Why retro enjoys a taste of Raspberry Pi

Even so, few would have predicted how big a success it would be. Having sold 100,000 units on the first day, it surpassed 8 million sales just four years later. At that point it had beaten the Amstrad PCW as the best-selling British computer. Today, more than 40 million boards have been sold.

Far from being a flash in the pan, the Raspberry Pi is on to its fourth main model. There are two smaller versions - Zero and Pico-and a unit called the Raspberry Pi 400 that harks backto the days when computers were placed in the same case as the keyboard.

In some respects, that has brought the Pi full circle. A lot of the incentive for creating the low-cost machine lay in the legendary BBC Micro, the computer responsible for introducing an entire generation of British schoolchildren

But the Raspberry Pi has also helped revitalise some of those old machines. Although most retro enthusiasts concentrate on getting the most out of the original computers, some are hell bent on taking things further.

The Raspberry Pi has enabled people to emulate old machines but also expand on their capabilities, and saved a lot of old tech from ending up in landfill. “I’d never consider