After 6 months of planning, designing, building and coding we have finished our first modern retro computer called the Alpha System 1. The Alpha System 1 is a complete stand alone computer system built with two Arduino Nano micro controllers and a handful of other components. Once built all you need to add is a PS/2 keyboard and an RCA video / audio cables to your TV or composite monitor.

At the heart of the Alpha System 1 is AlphaBASIC Plus, an enhanced version of BASIC based on the Arduino version of Tiny BASIC Plus. AlphaBASIC supports almost 70 commands and functions, including standard BASIC commands such as PRINT, graphical commands to draw circles, lines and boxes as well as commands for sound and file storage just to name a few.

The Alpha System 1 supports both PAL and NTSC output via a jumper on the board, this produces a text screen display consisting of 19 x 14 characters or 120 x 88 pixels. Along with a 32KB EEPROM split into 32 x 1KB banks for storage of you basic programs.