A BBC Micro in the Palm of Your Hand

What happened

The BBC Micro was a popular line of home computers in the UK during the 1980s, and it helped introduce an entire generation to programming. Dominic Pajak built a tiny desk toy that runs a cycle-accurate BBC Micro emulator on a Raspberry Pi RP2350 chip to play Elite.

These days, emulating these machines is relatively easy on a modern computer, but getting accurate emulation running on a tiny microcontroller is another matter entirely. That is exactly what Dominic Pajak, the developer behind a little desk toy, has accomplished, squeezing a cycle-accurate BBC Micro emulator onto a Raspberry Pi RP2350 chip that costs just $1.20.

The project runs on a Pimoroni Presto, a small development platform featuring an RP2350 microcontroller, a 480×480 touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity, and an SD card slot. It boots directly into Elite , the classic space trading and combat game, without requiring a separate computer.