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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Can we have a sub-$100 computer with built-in screen and keyboard to go with it?

Pick up any cheap $30 pre-paid Android smartphone at Walmart. Install Termux (while you still can). Use a nice keyboard for coding like Codeboard: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gazlaws.co... Or add a simple bluetooth keyboard to pair with it.

I wonder what the minimum cost for a phone with HDMI out is? Possibly better to get an Android TV box, although that has disadvantages as well.

The Raspberry Pi 400 is almost there. You wouldn't always get a VDU with a micro back in the day, either, so it's pretty close to what many of us had. Plugs into a TV, so it's a very similar experience.

Many people have huge TVs these days, not very suitable for hobby computing. Also, people don't want a mess of cables in their homes these days. Giving a kid a console without screen is not a good idea, because their parents will not like the cables, and the kid would just grab the iPad because of its superior UX. So I really think a home-computer should have a built-in screen.

For some people it'll be fine, they either have an old TV or spare screen or can get one inexpensively, for others it would be a pain and a laptop or whatever would be better. There are laptop kits for the Pi as well.

I think smaller tvs with HDMI are relatively easy to come by. people get a >50" for < $300 and get rid of the old one.

> Many people have huge TVs these days, not very suitable for hobby computing.

With either a wireless keyboard or a long HDMI cable, a huge TV is great for hobby computing. Why would a huge TV be a bad thing for this use?

When Amazon has their Fire tablets on sale, you can make a $60 tiny laptop. Or "laptop" if you prefer. ~$27 for the Fire 7. ~$25 for a Zagg hinged keyboard case. Spend 30 minutes removing the Amazon annoyances from their version of Android. Install Termux. Install Brave (this is the one Android browser I've found with full KB support). Not quite a full-featured computer, but maybe close enough depending on your purpose.

Fire Toolbox is an effective tool for removing Amazon crapware.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/windows-tool-fire-toolbox...

You can get ~$200 pi 400 + touchscreen deals. That's a lower nominal price than anything but firesale deals on 80s PCs without displays were, and a lot cheaper in real (adjusted for inflation) terms.

Sub $100 would be nice, sure, but it's not like what we have available today is bad.

Aren't keybords like $5-15. Rather have full/real kb. That +rasberry + cheap small monitor/tv should be sub $100.

I think there are keyboards with space for raspberry. To replicate the c64, trash80, appliED, TI94a experience.

With some of the discussion recently about Fabrice Bellard, I was thinking a nice retro, minimalist PC OS could be made with TinyC, QEmacs, FFMpeg, TinyGL, TinyCore Linux, etc. I'm sure a lightweight Basic implementation could be found to complement those.

Fabrix?

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