Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #138

One glance around Raspberry Pi Towers and you’ll find no shortage of retro computing enthusiasts. While Raspberry Pi is an ultra-modern and incredibly powerful computer, it is adored by people originally enthused by the home computing boom of the 1980s and ’90s. So it’s no surprise that Raspberry Pi is used to emulate classic computers and retro gaming consoles. For many Raspberry Pi owners this is their very first project: to recreate one of the esteemed computers of the past, built by the likes of Commodore, Atari, and Acorn. Personally, I’m a Commodore fan: first the C64 and then a beloved Amiga. The massive speed boost offered by Raspberry Pi 5 is a game-changer for retro gaming: opening up a whole new slew of 5th and even 6th generation consoles…

It’s now been a little over three months since we announced Raspberry Pi 5 (Issue #134, magpi.cc/134), and the time has flown by. We knew we’d built something quite special, but we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response from the community. The production ramp has been steeper than for any previous flagship product: we’ve been producing 70,000 units a week for the last few weeks, and this rate is set to increase to 90,000 units a week by the end of January. Once people had recovered from the shock of seeing both a power button and a real-time clock (magpi.cc/rtcdocs) on a Raspberry Pi, one of the most commented-on features of the new platform was the small, vertical, 16-way FFC (Flat Flexible Cable) connector on the left-hand side of the…

Alittle under two months have passed since the release of the Wayland-based Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm (magpi.cc/software). Whenever we do a major version release like this, we invariably spend the next few weeks fixing all the bugs that real users have found but our pre-release testing didn’t, and then make a bug-fix release with them (hopefully) fixed. This has taken a few weeks longer this time, simply due to the sheer amount that changed under the hood in Bookworm, but the bug-fix release is now ready and can be installed from today via Raspberry Pi Imager, or downloaded from the usual place on our website (magpi.cc/osimages). Or, to upgrade an existing image, simply use the updater icon on the taskbar, or (if you’re more old-school) open a terminal and type…

MAKER Brian is The MagPi’s publishing director and a volunteer and restorer at Rhode Island Computer Museum. jepSTone.net Brian Jepson developed an interest in home computing and programming not long after receiving a Radio Shack 150-In-1 electronics kit from his parents. He went on to write about computing and making, culminating in his role as Publishing Director of The MagPi and Hackspace at Raspberry Pi. “When Raspberry Pi originally came out, it really tied both interests together in ways that no other development board had.”, he says. In his spare time, Brian volunteers at Rhode Island’s Computer Museum (ricomputermuseum.org), restoring old computers. He had a couple of SCSI-based (Small Computer System Interface) computers – “a PowerPC ThinkPad and an Apple Macintosh Quadra, all of which used SCSI drives” – and…

MAKER Tim Alex Jacobs, aka mitxela, is an inventor, artist, and hardware hacker based in London, UK. mitxela.com Tea-light candles are ideal for mood lighting, but naked flames can be dangerous – and those off-the-shelf artificial LED versions aren’t very convincing. Taking a different approach, Tim Jacobs’s POV candle spins an LED matrix at high speed to create the illusion of a hovering 3D flame. “There was a discussion at a pub meet-up about electronic candles, of which there are many different types,” recalls Tim. “I was specifically trying to think of a design that would look right from any angle. I’m not sure if I’ve achieved that yet, but this is only the first prototype!” His solution was to make use of persistence of vision (POV) – the brief…

MAKER Will is an atmospheric scientist who enjoys making and tinkering with all kinds of fascinating hardware in his projects. willwhang.dev You may have read about OneInchEye in issue #137 of The MagPi: it was a lynchpin in the development of Csaba Nagy’s CinePi XL filmography project. Sensing there was a great story behind the creation of the dedicated 20.3Mp sensor, we got in touch with its maker, Will Whang, to hear how OneInchEye (named because of the size of the CMOS) came about - and to admire the resulting photography. Will has always been interested in solar imaging and says “the sight of the mighty sun temporarily obscured, and events like the Venus transit,” have always left him in awe. He studied atmospheric science where he had plenty of…