As I'm still saving for the Pi 400 and the M5stack Faces kits, I've decided to start development on the PiCarts using the Raspberry Pi 4. It used to live in my camcorder, but has recently been put back in it's case for use as a control center and entertainment center for the camper. It's not the exact system I want to work with, as it's rather stationary, but it will work for now. The hardware should arrive soon for the carts, and I'm too excited to wait for the Pi 400 to start development. The Pi 4 has the official 7 inch touchscreen, a Smartypi Touch 2(I think that's the proper name) case, official power supply, and a Creative Stage Air portable sound bar. I love that speaker as it has Bluetooth, line in, and even a USB port that turns it into a simple and reliable portable music player. This setup will work just fine for now, but it needs a few things. Currently, the audio cable is very long and requires taking the stand off to access. Not great for when I need to plug headphones in. I may buy a short cable and a coupler so I can just plug headphones into the end of the cable. Then I can work on audio or just watch videos without disturbing anyone. I'd also like to get a very large battery bank that won't trigger the Pi low voltage ⚡ warning. I remember seeing a way to disable that, and I might just do it. I've already got a Bluetooth keyboard I really like, and I have a USB mouse. I need a new flash drive to boot from, so I can start working with a fresh system. I really don't want to have to reconfigure all the software that's currently on the Pi. The good thing about these little investments is that they will carry over to the Pi 400 when I get it. Double checking, I confirmed that the Pi 40p has no analog audio output. No headphone jack. This is very inconvenient in general, and especially for me when I want to do testing of audio in public. The thought occurs to include a headphone jack and circuitry on some carts. If that doesn't work out for me, I'll just get a Bluetooth adapter for my in ear monitors headphones, or a USB headphone adapter. The 3.5mm audio jack is one connection I really wish they would have kept. Bluetooth is terrible and I hate it. I could possibly design a cart PCB that has the option to add audio hardware and just leave it unpopulated if not needed. I almost always listen to music or working with audio files while working though, so I'll most likely end up with with it populated on my development boards. 

Thinking about all of the hardware, I realize that the software is likely going to be the hardest part for me. It's almost all custom, but hopefully just a custom selection of well established things. I want a system tray object that runs on boot, so I have to figure out how to add those entries. I also need to make an installer of some sort that makes this stuff simple enough for the average user. Then I need to figure out how to distribute this software. This project is for me specifically, but I want the practice and experience of releasing a commercial product for my portfolio and own satisfaction. 

I've got tons of research and work to do, and I should be updating this page far more often when the new hardware arrives. I'll be picking up a package today. It should contain an esp32 board and the HDMI to USB adapter. I realized I can even use the Pi 4 as a display for the Pi 400 when it arrives. Next order to arrive should be the Digikey with the Adafruit perma-proto HATs with EEPROM. I'm expecting my order of SD NAND Flash chips to arrive next week. Until then, I'll continue development on things like the user interface, start up scripts, and board design.

While browsing the website I ordered the flash chips from, I found they offer a line of SD NAND Flash chips other than the series I just ordered. These are interesting as they're higher capacity, cheaper, and the same for factor. 

Here's a 64GB for $14 USD: 64GB flash.

I Just paid $11 USD for an 8GB flash chip, so that's a little annoying. My fault for not doing enough research. I did order a part that is confirmed to work how I want, so it's ok. I'll order a few of these chips for testing later. The per part price is still quite high for these chips, but far more reasonable than an SD card with a socket. More reliable connection as well. 

They also offer a cheaper 1GB flash chip. This is around half the cost of the one I ordered, which is nice. I need to determine the trade offs between the two series of chips before I make any decisions. I'll solder headers to the prototype HAT and the SOIC breakout boards so I can swap chips easily and test everything out thorough. 

Having cheap 1GB chips has me considering adding one along side the larger chips. The smaller chip could load the program and be read only, while the larger one could store user data. That might make it easier to protect the program data from corruption and accidentally being erased. I'll wire up two cards on a board and play around with the software in the near future. One will have to be over the SDIO interface, the other in SPI mode. SPI is far slower than SDIO, but I've ready reports of getting 4MB per second on it. I plan on designing loading screens if I can implement them. Fun animations and even mini games may be an option. I don't think slow loading times will hurt the experience too badly. Especially if loading retro style games from a cartridge. We shall see.

I've been really disappointed in how slow progress on this project has been. Life has been crazy and money very tight. Having finally ordered the hardware is inspiring me to really push forward on this. I still don't have much time to dedicate to it, but progress is being made. Feeling a bit of imposter syndrome these days, being stuck researching and only talking about the project. Next week should change that when most of the hardware arrives and I go pick up my first Pi 400. 

I had some down time today before having to move the camper to a new site, so I ordered the cartridge hardware. I ordered two Adafruit perma-proto HATs with EEPROM, and a 6 pack of Adafruit 8 pin SOIC adapter boards from Digikey. I went with Digikey as Adafruit was out of stock on the HATs. I also hate that I can't seem to find the filter options on their site to not show stuff that's discontinued and/or out of stock. That irritates me to no end. No such trouble with Digikey. That order, to make 2 cart prototypes was $25. Pretty expensive per board, but having custom boards manufactured should bring down there board price significantly. 

The other order I placed was from LCSC in China. They're the company that makes the SD flash chips that solder right to the board. This is the main chip for these carts. I don't like that the are rather expensive though. Over $3 USD for a 1GB chip, over $11 USD for an 8GB chip. I ordered a 1GB and an 8GB card to start with. Both extremes to see what I can do with both. I may add smaller SPI flash chips such as 64Mb models in addition to the large flash chips to allow for a more permanent storage, like a ROM chip in older cartridges. I could do super cheap SD cards and sockets, but they're far less permanent and reliable. They do offer bulk discounts, so I'll see what the largest order I can afford will be after the design is finalized. Even if I never sell any, I'll just give them away to people who might be interested. Another thought was to offer a version of the board that is just a HAT with EEPROM with a micro SD card slot ties to the SDIO pins. This would just add mass storage options to a HAT which would be good for data logging and such. That might already exist, so I'll have to look into it. For that one I'd just add a big prototyping area and the SD card slot. 

The next piece of hardware is the HDMI to USB capture card since I don't own any kind of monitor or tv for use with the Pi. I already ordered that and it should be here in a few days. Will allow me to use my laptop as a monitor and pack the Pi 400 into my laptop bag. Not ideal, but will work. 

The last piece of the hardware puzzle is the Pi 400 kit. I've got plans to drive to Microcenter in a week or so to go pick one up in person and take my friend for his first adventure there. Once I have all the hardware, I'll assemble the first board and start writing code. This is a huge project for me and will be documented for others and for my portfolio. I don't know of anyone else making a new cartridge format for any modern systems, so I wanted to do it myself and see what happens. Today's orders put me one big step closer to my end goal. 

I've already got two people interested in developing games for the format. Both are artists. One amateur, one professional. Both are very talented and fun to work with. I'll be creating all of the tools needed for them to make their games a reality, or at least packaging the tools and making them easy to use and learn. Once that is done, I should have a cart dedicated to developing games for the system, with built in storage and special hardware such as real time clock modules, lights, displays, and sensors. I've got to decide on a display and lights for the upcoming pinball cart, so I took a close look at the various pinball machines I was playing last night at the arcade. I think an RGB matrix will be good, as long as the resolution is high enough. Although, an OLED or LCD can mimick LED displays and are more versatile. Have to factor in price too. 

Many things are still up in the air, but the hardware testing will help solidify many design choices. 

Next update should cover the hardware when it arrives. 

The case for these carts is just as important to this project as the PCBs themselves. The most important function is to protect the board Frome damage. The next most important function after that is to identify the cartridge. There's an immense amount of work that will go into the case, but it's got one guiding principle at heart: hacker friendly. I don't want fragile snap tabs, security screws, or permanently sealed cases to slow people down. As a kid, I always wanted to know what was in the cartridges and how they worked. Wouldn't it have been nice to be able to open up the cart, see all the chips labeled, and have a description and schematic on the back showing and explaining how it worked? It would take longer to design such a silkscreen, but imagine the surprise when a kid got curious and snuck a screw driver to sneak a peak. They might actually learn something and become more curious. Then they'd eventually learn that the cartridge could be reprogrammed and used for other things. That's one of the main goals of this project. To inspire Roger people. A few years ago I thought I was incapable of learning to program, understand circuit diagrams, and design boards. Here I am learning all of it now. Most of that knowledge came from the efforts of others in the open source community. I know that's all a stretch for a log talking about cart cases, but those are the guiding principles of the case designated the entire project. 

For the physical case, I'm considering stamped aluminum sheet metal with a screw or two holding it together. I had an Atari 1200xl and liked the metal face plate of the cartridges. Having a background in industrial processes, I know just how much custom molds for injection molding plastics can be. I also really hat plastic. It's just cheap, disposable, and very harmful to the environment. Aluminum mining isn't any better, but the energy it takes to recycle it is far lower than to mine it. I'd aim for sourcing recycled aluminum only. If that doesn't work out, I may actually go to wooden carts. Renewable, many types, biodegradable wife a natural finish is used, fairly cheap, easy to work with. Making a jig to curl and route out the cases from wood will be fairly simple for me. I have a decent bit of experience with wood working and can figure out most things. I think white oak would be a good base wood to work with. Cherry, black walnut, and maple are also lovely choices. I've already got a case design in my head that would be very simple to implement. I also happen to have a good sized chunk of mahogany that was destined for the burn pile. I may make my very first cart out of it and keep it for myself. I suspect it's not a very sustainable wood these days, which is why I value my scraps. 

Regardless of the material used, it has be strong enough to support the PCB for many plug and unplug cycles. I plan to add as much support to the board as possible to help these carts last as long as possible. The though of resin casting those carts had occurred, but takes away any chance of hacking and puts plastic into the equation. There is a company I'm investigating for future projects called Ecopoxy, that makes environmentally friendly epoxy resins. They told me they're using 95% plant based formulas these days, which is a great start. I may cast cases out of it for testing some day. It would be nice to have clear cases at some point, so that's definitely on my list of options. 

For the shape of the case, I'd love to have a rounded and sleek profile like the Pi 400, but not at the expense of cost and material waste. Though, if using wood it's as simple as routing the corners to make them round. I'd want to start with rectangles so I don't end up with a ton of rounded or awkward scrap I couldn't use. Wood scrap is easy to use and recycle, thankfully. Eventually, I think I want to do CNC milled plywood cases. 

I have many more thoughts on cases, but I feel I've written down enough of them to clear my head for the day. Hope someone finds this useful or interesting, would love comments and thoughts down below.

This project is really important to me. I know there are people who will find it pointless. That's fine. I enjoy working on this, and it's already brought immense joy and inspiration to my step daughter, who has always dreamed of creating her own video game. I mentioned it to her and she loved it. It felt really nice to have someone else so excited about my project and to see her light up so brightly and often over the weekend. This project evolved from simple little EEPROM chips to SD NAND Flash chips, once I learned the latter existed. I still plan on doing the super simple EEPROM carts as well as the multi-gigabyte SD chips. The little tiny EEPROM chips are special to me, as they force the programmer to really think carefully about what goes on them. Very minimalist, which is the general lifestyle I live these days. The EEPROM carts should be far cheaper as well, which is great.

With that thought out of the way, I have another to explore: the micro Pi HAT form factor or "uHAT". Basically hats for the Pi Zero family. These could be used for memory-only carts, where no extra hardware is included on the board. It's quite wasteful to use a full size HAT board when only a few SD or EEPROM chips are needed. Smaller form factor, cheaper board and case. More could fit into a pocket, perhaps. That brings up another thought, though I don't know good of an idea it is... Connect the carts to each other for storage if a GPIO passthrough is used. Could be used as a HAT riser that also adds mass storage to the GPIO. I've just been going crazy with the possibilities of this project lately. Anyway, I think I want to make the case out of wood or something organic. I could also just resin cast the uHATs to make them more rugged. Been looking for an excuse to learn resin casting anyway. Cases are all still up in the air. I do know that I want to create custom PCBs, write the games, and make nice boxes and manuals for the carts, like commercial games used to have. Even if just for my own portfolio and collection. 

New hardware! It's been rough lately, with a car repair, campsite fees, food, and such. Not much fun money flying around these days, sadly. I did manage to spare enough to order an HDMI to USB capture card for this project. I also got my first ESP32 board in the same order. That's for a different project. The capture card is to use my laptop as a monitor for the Pi 400 as I don't have a monitor or tv in the tiny camper these days. I've yet to get the Pi, or the proto HATs, but those are coming up very soon. I live near a Microcenter, so I'm just going to pick one out in person, like the olden times. Getting the Pi 400 kit for use with this and other projects. I've also decided on a Logitech trackball as my next mouse. I often end up with limited table space these days, so that will help. I'll be ordering the Adafruit perma-proto HATs with EEPROM soon for development. I'll place the order for the EEPROM and SD flash chips soon as well. Hoping to have all the hardware arrive as I have the money for the Pi saved up so I can go get the Pi and start work that day. So excited to get started on this one. I'll be learning Pygame and practicing programming on other projects while I save up and wait for stuff to ship. I've got a few Raspberry Pi Pick boards sitting around to play with as well. I was actually one of the very first people to every buy one from the Microcenter near by. That was a very fun day for me. I plan to incorporate the RP2040 chip into a cart in the future as well. Once I get some experience with board design and such. 

Lots going on here these days, struggling to survive the off grid life in the eastern US. Not a good place to be a full time RV person. The people are horrible and restrictive. Good thing I move to the west coast in October. The projects should really take off then when I don't have to pay top dollar to park a camper every single night. Until then, I'll continue to chug along through this project and others. 

At the start of this project, I wanted the Pi to be able to boot from the cart over GPIO. I can't find a way to do this right now, so I'm changing the goals so the project doesn't stall out. The problem with booting from the cart is that the only viable interface I could identify is SDIO on the GPIO pins, but the firmware of the Pi 4 doesn't seem to support booting from it. Instead of trying to mess with the firmware and make users do the same, I decided to just start with a simple program that manages the SDIO connected flash device. Software and user data would be stored on the flash chip attached to the SDIO interface, and allow loading, ejecting, backing up, and even updating the carts. A read only partition would hold software, such as a word processor, or even a game. User data would be stored in another partition on the cart. 

This would require the user to install a program on their Pi, but I'm ok with that. The program could even have install files on the read only partition so that no network connection or external sources would be needed to install. This isn't as clean as running an OS from the cart, but that's ok. I'm currently calling this software the PiCart Manager software. I'm also considering adding a hardware button to each cart to load or eject the cart. I've got to see if it will be worth a GPIO pin to implement. These carts are all about simplicity and convenience, and not having to click through menus to safely eject a cart may very well be worth the GPIO pin. 

Another thought just occurred: how to load carts on a Pi without the PiCart Manager installed, and with no option to install? Perhaps a lab computer or a friend's Pi or something. I'll have to figure that out. I have to look into what all I can make the system do with the EEPROM data on the board. If it can set up the GPIO pins, mount the SDIO attached partition, and run a program, I could have it run the PiCart Manager in RAM without having to install. I've yet to get too deep into that part. If I can't make it work right away without installing anything, that's ok. I'll just keep moving forward with the new plan.

I've recently started organizing this project with paper. Actual physical paper. I actually really enjoy the process. I don't like having to get out my phone or laptop just to add something to a list. I'm using paper folders and paper so that I can recycle the entire project when everything has been digitized and get the clutter out of my life. Of all my projects, this PiCart project is my favorite and likely to be the first project completed and released. I've outlined the general functions of the software, as well as the procedures for various tasks, such as loading a cart, and backing up a cart. I'm stuck in the research phase for a while until I can buy the Pi 400, an HDMI to USB adapter, and the prototyping hardware for the first cart. After the first cart is built and tested, I can get the PiCart Manager software done, then start on other carts, such as an Arduino cart with built in flash storage. These carts are basically Pi HATs, but with on board mass storage and programs. Basically a way to keep everything for an entire project in one convenient place. I'd be far more likely to develop further projects with something like this, as I'd never have to worry about leaving files on a flash drive or forgetting the hardware.

Hope everyone has enjoyed the updates. I'm very anxious to really start developing this, but money is tight right now, as is time. I'm learning to program, learning to sail, learning massage, learning PCB development, working, and trying to complete the projects on the camper we live in. Extra busy these days, and this project is sadly one of the lowest priority items, even though it's the most exciting and promising. Any and all help welcome on this project if anyone wants to contribute and help me get it done faster. Otherwise, I'll keep chugging along. Cheers.

I can always make these things simply because I want them, but that isn't always a good reason to do so. Yes, I really want this to work out so I can play with it. At the same time, I really want OTHER people to really enjoy this. Maybe it can also be genuinely useful so I can feel good about it. Every PCB and part produced is going to eventually harm the planet in some way at end of life, so I want the hardware to earn it's offset by doing something genuinely useful. To that end, I've been really thinking on the goals of this project. Why does anyone actually NEED something like this, aside from nostaligic fun? I think, if done well, it could actually become a teaching tool of all sorts. Maybe these end up used as a kid's first computer system. A Pi 400, a tv, and read only file system, and software carts. Or perhaps it ends up used as development system, where the carts not only contain hardware such as relays, GPIO pins, and sensors, but also large amounts of data storage for logging and holding project files beyond just code. You'd never have to worry about where your data is kept, as it would be kept on the 1-8GB of built in storage. Local and cloud backups would be possible as well, just in case. For me, managing all the data for software projects is a huge pain. I'm still developing a system of organization for everything, and it has cost me a few projects in the past. 

The way I am starting to envision this ROM cart is more of a system of specialized Pi Hats that simplify the experience of programming, working, playing, or learning in general.

I am having a lot of trouble finding a way to make the code and carts universal for all Pi systems. The problem is that I want to boot from the cart itself, but the Pi 4 doesn't seem to support that in any fashion. I could do it with the Pi 3, if I remember correctly, but it doesn't have the processing power to run as a viable desktop computer. The Pi 4 and Pi 400 do. Especially the Pi 400 with it's gigantic heat sink and slightly faster CPU. Booting over SDIO on the GPIO pins SEEMS possible, but I've not been able to confirm either way. This would be the killer feature for me, but I have a plan. Instead of booting from the GPIO SDIO interface, I think I'll try to just autorun code from it when a cart is plugged in. I was trying to avoid modifying the host OS, but I think having to install a small program to use the carts is a decent trade off. I still find a one time install far more pleasant than changing boot devices manually.

In order to get the carts to work, I am looking into packaging programs as ARM compatible appimage files for the Pi 4 and 400. THey would then just live in there own area of the SD NAND flash chip on the cart, and be loaded over the SDIO interface over GPIO pins. The entire program could be loaded into RAM all at once. Startup code on the Pi could be used to detect when a cart was connected, and load the software from the cart. The programs would have to be modified to save to the SD NAND on the cart as well. Maybe a universal load/save system for all the carts that handles that. I think most of the work in this project is going to be in the software, but there are some hardware issues to sort out.

One of the main concerns I have with hardware is actually making sure it is going to be safe to plug in and remove these carts while the system is running. I don't recall the default GPIO pin states of the Pi as it starts up, runs, and shuts down. I am at least aware that this could cause problems, so that will influence the designs of the software and hardware. I also need to make sure the carts could be plugged in upside down without damage, as we all know someone is gonna try it... I need to ensure that the NAND flash will also have everything needed to manage the data, like wear leveling if needed. I'd like a read only partition for the code to load from, as well as read/write areas for saving settings and user data. The hardware is very exciting to me, and I have chosen a PCB manufacturer for the first prototypes. CamptechII, out of Canada seems to have a good reputation and more capabilities than I would need for this project. Plus, they offer custom silkscreening colors! I'd like to match some of the colors to the Pi color scheme, of course. That was a huge decision I needed to make for all upcoming projects. I like Canada, and shipping should be faster than from China. I look forward to placing that order and getting my first boards in for testing. I still have to choose a free and open source PCB design software and learn to use it, but that should be simple enough. I have a fair amount of CAD experience in other areas, and can cobble something workable together. 

The first prototype will likely be a hand soldered, bare bones board with only a single SD NAND chip on it. Or maybe even an SD card connected to GPIO. I wish to start on that immediately, but need to work more and pay some bills before I can justify even that meager expense. It's more a problem of getting sucked into the project and spending way too much time on it! 

I have tons more thoughts, but will get to work for the day so I can cover my campsite rental for the month, and start working towards the rest of my goals. This project is on my mind and very exciting to me, so expect some progress and updates soon.

I'd been trying to find a permanent and proper way of adding large storage chips to the cartridge, and I finally found something viable: SD Cards on a Chip. They come in 1,2,4, and 8GB capacities, and have the SD controller built in. This could be hooked directly to the Pi GPIO pins, and would just show up as mass storage. I may be able to add a protected read only partition for ROM storage, and have the rest of the cart be available for user storage space. The Thonny Python IDE comes to mind here, allowing the user to store their programs on the cart, instead of having a separate storage device. I was going to simply add an SD card to every cart, but that gets expensive, fast. These chips are about $2.50 USD each, instead of the $9.00 USD or so for an SD card, plus the socket. I was worried about using SD cards as they might come loose over time and they'd certainly make the carts very expensive. Shaving $5.50 or so off each cart's manufacturing cost will help make the system affordable for, which gets it into the hands of more people. With just a blank memory cart, it would be nothing more than a giant flash card for the GPIO Port. The magic comes when other hardware is included in the cart, such as lights, speakers, mics, motor drivers, and whatever else you could want. It's basically just a hat system for the Pi 400, but with a few special features, like possibly being able to boot an OS from the GPIO Port. I was struggling to find flash storage large enough to hold even a few hundred megabytes until I came across this chip. The largest SPI flash chips I found were 8Mbits, so if have to connect a bunch of those up and program something to manage it. The SD system handles everything for me, getting this project going that much faster. I still plan on making some SPI ROM carts for simpler things and retro games. I like the challenge of making ROM carts and stuffing data into them like they used to do. I'm very excited to get some of these chips in for testing and start making my first cart.

I decided it's about time to order some hardware and build a test cartridge. For the connecotrs I've found two options: Standard and Tall headers. The standard height would just plug into the GPIO port, but the tall would stick out of the back of the cart, allowing other things to be connected to GPIO at the same time. I like the idea of having a joystick cart that has connectors for things like Commodore or even NES joysticks. That would plug in first, then the game would plug in on top of that. Could get quite crazy looking, but may of the older consoles had tons of hardware that could be plugged in all over. For now, I'll order the standard height so I can get started on a test cart. For the memory chip, I'll be ordering a few of the 4Mbit EEPROM chips. I'll need 1 of them for a single chip cart, and at least 2 for a multi-chip cart. I already have a small stash of protoboard large enough to mount the headers and build a simple board. I just need to see if there is any supporting hardware I need for the EPPROM chips. Accodring to this page, it should be a very simple matter of connectng some wires and running the code. If that's the case(will confirm this connection method is proper for long term use), then these low capacity carts will be very simple. Just a single IC, connected to some of the pins on the header. Seems like a waste of space and hardware, but that can be handled later. I plan to make the carts fairly large to leave room for more advanced carts in the future. I can easily hand wire some test carts when the hardware arrives, so this should be just fine for testing. 

On a random note, I found a nice looking EEPROM program written in python. I was thinking of how I can make a program that will handle reading of the EEPROM, but no need. I could have this program load on start up, and have it load the EEPROM data into another program. EEPROM-PiPython.

Pricing

EEPROMs, with shipping: $15.31 USD

Headers, free shipping: $8.18 USD

Total: $23.49 USD

Price per cart: $3.26 USD

The price per cart is my cost, not including the solder, wires, and PCBs, all of which I have already. A fab house can likely make these far cheaper and faster than I can, so I'll be designing and ordering some premade boards when I finalize a few designs. There is much to consider, such as physical size, memory type and layout, pin assignments, and even board color. 

I accomplished what I set out to do with this log, so I'll move onto the next thing.

All of the classice home computers had some sort of environment they booted into when there was no cart inserted. This system should as well. To me, it makes the most sense to have it boot to some sort of Python development environment. I could have it boot a C64 emulator and offer people a BASIC prompt, but that's not exactly practical these days. This system is based off of retro systems, but the goal is to make a modern version of those classics.

I started looking into different Python IDEs and found mu. It's pretty neat and looks like it might be perfect, except that I can't get it to install on either of my two linux laptops. I've had nothing but terrible luck with software on Linux lately, and it's geting very frustrating. I thought this might be as simple as installing a new program and seeing if I like it, but not so. This is the second program I've tried to work with tonight that just outright fails to install. 

I decided to do some testing with something I was fairly certain I could actually get to work: Thonny. I actually really like it, just based on the few minutes I spent with it. It's far more complex than the old BASIC prompts, but I didn't feel overwhelmed. One thing I'd love to do is create a custom color scheme for it for this project, and set up a bunch of defaults to make things easier. That reminds me that I need to create a manual for this computer as well. That is a massive project in itself, but one well worth completing. The old manuals were an important part of the home computer experience. The goal is to be able to provide everything needed to get started without internet or messing around. 

The next step in this part of the project is to get the Pi to boot straight to Thonny and lock out everything else so no one can break the OS. That's probably going to be far more difficult than it sounds. I'll start on that this week and see where I can get. 

It occurs to me that I'm still very much in the research phase, and it feels like I'm not making any progress here. The cure for that is to get some hardware ordered and start making development hardware. For now, I'll start doing all of my Python coding in Thonny to evaluate it as a default IDE.