Are there many of these still existing? If I'm not set on having something Canadian, which would be a good model to look into? Would it be a good way to introduce a kid to computers / Unix / programming?
I learned to code on a TRS-80 Model 100, in BASIC, when I was 7 years old or so. Nothing Unix-like about it, but as an introduction to programming concepts I got a lot of mileage out of it. The upside is, there are no distractions, and it basically doesn't do anything except let you write text or short BASIC programs. It's essentially a big keyboard with a little chunky LCD display and it runs a long time on AA batteries. I dragged it everywhere with me as a kid, along with the BASIC manual, trying to figure out how to get it to do things. The portability was a big plus, cause I could just keep experimenting whenever I had ideas.
There's no point to running antiques any more, not when, for example, you can buy a reproduction PDP11/70 front panel that runs on a Raspi runnig an emulator running genuine V7 Unix!
You can probably emulate that pretty easily with a Raspberry Pi, which contains a huge amount more processing power, but I guess I understand how its just "not the same".
Are there many of these still existing? If I'm not set on having something Canadian, which would be a good model to look into? Would it be a good way to introduce a kid to computers / Unix / programming?