Vintage computing enthusiast Julio Merino is hoping to turn more people onto developing in BASIC with the EndBOX, a compact system designed to run his EndBASIC interactive development environment — bringing back the era of your computer booting into a programming language, rather than hiding away its inner workings behind a graphical user interface.
“Remember when turning a computer on meant instantly jumping into code? No bloat, no distractions — just you and a prompt? That’s the experience I’ve been working to bring back with the EndBOX: a small, resilient, nostalgia-packed, all-screen computer that boots straight into the retro-inspired EndBASIC environment,” Merino explains of the project. “And today, six months after its inception, I’m excited to formally show you the first working prototypes — though they are still rough and need refinement.”
The EndBOX Micro (above) and EndBOX (top) aim to bring back the glory days of home computing, circa the 1980s. (📷: Julio Merino)
Merino’s work on the project extends to two prototypes. The first is a full-size EndBOX, which features a 7″ touchscreen display in a custom-printed housing to form a tablet-style portable computing device. The second is the EndBOX Micro, which uses a much more compact form-factor with a 128×128 LCD panel. Both are, in their current form, powered by a Raspberry Pi single-board computer: the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B in the case of the EndBOX proper and the more compact Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for the EndBOX Micro.
Regardless of form-factor, the idea is always the same: booting into a pared-down NetBSD-based operating system that drops the user at a BASIC interpreter, ready for their commands — much like the Commodore 64 and other eight-bit microcomputers of the 1980s. Dubbed the “EndBASIC Shell,” this is a fork of the EndBASIC programming language — building on decades of iteration on top of the original Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Code language — with support for features including USB connectivity, Wi-Fi connectivity, and even general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pin control, though the GPIO headers of the current prototypes are hidden away.
The EndBASIC “shell” includes support for persistent configuration changes, using a file inspired by MS-DOS’ CONFIG.SYS. (📷: Julio Merino)
“The primary goal behind the OS is get you to a prompt as quickly as possible while offering ‘advanced’ features like USB input and Wi-Fi connectivity,” Merino explains. “A secondary goal is to be resilient to power cuts: you should be able to yank power and reboot the machine at any time to get back to a known-good state, just like you used to do.”
Merino has indicated a desire to bring the EndBOX to production as a ready-to-run device, and has opened up applications of interest — as well as financial support for further development — on the EndBASIC website.