I've long thought that the original GameBoy Advanced would make a great platform for kids to learn about hardware. Being solid state, it doesn't have the physic

I've long thought that the original GameBoy Advanced would make a great platform for kids to learn about hardware. Being solid state, it doesn't have the physicality that OP describes, but it does have a very understandable hardware and software model. Basically, 100% of the machine can be controlled via memory-mapped structs. No need to call a magical function from some Nintendo-sanction wizard. You can stomp the bits yourself and make stuff happen. I've written a toy program to draw on the screen in half a page of C. No includes, no libs. int main, vidmode=3, pixels[n]=255;