Preserving Fisher-Price Pixter

Thank you. This is a spectacular amount of work and information.

As someone who is interested in similar old hardware that occasionally lacks any kind of documentation (specifically cameras), I sincerely wish I had this level of patience and determination (and also understanding, I'm not really a software guy).

> In 2000, the famous American toy company Fisher-Price released a simple drawing-oriented handheld gaming console for kids called Pixter. It featured no brain-rotting social media and focused, instead, on drawing, sketching, and educational games.

I fear that the future will increasingly be filled with people framing old/new cultural artifact X or Y in terms of whether or not it reminds them of social media.

(Not a dig at the article or the immense technical skills required to accomplish all of this)

Is there any dumb LCD console like that available these days for kids? (not those retro gaming consoles). I want to buy one for my kids. It looks so good, specially because it is a dumb and simple device.

I found Pixter online but are there a little bit more capable systems like this for kids made today?

EDIT: Looks like devices by LeapFrog and VTech are the closest alternative these days so far.

Thanks for the details :)

I was half expecting you to find the Pixter Color VM to be a Forth like interpreter ;)

I still follow Dimitry on twitter for his technical talent, as I've done some palmOS software reversing as well, but man every other post is something along the lines of "we should let X group fend for themselves in a rattlesnake pit because they don't produce value".

All to say it's a major bummer his cool work is tainted by his dehumanizing words and I wonder if he understands how he comes off to people.

Wow great work and great post! love stuff like this on HN.

Always a pleasure to read your articles Dimitry, ever since I discovered your "Running Linux on an 8-bit microcontroller" project, back when I was studying electrical engineering in university. Your low-level hobby work is insane, specially on the palmOS side.

The "bad things" link is broken, the href attribute is mistyped as "haref"

> If that was not enough of crotch-punch, in a desire to cut more costs, they decided to save $0.000001 per device and used the cheaper BJTs instead of FETs.

Having had coworkers who worked for Fisher-Price, using worse components to save a fraction of a cent per device seems their general MO.

Is this in MAME?

Yet again my plans for a productive morning have been derailed by an excellent new write up from Dmitry :)

That hand rolled DAC for the touchscreen with the eight gpio lines is hilarious.

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