Raspberry Pi Pico Emulates Retro Computer

Raspberry Pi Pico
(Image credit: Kilograham5)

The recently released Raspberry Pi Pico community is already giving us a glimpse at the power of this new board via some incredible projects. On launch day, the Raspberry Pi Foundation shared a Raspberry Pi Pico project on Twitter designed to emulate and output BBC Micro demoscene demos to an external screen. The BBC Micro is the machine which influenced the Raspberry Pi model names, and was the computer with which Eben Upton learnt to code in 1988.

The project was developed by a maker with the Twitter handle of Kilograham5. According to the post, it demonstrates full-speed high-fidelity emulation using a partially overclocked Raspberry Pi Pico. 

To get a visual output, Kilograham5 used the Pico's Programmable IO pins to wire VGA/DPI compatibility and connect the screen. It can even support keyboard input using a USB 1.1 host.

You can explore tons of cool demos on the Bitshifters Github. This is essentially a collection of software, video demos and games from artists, musicians, developers and enthusiasts in the microelectronics community that are ideal for adapting to projects like this Pico demonstration.

This new board is only $4 and we're definitely eager to see what the community can create with it. In the meantime, check out our list of Best Raspberry Pi Projects for more cool projects from the maker community.

Ash Hill
Freelance News and Features Writer

Ash Hill is a Freelance News and Features Writer at Tom's Hardware US. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting.