[flohofwoe]

Same here, that growing feeling that we have lost something during the 90's when home-computers were replaced by 'business PCs' drove me to write an emulator to preserve some of the magic in the past few months: http://floooh.github.io/virtualkc/, here's how to write a 'Hello World!' program on it in BASIC, FORTH, machine code and assembler: http://floooh.github.io/virtualkc/p035_helloworld.html

In my opinion, the RaspberryPi is the closest thing to a home-computer we have today, it encourages to learn, experiment and create things, it would be nice if it had a simpler, more home-computer-like standard operating system though. Linux (or any other current desktop or mobile OS) is simply too complex and scary. In contrast to that, smartphones and tablets are closed ecosystems optimized for consumption. I don't see how these closed-off platforms encourage kids to explore and learn to create something on their own.

[jarcane]

The RISC OS people have produced a custom ROM that runs only BBC Basic at boot: https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os-pico

There's also some stuff here on the RPi site on other BASIC options: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-bas...

I would actually love to re-case an RPi in it's own retro keyboard unit and turn it into a proper TV-computer of old. Alas I don't really have anything in the way of that kind of solder/hardware skills.

EDIT: Actually, following some of my own links, it looks like someone's beat me to it: http://www.fuze.co.uk/

[jsjohnst]

The second link to the docs really degrades poorly on mobile. Almost impossible to read.