It's irrational, but I'd like to tinker around with a HERO robot, too. I say irrational because it's possible to have vastly more capability with a Raspberry Pi

It's irrational, but I'd like to tinker around with a HERO robot, too. I say irrational because it's possible to have vastly more capability with a Raspberry Pi-based modern bot, at 10% of the price. But there's something alluring about the golden era "old iron" computers (pdp8/11) and 1stgen micros (8088/6502), tube amps over solid-state modeling amps, and robots. In a sense it's amazing they (we?) were able to accomplish so much with so little resource. But also, in the same way that cabinet art portrayed 80's video games as graphical masterpieces even when the graphics themselves were little more than blocks, perhaps it is the hopefulness in the face of failure to deliver on the promises of the early robots that makes them so charming. I hope to live long enough that someone looks at a Boston Dynamics littledog and says "oh, look at that old thing. It's so primitive!"