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A Growing Family The RP2040 is a microprocessor from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the folks behind the Raspberry Pi (perhaps unsurprisingly!); it’s now been joined by it’s younger and faster sibling, the RP2350.
My first real exposure to this chip was in the marvellous PicoSystem which is an adorable little handheld now supported by the 32Blit ecosystem(among other platforms!)
Since then, I’ve steadily acquired a variety of Pico(W)s and largely Pico-based gadgets (my current addiction is the beautiful Galactic Unicorn, more about that later!
A Wide Web I’ve been fiddling with web and web-adjacent things for ages, although I’m not sure I’d declare myself to be an expert at any of it.
Occasionally, when I’ve struggled to work something out or get something working properly I try to write down what I’ve worked out - more to aid my own memory than for anyone else, but if it saves someone the same pain as I’ve been through then that’s good too.
History I’ve been fiddling about trying to write games pretty much since I owned a computer. My first attempt at writing a game was on the VIC-20, and although I no longer remember what I was trying to write, I do remember the effort came to a crashing halt half-way through when I ran out of memory.
In my defence, 3583 bytes is not a lot of room, even in BASIC.
The Hardware The 32blit (yes, the certificate is expired) started life an adorable handheld console, from the folks at Pimoroni.
With a surprisingly powerful processor, a beautiful (and generously sized!) screen, all the controls you could want and what has become a very well polished toolchain, it’s comfortably the best thing I’ve ever backed on Kickstarter.
Sadly, the latest news is that the device has been discontinued; it’s too hard and too expensive to get the parts and assemble them, so it’s just not commercially viable.
