Minimal Computing (anyone using "Raspberry Pi"?)

[Arragonis]

Just wondered if anyone else here has been playing with the "Raspberry Pi" computer at all ?

The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, including Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science in each academic year. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.

Something had changed the way kids were interacting with computers. A number of problems were identified: the colonisation of the ICT curriculum with lessons on using Word and Excel, or writing webpages; the end of the dot-com boom; and the rise of the home PC and games console to replace the Amigas, BBC Micros, Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 machines that people of an earlier generation learned to program on.

Put simpler it is a single board computer running an ARM chip (the one in your mobile phone) and including sockets for a HD TV and a USB keyboard and mouse. The software is free to download and install, and includes simple stuff like a web browser, word processing and a lot of programming stuff like Python and C+++. There is, apparently, a version of Android being developed for it - perfect for AIDE.

I have mine, in a custom built (by A-Junior) Lego case

[cfg83]

Arragonis -

I've considered getting one (or two or three) but why not go to the next step? ...

$99 Parallella supercomputer appears on Kickstarter

The launch of the Raspberry Pi $59.95 at Amazon Marketplace has been a huge success story, and promises to get cheap computers into the hands of kids and hobbyists around the world. But it has also had another effect–it has inspired others to look into alternative methods of developing cheap computing platforms.

One company taking inspiration from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is Adapteva, which focuses on semiconductor technology and has developed a very efficient multicore microprocessor architecture. Now they intend to use that architecture to offer up a $99 supercomputer with the help of Kickstarter.

The project is called Parallella, with the main aim being to make parallel computing open and accessible to everyone at a very cheap price point. Adapteva intends to do this by using its Epiphany RISC processors, which promise up to 45GHz of CPU performance using only 5 Watts and fitting on a board the size of a credit card.

CarloSW2

[jamesqf]

Minimal? Guess it depends on your definition. 700 Mhz processor, 256 MB RAM, SD chip "disk" which are up to what, 32 GB these days? As compared to my first machine, which had an 8 MHz processor, 640K RAM, and a couple of 360K floppy drives, later upgraded to a 20 MB (yes, I mean megabyte) hard disk.

[cfg83]

jamesqf -

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Minimal? Guess it depends on your definition. 700 Mhz processor, 256 MB RAM, SD chip "disk" which are up to what, 32 GB these days? As compared to my first machine, which had an 8 MHz processor, 640K RAM, and a couple of 360K floppy drives, later upgraded to a 20 MB (yes, I mean megabyte) hard disk.

Right on! Back when I was a kid, PCs used to require typing, and we liked it!!!

I thought we had arrived when I paid "1 dollar per megabyte" for a 500 MB hard disk.

Do you get paranoid that a laptop should always be horizontal to keep the hard disk flat? I know hard disks are leaps and bounds above the old daze, but the only thing that *matters* in a PC is the hard disk. Everything else can be replaced.

CarloSW2

[niky]

Your first computer had Megabytes?

Mine had a tape storage drive that could barely hold 16K. The first time I saw a floppy, they were still single sided. Then they went double-sided. Then we went for the 3.5" disks... which weren't floppy at all...

-

A 45 GHz parallel processor? If it can do Angry Birds, I'm sold.

[cfg83]

niky -

Originally Posted by niky

Your first computer had Megabytes?

Mine had a tape storage drive that could barely hold 16K. The first time I saw a floppy, they were still single sided. Then they went double-sided. Then we went for the 3.5" disks... which weren't floppy at all...

-

A 45 GHz parallel processor? If it can do Angry Birds, I'm sold.

16K?!?!? that's so core memory :



CarloSW2

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by cfg83

Arragonis -

I've considered getting one (or two or three) but why not go to the next step? ...

Hmmm, interesting...

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Minimal? Guess it depends on your definition. 700 Mhz processor, 256 MB RAM, SD chip "disk" which are up to what, 32 GB these days? As compared to my first machine, which had an 8 MHz processor, 640K RAM, and a couple of 360K floppy drives, later upgraded to a 20 MB (yes, I mean megabyte) hard disk.

You were lucky.

(watch video first )

On our day computers had 1K of memory, if you were lucky, and only a pretend keyboard. Programs, we had programs but they had to be loaded from the tapes. And we used them we couldn't watch the TV. Colour, what are you, a lord or something ?

But we were happy, we really were.

But you tell the youth of today and they just don't believe you...

[Arragonis]

Its a neat-ish machine. One student has written a whole circuit test program on it, various people are doing games and programming education. I kind of home it works, and I have a hope for Android working - I have a few projects for that and emulators are, well, pish for developing on and no money for a Galaxy tab.

Apple, no thanks.

[cfg83]

Arragonis -

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Its a neat-ish machine. One student has written a whole circuit test program on it, various people are doing games and programming education. I kind of home it works, and I have a hope for Android working - I have a few projects for that and emulators are, well, pish for developing on and no money for a Galaxy tab.

Apple, no thanks.

Look on YouTube for "Rasberry Pi Android" and you'll find stuff like this :

Jelly Bean on G1, XBMC for Android, Raspberry Pi ICS!
http[colon]//www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=ZbpECSFTVv4

The above URL's comments led me here (very nice YouTube of ICS) :

Android 4.0 is coming! | Raspberry Pi - 2012/07/31

Update: those of you looking to play with Android on Pi in advance of our source code release might want to check out the community Razdroid project, which last month produced its first non-accelerated port of Gingerbread on top of the publicly released VideoCore binary.

Naren has been working on a port of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) to Raspberry Pi, and as you can see from the screenshots and video below, he’s been making great progress. Hardware-accelerated graphics and video have been up and running smoothly for some time; AudioFlinger support is the only major missing piece at the moment.

CarloSW2

[Arragonis]

Yep looking forward to it - I don't watch the project too closely because of time, but will switch back to it when the Android full release is out - or soon afterwards.