As you might remember, buspirate is a pic24-based device with a pic24 + ft232 for usb connectivity. pic24 runs (according to datasheet) at clocks up to 32Mhz. The price tag for my bpv3 hardware was something around 30$ at places like seeedstudio.
uISP on the other hand is way cheaper and simpler and contains only an atmega8 + a handful of passive components. It’s less than 5$ worth of components (and board!) and was designed by me a very long time ago as a super-cheap ISP programmer/devboard. Something I can give out to students to get started in electronics. uISP has NO HARDWARE USB. It just uses vusb stack. Yep, simple as that. The clock is 12Mhz on most boards and for this test I also made a super-special version with a 20Mhz crystal.
Now, can this cute little thingie outperform a much faster buspirate with hardware serial interface IC? Turns out it can, after all!