A Word About The Matronix 500-In-1 Project Lab

I first started with electronics during the autumn of 1990. My first try was with a Science Fair 200-in-1 Electronic Project Lab. Later I learned about op-amps with a 130-in-1 Project Lab and later I experimented with breadboards with a 300-in-1 Project Lab. The one I never could acquire was the Elenco 500-In-1 Project Lab (sometimes branded as a Matronix.) One reason for its discontinuation is the advent of the Raspberry Pi! Not only that, but Arduino’s line of integrated circuits, boards and micro-controller and CPU components also contributed to the 500-In-1’s demise. So with a single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi, now we have an infinity-In-1 Electronic Project Lab! The two operating systems, RISC OS Pi and RISC OS Pico really put the fun back. Pico in particular has the feel of a 1980’s home computer. So I am considering to build a few Raspberry Pi-based projects to use as tools in my electronics tool boxes so I can learn more about assembly and machine-code programming and play with the GPIO ports on the Pi. One of my goals is to build a custom-made, DIY video arcade game cabinet. The USB game controllers and modules wouldn’t work with RISC OS so to build a video game control panel with joysticks, buttons and even a trackball, I have decided to quit for a while so that I take some time to learn about the GPIO ports, Arduino and Feather hardware as well as to gear up with wire, cables and hopefully a 3D printer to print keyboard key caps and enclosures. I also have planned on building a collection of hand-held devices with Pi Grrl kits from Adafruit as a guiding standpoint. My electronics hobby has been in hibernation for a tad over 5 years as I suffered from one expensive, virus-prone, buggy computer, from desktop to laptop computers. Every laptop I bought with Microsoft Windows operating systems died after 2 years, forcing me to buy a whole new computer every time. After three laptops in a row crashed without remedy, each within 2 years, I finally decided to abandon Windows computers and since then I never again bought another computer from any store from Wal*Mart to Best Buy to Sam’s Club. Meanwhile I discovered single-board computers on sale after I studied the Dyna-Micro MMD-1 from 1975 while reading books given to me by a neighbor. I bought my first Raspberry Pi in 2015 and I got hitched to this technology since! To add to all Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Feather hardware I plan to snap up in my arsenal, I bought a pair of Apple computers; a Mac Mini and a Mac Book Air. I use either of them to write SD card images for the Raspberry Pi and its cohorts. I haven’t gone back to Windows since.

If you want to make a MAME style GPIO joystick, then you will probably need to write a RISC OS joystick driver, as well as port a newer MAME (or write/port your own games!).

You can give USB joysticks a try-out with my USB Joystick driver. Have a look on the JASPP forum. It is a work-in-progress.