The SMART Response XE was originally a device, produced in great volume, that sold into education environments for pupils and students to respond to smart whiteboard tasks and quizzes. In certain parts of the world, they can now be found secondhand for not much coin and that brought them to the attention of the hardware hacking community. With a simple pogo pin programmer, they were quickly reverse-engineered and became excellent target devices for Arduino BASIC and more. This version runs an adapted version of the classic text-based game “Super Star Trek”.
Super Star Trek has a really long and fascinating history that’s worthy of a little reading around. Mike Mayfield is cited as its original creator as he wrote it for the HP2000C platform back in 1972. There are hints that prior to this in the late 60s older takes on Star Trek as a Spacewar style of game existed on numerous machines. In 1973 Dave Ahl and Mary Cole converted the HP version over to BASIC PLUS and the code was included in Dave Ahl’s classic book 101 BASIC games.
The SMART Response XE is a neat little handheld powered by 4 AAA batteries (not included) and it’s fantastic to see that creative uses are being found for them rather than them being destined for landfill. We can imagine buying this version pre-flashed with this excellent game and then, after a suitable period of Super Star Trek fun, re-flashing it for Arduino BASIC and potentially exploring lots of other retro BASIC games!
