Clubintosh

Holy smokes, we have an awesome community. Bart, one of the amazing people behind Computer Club World, has a Playdate, just like me. He reached out that he wanted to try to make a Playdate app. Maybe we could do something for Computer Club?

💾 Is an OS simulator a thing?

Bart had been curious about what it would take to build for the Playdate. On Sept. 3, 2024, we were to host a Computer Club meetup called 'Speeltijd'. People in the community could bring their gadgets for others to try. The perfect occasion, right?

Bart sent me a demo, where one could use the signature crank to insert a floppy disk into a desktop computer. From there, we ended up 'closing the entire loop': from floppy over booting ... to an actual OS environment.

• What's consistent: you crank it. People can crank their way through the entire experience.
• What's not: the systems that are featured. We took some liberties, and mashed up a lot of different systems and brands. There's old-school IBM, an Energy Star BIOS (but featuring our mascot Floppyhead), MS-DOS prompting, and a classic Macintosh desktop;

👀 See for yourself

Bart created a 'crank through':

Some screenshots:

But, if you have a Playdate: you can try it out yourself. Playdate makes side loading super easy: just download the game, surf to your Playdate account, and drop the file there.

All kudos go to Bart. What a cool experiment!