Tauon PC-1 review
You should give this a chance. It deserves one.
Welcome to the Tauon PC-1.
A Tauon is an incredibly geeky sciency thing, as it happens, and has nothing to do with the Great Eastern Philosopher.
You won't find it for sale anywhere other than on Tauon's website, and on ebay so far as I can see, and then only if you're a regular visitor of the ebay "vintage computer hardware" category. It won't even turn up on ebay if you search for the product name: "Tauon PC1" - you'll just stumble upon it one day, when you're looking for a replacement floppy drive, or a C64.
So, what is it?
It's a computer in a dinky little case!
Hardware wise, it has:
It runs Tauon OS (v .991 at time of writing), a customised Android 7.1.
I know though, that's not what you saw in the picture.
No, it's not a generic USB keyboard. It's a computer, as in personal computer, like the one that you had in your bedroom when you were 12, before cubicles and beige boxes turned them into boring utilitarian appliances with no personality. If that sounds quaint, archaic, and these days, just a weird, and absolutely the wrong way, to describe, well - a computer - and yet, you are intrigued and absolutely must have one, then this is for you.
The real question though is: why this exists at all? (You know what I mean.)
I suspect the Tauon team a Ukrainian startup, have struggled with this very question as well. This is built to a price. The story of this device, reading between the lines, reveals struggle throughout, an admittedly romantic assumption grounded in no more than conjecture, but that makes me like it so much more. This was dreamed up, nurtured, honed and loved, however humble its final appearance.
It's a budget product, without a doubt. It's light as a feather. Its case design is unpretentious, dull, going for that library terminal look. It comes in a repurposed keyboard box. If looks matter, this will not do, and it is not for you.
As for the why, Tauon settled on describing it as a "kid friendly family computer". The mission here is a cheap uncomplicated computer that kids can use with a minimum of fuss, to learn to program and to play games on. It's certainly equipped for the programming part: the keyboard is where a chunk of its undeniably small production budget was deployed; it's the right size, and it's decent.
Sadly, "kid friendly family computer" is probably the worst thing to call any product intended for kids. It's down there with "educational toy", and guaranteed only to irredeemably damage sales. The world has moved on: watch the spark in the eye of the kid in your life vanish into tantrummy disappointment, as you explain to the brat why the Tauon is what they really want, not a Nintendo Switch. I hope and want to be very wrong, but while Tauon's stated mission is noble, and absolutely necessary for these times, I also fear it is Sisyphean - as far as many of today's kids, and family units, for that matter, are concerned.
On the other hand, the PC1 is incredibly appealing to the parents of the kids it is aimed at. Indeed, there are kids who will want this - they are just much older. The PC-1 channels the spirit of an 80's 8-bit: your Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, C64, TI-99 or Apple II. Perhaps if it were painted:
Turn it on, and the scene is set with a callback to a simpler computing time: a pixelated Tauon OS logo, foreshadowing what this whole thing is really about:
Then you can recapture this hazy, misty unicorn moment:
Or this glittering requiem of full spectrum light:
How good is emulator performance? Watch from 5:48:
Whether that's good enough for you, you'll have to decide for yourself, of course. Everyone's threshold for lag and accuracy flaws is different. It's more than fine for me, good enough to have a lot of fun if casual retro gaming is your thing. It will doubtlessly be an abomination for any emulation purist questing for frame perfect fidelity, but these are the same people who buy stereo cables that cost twice as much as the PC-1, and this is not meant for them either.
To treat this as solely as a retro gaming console though, is missing the point, as the package is also missing a controller. In its place though, is that keyboard. This then, is about using your c64 after you finished WizBall, and had no more pocket money for a new game.
The Tauon makes a case for itself as a convenient way to repent for those never learned BASIC or assembly skills, or to brush up on them again, but with modern conveniences like HDMI and SD storage. It costs a lot less than a single C64 Maxi or Spectrum Next, and emulates many more systems. Really, there's nothing quite like it around, unless you roll your own board of choice into a keyboard, which Tauon kind of assume you might want to do sometime anyway, and so they made it easy.
It would be a shame to gut the PC-1 quite so quickly. The value created by the developer behind it hides in plain sight, in the customizations of Tauon OS. It will strike you as an oddity, and the workspace looks like your mum's hand me down phone on TV-out at first glance, but it's stable, responsive, and undeniably easy to use.
Important but easily missed features, like a dedicated home and back key and single click switchable keyboard to gamepad mode, robust HDMI implementation (works on every screen I've thrown at it, including some TV from the dawn of time) seem so obvious when they just work, it's easy to forget that they often do not, in budget gear. Tauon is working on Taoun BASIC Script, which is in 0.26 alpha here: https://tauonelectronics.com/TauonBasicWebAlpha/ . [Update 4/7/2020 Now built into Tauon OS v.994] And a driver for that I2C port.
If you do feel the need to stray, the PC-1 will boot into Fedora32 Linux from SD card, with absolutely no need to burn bootloaders or any such unnecessary deviousness (and leaving Tauon OS on internal NAND unchanged):
Linux support is community based and nascent, but real due to Linux Legend Hentacler (SD image is here: FTP 62.171.128.19/ [Login: tauon Pw: tauon]).
Tauon have established a small but surprisingly informative forum. They are accessible, and clearly trying - the latest OS is v.991 was released pretty much immediately to fix a forum raised bug, for instance. Hopefully they will share their roadmap for Tauon OS and the PC-1 itself when they have time. I hope the Tauon community will continue to grow.
So, should you get one?
This is an already very usable computer. If the worst should happen, you've got yourself a nice case.
If you made it this far, you already know.
Welcome to the Tauon PC-1.
A Tauon is an incredibly geeky sciency thing, as it happens, and has nothing to do with the Great Eastern Philosopher.
You won't find it for sale anywhere other than on Tauon's website, and on ebay so far as I can see, and then only if you're a regular visitor of the ebay "vintage computer hardware" category. It won't even turn up on ebay if you search for the product name: "Tauon PC1" - you'll just stumble upon it one day, when you're looking for a replacement floppy drive, or a C64.
It's a computer in a dinky little case!
- Allwinner H3 Quad Core SOC [1ghz to 1.2ghz/1gb RAM/8GB internal NAND storage]
- SD slot
- USB slot,
- HDMI and composite out
- Ethernet
- Wifi
- UART (send/receive signals through terminal commands)
- I2C (drivers aren't ready yet, but promised).
Inside the case - yes it's one of those all in one SOC boards - assembled by Sunvell:
It runs Tauon OS (v .991 at time of writing), a customised Android 7.1.
I know though, that's not what you saw in the picture.
No, it's not a generic USB keyboard. It's a computer, as in personal computer, like the one that you had in your bedroom when you were 12, before cubicles and beige boxes turned them into boring utilitarian appliances with no personality. If that sounds quaint, archaic, and these days, just a weird, and absolutely the wrong way, to describe, well - a computer - and yet, you are intrigued and absolutely must have one, then this is for you.
The real question though is: why this exists at all? (You know what I mean.)
I suspect the Tauon team a Ukrainian startup, have struggled with this very question as well. This is built to a price. The story of this device, reading between the lines, reveals struggle throughout, an admittedly romantic assumption grounded in no more than conjecture, but that makes me like it so much more. This was dreamed up, nurtured, honed and loved, however humble its final appearance.
It's a budget product, without a doubt. It's light as a feather. Its case design is unpretentious, dull, going for that library terminal look. It comes in a repurposed keyboard box. If looks matter, this will not do, and it is not for you.
As for the why, Tauon settled on describing it as a "kid friendly family computer". The mission here is a cheap uncomplicated computer that kids can use with a minimum of fuss, to learn to program and to play games on. It's certainly equipped for the programming part: the keyboard is where a chunk of its undeniably small production budget was deployed; it's the right size, and it's decent.
Sadly, "kid friendly family computer" is probably the worst thing to call any product intended for kids. It's down there with "educational toy", and guaranteed only to irredeemably damage sales. The world has moved on: watch the spark in the eye of the kid in your life vanish into tantrummy disappointment, as you explain to the brat why the Tauon is what they really want, not a Nintendo Switch. I hope and want to be very wrong, but while Tauon's stated mission is noble, and absolutely necessary for these times, I also fear it is Sisyphean - as far as many of today's kids, and family units, for that matter, are concerned.
On the other hand, the PC1 is incredibly appealing to the parents of the kids it is aimed at. Indeed, there are kids who will want this - they are just much older. The PC-1 channels the spirit of an 80's 8-bit: your Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, C64, TI-99 or Apple II. Perhaps if it were painted:
Turn it on, and the scene is set with a callback to a simpler computing time: a pixelated Tauon OS logo, foreshadowing what this whole thing is really about:
Then you can recapture this hazy, misty unicorn moment:
Or this glittering requiem of full spectrum light:
Ahhh, memories.
This is a retro computing lover's and hacker's delight.
It ships with a preconfigured Retroarch and so is potentially every retro system retroarch can be. It runs Android apps via Apkpure app (no Google play), so you have all that stuff to play with as well.
This is a retro computing lover's and hacker's delight.
It ships with a preconfigured Retroarch and so is potentially every retro system retroarch can be. It runs Android apps via Apkpure app (no Google play), so you have all that stuff to play with as well.
How good is emulator performance? Watch from 5:48:
Whether that's good enough for you, you'll have to decide for yourself, of course. Everyone's threshold for lag and accuracy flaws is different. It's more than fine for me, good enough to have a lot of fun if casual retro gaming is your thing. It will doubtlessly be an abomination for any emulation purist questing for frame perfect fidelity, but these are the same people who buy stereo cables that cost twice as much as the PC-1, and this is not meant for them either.
To treat this as solely as a retro gaming console though, is missing the point, as the package is also missing a controller. In its place though, is that keyboard. This then, is about using your c64 after you finished WizBall, and had no more pocket money for a new game.
The Tauon makes a case for itself as a convenient way to repent for those never learned BASIC or assembly skills, or to brush up on them again, but with modern conveniences like HDMI and SD storage. It costs a lot less than a single C64 Maxi or Spectrum Next, and emulates many more systems. Really, there's nothing quite like it around, unless you roll your own board of choice into a keyboard, which Tauon kind of assume you might want to do sometime anyway, and so they made it easy.
It would be a shame to gut the PC-1 quite so quickly. The value created by the developer behind it hides in plain sight, in the customizations of Tauon OS. It will strike you as an oddity, and the workspace looks like your mum's hand me down phone on TV-out at first glance, but it's stable, responsive, and undeniably easy to use.
Important but easily missed features, like a dedicated home and back key and single click switchable keyboard to gamepad mode, robust HDMI implementation (works on every screen I've thrown at it, including some TV from the dawn of time) seem so obvious when they just work, it's easy to forget that they often do not, in budget gear. Tauon is working on Taoun BASIC Script, which is in 0.26 alpha here: https://tauonelectronics.com/TauonBasicWebAlpha/ . [Update 4/7/2020 Now built into Tauon OS v.994] And a driver for that I2C port.
If you do feel the need to stray, the PC-1 will boot into Fedora32 Linux from SD card, with absolutely no need to burn bootloaders or any such unnecessary deviousness (and leaving Tauon OS on internal NAND unchanged):
Linux support is community based and nascent, but real due to Linux Legend Hentacler (SD image is here: FTP 62.171.128.19/ [Login: tauon Pw: tauon]).
Tauon have established a small but surprisingly informative forum. They are accessible, and clearly trying - the latest OS is v.991 was released pretty much immediately to fix a forum raised bug, for instance. Hopefully they will share their roadmap for Tauon OS and the PC-1 itself when they have time. I hope the Tauon community will continue to grow.
So, should you get one?
This is an already very usable computer. If the worst should happen, you've got yourself a nice case.
If you made it this far, you already know.
sumpgilAducchi Amy Turner https://wakelet.com/wake/vcIm-lee6B6arMySN_oIR
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Tauon PC seems like a promising innovation, blending sleek design with impressive performance. Can not wait to see how it revolutionizes the computing landscape.
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