HardwareGaming PCsRaspberry’s Pi 500 is the perfect throwback to the 1980s golden age of home computing and I’d love to relive those moments again with a modern machineWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareGaming PCsRaspberry’s Pi 500 is the perfect throwback to the 1980s golden age of home computing and I’d love to relive those moments again with a modern machineWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Raspberry Pi)
The first computers in my life were British-made Sinclair machines, comprising all the computing hardware stuffed inside a keyboard. They were very cheap, especially compared to more serious computers of that time, but they were also very easy to use. The likes of theZX Spectrumintroduced me to video gaming, programming, and messing about with electronics.
So when I saw news of the release of theRaspberry Pi 500(viaSweclockers) and saw the specs and pictures on the main site for it, I got a burst of nostalgia. And then a flood of regret, once I remembered about all my other Raspberry Pi units just collecting dust, somewhere in a forgotten corner.
Anyway, so what exactlyisthe Pi 500? At face value it’s a rather fetching white keyboard, with a raft of ports about its rear, but delve inside and you’ll find the latest version of the Raspberry Pi. We’re up to number 5 now and it’s a substantial improvement over the fourth iteration, though with some caveats to that statement.
That’s paired with the RP1 I/O controller, offering Bluetooth 5.0, 1Gb Ethernet, two USB 3.0 Type-A and one USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a 40-pin GPIO (general purpose IO) header, and two micro-HDMI sockets (good for 4K, 60 Hz).
It’s priced at$90/£85for the base package (i.e. just the keyboard and a 32 GB SD card with RaspberryOS installed), and around $30/£30 more for the ‘desktop kit’ version, which includes a mouse, power supply unit, HDMI cable, and a beginner’s guide to the Raspberry Pi. It’s a bit cheeky of Raspberry to not include a power supply with the base unit, if you ask me, because the Pi 5 does need a 5 V, 5 A supply at the very least. It’ll run with less current but it won’t work half as well.
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All the additional new capabilities and higher clock speeds do mean one thing, though, and it’s that the Raspberry Pi’s chips can run a bit on the hot side. Fortunately, the Pi 500 is fitted with a large slab of aluminium, for passive cooling.
So what can you do with a Pi 500, should one take your fancy? Well, as our very ownJacob Fox discovered, it’ll runDoom 3well enough to hit 60 fps at 480p low settings, but that’s not really its forte—the original Doom and retro emulation are better suited to the tiny GPU.
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But don’t let me put you off. The Raspberry Pi 500 looks super nice and with a certain holiday just around the corner, it could be an ideal gift for the budding coder in your family. Without my ZX Spectrum, I would never have learned about how computers really work nor developed a lifelong love of assembly. The path that ultimately led me to this very job is almost entirely down to that humble home computer.
You know, I think I may have just talked myself around to getting a certain Raspberry-powered white keyboard. Ah, here we go again.
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