I see where you're coming from, but these are gross exaggerations in the vein of infomercials depicting performing mundane tasks without their product as nearly impossible.
First, the software could be packaged as an OS image for the pi itself, eliminating a fair chunk of your list, but second, the alternative presented on this page is to assemble the hardware from a list that includes resistors.
Surely if you can manage that, you can wrangle an iso.
There are a whole heap of gotchas that don't seem like a big deal if you're a savvy adult programmer, but are showstoppers if you're eleven years old and just getting into proper computing.
The Raspberry Pi is a very useful thing, but Eben Upton will freely admit that it was the wrong solution for the intended audience. It's just too complex and too brittle to work as a "modern BBC micro" for educational use. The lessons learned from RPi led to the BBC micro:bit, a much simpler Cortex M0 development board that has been a roaring success in British schools.
The BASIC Engine isn't a suitable educational tool as-is, but it could become very useful if it's offered as a commercial product with HDMI or VGA output.
Ordered a RPi Zero W from Adafruit on a Saturday, got it on a Wednesday. Took about two hours to get through a headless install of Raspbian [1], most of which was fighting with my Mac's Disk Utility.
Not knocking the BASIC Engine, I think it's cool as heck, just pointing out that getting started on RPi is not really as painful as it once was. You can even purchase an SD card preloaded with Raspbian!
A bit OT, but if your hassle with disk utility was related to imaging your card, I'd recommend https://etcher.io/ . It's an unbelievably simple and friendly tool.
I see where you're coming from, but let's be honest, that's still way faster and easier than the BASIC Engine, unless the author offers a way to order pre-built sets.
> Binaries are available on Github in the firmware repository. They can be uploaded to the system via the serial port, using esptool
Good luck flashing the firmware on this thing over a serial port. I'd much rather emulate the platform on a pi, so that I can repurpose the device for something more useful when I realize how big of a waste of time it is to use BASIC for new projects. Source: I use BASIC at work and it sucks butt.
It's sad that it's not easily available any more. It's open schematics, though, so you can also build it yourself, given enough skill and determination.
Note he actually made a point of making it (mostly) compatible with a RasPi Model 3 enclosure. Note that this has very different design choices compared to a RasPi, probably most notably the PS/2 and RCA connectors, which suggest the idea to being able to use it with older TVs or the like. As a "learning platform for underprivileged children" it's highly likely that things like RCA video and PS/2 keyboards are incredibly easy to pick up today incredibly cheaply: Everyone wants to get rid of them.
PS/2 keyboards/mice might be harder to find than you'd think. New ones are hard to find and while there are literally millions of old ones sitting around disused, their very lack of value means that the secondary market is not strong. Not many people want to bother listing a $2 used keyboard on eBay.
I'm a tech guy and could scrounge up a dozen old keyboards in a few minutes, but someone who is just starting out probably won't have a collection of old hardware to pull from.
Finding TVs that will still take composite or component is getting harder. And even if they take it, they usually only take it in at a very specific scan rate and resolution, and it usually looks like garbage.
I'm not sure where you're from, but I don't know anyone who doesn't have literally dozens of VGA monitors they can't figure out how to get rid of. Even modern this-year Dell monitors still come with VGA, and I've never even seen a modern TV without RCA plugs.
Is their a Goodwill or Salvation Army store around you? Check it out, see what their electronics section looks like. That's the target market.
Many modern monitors might have VGA still, (none I've seen recently do) but almost all lack the ability to handle the 15khz horizontal that much vintage computer tech uses.
True, VGA being an analog interface was perfect for CRT-based monitors. Many modern LCD monitors still have it, not sure about the image quality though.
VGA is still pretty adequate. The main limitation is that if you hook up a VGA monitor, you can't watch most proprietary video, whether it be disc or streaming, because they need a more sophisticated connector for their DRM schemes. VGA cables have no real difficulty with 1080p or some even higher resolutions.
The irony is that the very, very early prototypes of the Pi were a lot more like this, built around an Atmel microcontroller; it was eventually decided that HDMI and a browser were too important to do without.
