Run BASIC on Your SMART Response XE

Dan Geiger has a guide that will walk you through how to run BASIC on SMART Response XE devices.

Cameron Coward
3 years agoRetro Tech

Smartphones and tablets are commonplace today, which is great for teachers and schools. Interactive learning apps offer a wide range of unique ways to teach kids. But before iOS and Android came along and took the world by storm, quirkier devices filled similar roles. One of the most popular of those devices was the SMART Response XE, which was a small handheld computer that a student could use to respond to a teacher's questions. These devices are obsolete these days, since students can use their smartphones for the same purpose. That means that you can snag a SMART Response XE for a few dollars and Dan Geiger has a guide that will walk you through how to run BASIC on the device.

BASIC is a general purpose programming language that was very popular on early microcomputers. For example, the Commodore 64 came with a BASIC interpreter in ROM. As such, many of us had our first programming experiences in BASIC. As it turns out, the SMART Response XE is a perfect device for some portable BASIC programming. Each SMART Response XE has a full tactile QWERTY keyboard, a 2.5x1 inch LCD display, and a respectable microcontroller. That microcontroller is an ATmega128RFA1 with an 8-bit CPU, 128k of RAM, 4k of EEPROM memory, and an external 1Mb flash memory chip. Best of all: it is compatible with the Arduino IDE.

Larry Bank created an Arduino library for SMART Response XE devices, which lets you read the keyboard, write to the screen, and work with external memory. Another library, called Tiny BASIC Plus, lets you run a special version of BASIC on Arduino boards and Arduino-compatible microcontrollers. Dan Geiger combined these two libraries so you can program in BASIC on a SMART Response XE. He also provided instructions on how to open up the device and flash the code. All you need to do is a make a programming adapter and connect to it with a JTAG programmer like the AVR ISP MkII. These devices can run on four AAA batteries for a long time, so they're great for tinkering with BASIC on-the-go.

If you don't want to go through all of the trouble of flashing new firmware, you can buy a SMART Response XE with Tiny BASIC Plus already installed on Tindie.

Cameron Coward
Writer for Hackster News. Proud husband and dog dad. Maker and serial hobbyist.
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