
Hey man that is super cool :) I will probably order a few to play with and gift for Christmas now that the tariff situation has settled down a bit. High five on a nice project :)
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. If the headline asks the a question, the answer is always “no”.
No, this is not a proper computer for a dollar.
There’s always an argument over what constitutes a “proper computer”. By using a $7 “cheap yellow display” ESP32 dev module, you can use the built-in display for an on-screen keyboard, and these generally include a microSD card socket, and always WiFi and Bluetooth. I would challenge anybody to argue that such a thing would not be a “proper computer”, which I could claim is $1 for the computer itself and $6 for the I/O peripherals, but even that would require a separate power supply.
Thumbs up for supporting VGA! 🙂👍
fuzix working?
Used BASIC on a Z80-CP/M box to write a simplified version of SPICE, which I used to analyze some audio circuits for an amp I was designing. It could even draw response plots on a hacked HP analog lab plotter. To get things to run in the whopping 56k of RAM, there was a lot of intermediate result storage onto floppy, which was then read in again for the next phase of processing.