my pocketchip experience in 2024
i got a next thing co pocketchip sometime around 2017 second-hand from a friend who had ordered and (luckily, seeing as the company went under before fulfilling all orders) received his but ended up no longer wanting it. i've played with it on and off quite fondly since, and i've recently unearthed it and done a bunch of upgrades to it, so i figured i would write a post about it. a lot of it is from all over since 2017 to today so it's not really chronologically coherent
for most of its life, i've actually had the pocketchip plugged in and running 24/7 as a desktop ornament. i had a portal set up in my LAN (open to the internet for others to play with, even) for a period of time which allowed you to write, save and compile processing sketches to run on the pocketchip. the sketches would compile to java on my home server not to put the load on the pocketchip (which would take a lot longer and slow down a sketch already in progress) and the whole thing ran on a NFS mount so the NAND wouldn't be constantly written to. the sketches would then continuously run on my pocketchip on my desk as a sort of a "demo screen" or a "permanent screen saver"
beyond that the usual putting games and emulators on it was standard practice. did you know zep still updates pico8 for the pocket chip to this day?
