High-school class based in MiSTer

[FoxbatStargazer]

Earlier this year My Life in Gaming youtube channel ran a live fundraiser for Joey Versoza so that he could buy Misters for his entire high school classroom. He wanted to teach kids the history of video games, but also wanted an economical way to give them an accurate look at how the earliest games looked, sound, and played. Here's a brief article from the school giving a little insight into how the Misters were used in their first semester.

[akeley]

Sorry, but buying 27 full-stack MiSTers is not an "economical way" to teach a class about videogaming history. Bunch of RPis or school computers/laptops would do just fine.

[FoxbatStargazer]

The school had chromebooks and rightly concluded that they were a mess. Although I can't say that some Pi400s would've managed well enough for substantially cheaper. Still not the school's money so they didn't care, it was mostly funded from hardware enthusiasts watching MLiG's stream, and it was a damn sight cheaper than trying to restore and maintain real Apple IIs and the like.

[akeley]

For me it's an example of "magical FPGA" thinking, plus "let's fundraise anything" internet thing, that I just don't buy into. MLiG and his subscribers should know better - that this is really an overkill for the task. Nevermind details such as the fact you can't save on Apple II core atm, so perhaps it's not the best way to experience Colossal Cave and other early Apple classics.

[bazza_12]

prob cheaper to buy the original machines on ebay.

[Newsdee]

This seems practical to me. Maintaining a fleet of MiSTer is easier than a bunch of RPis, and the kids can't browse the net and get distracted with Youtube.

The DE-10 has an educational discount, and they may have gotten a 32MB SDRAM expansions which is fairly cheap.