> you can probably have a working board for about five bucks that'll run rings around an Apple II or a vintage PC.
Hell, you can do even better than that. Assuming that CHIP (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...) delivers on it's Kickstarter, for $9 you get a 1 GHz CPU and 512 MB RAM. That's roughly on par with an average home PC from about 2002-2003.
If you bump your budget up to $40, you get a Raspberry Pi 2 with a quad core 1 GHz chip and 1 GB of RAM. Now we're talking parity with an typical home PCs from 10 years ago, or less.
Hell, you can do even better than that. Assuming that CHIP (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...) delivers on it's Kickstarter, for $9 you get a 1 GHz CPU and 512 MB RAM. That's roughly on par with an average home PC from about 2002-2003.
If you bump your budget up to $40, you get a Raspberry Pi 2 with a quad core 1 GHz chip and 1 GB of RAM. Now we're talking parity with an typical home PCs from 10 years ago, or less.