
QEMU 4.0 adds micro:bit emulation support - ingve
https://www.qemu.org/2019/05/22/microbit/
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newaccoutnas
Fantastic to see how far micro:bit has come, I was working with the engineer
in R&D at the beeb at the time who came up with the idea. Fondly remember
testing on the 5th floor lab, checking thermal properties of the prototypes so
they didn't burn little fingers :) Hopefully it's 'sparked' a good interest in
computers and electronics in curious minds (old and young)

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pkaye
I'd presume these things run at mA of power? Why would there be concerns to it
getting hot?

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danieldk
Because kids do things like connecting VCC and ground, or drawing too much
power from microcontroller pins, etc.

(I guess)

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pkaye
Voltage regulators usually have a short circuit protection circuit though.

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danieldk
That's a good point. However, many regulators get hot with high loads. Also,
the short circuit projection of some regulators is to burn out. Given all
these problems and the relative carelessness of kids, I can see why they would
dig through spec sheets and would measure temperature under various
conditions.

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bloopernova
Somewhat off-topic:

I wish I could wave a magic wand and get enough trained teachers and funding
across the world such that kids can learn electronics and programming from a
young age.

Imagine what the computing world would be like if IT familiarity was common?

Back in the day I remember flabbergasting my teachers with the BBC micro
plotting program in... I think it was 2nd year Junior school in the UK (so age
about 8 I think). I put a loop and extra instruction around the example 5
pointed star drawing code such that it made a Spirograph-like pattern/mess on
the screen. Draw x units long, turn 72 degrees, repeat 5 times, at the end
turn a few degrees more and keep going. I didn't become a master programmer, I
didn't write an open source kernel or any award winning apps, but my comfort
and familiarity with computers allowed me to jump in and become a sysadmin. I
wish every child could have that opportunity.

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HoppyHaus
(Anecdotal) I'm currently a high school student who participated in an IT
class and a lightweight coding club. Something that at least is an issue here
is that there simply isn't much of an interest in programming to begin with.
The IT class was canceled after I finished it, due to the majority of people
in that class being auto-assigned, rather than voluntarily joined. Coding club
consisted of only my friends and ~2-3 other people who were only mildly
interested.

Even in the 8th grade, there were opportunities to learn this sort of stuff,
and nobody cared. Again, anecdotal, but still a factor.

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snvzz
Vaguely related, my recommended CPU to learn assembler with is still the
68000, whereas my recommended platform is still the Amiga.

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bonzini
32-bit ARM is a pretty good assembly language. It's more orthogonal than the
68000, which has separate address and data registers, and there are cheap
single board computers that use it. Unfortunately, the Cortex-M series uses
Thumb which is not a good match to learn assembly, so you still need a
bootloader, a kernel etc.

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Newtonip
I cut my teeth on the 68000 (even made my own motherboard) but I must say that
writing assembly on the ARM architecture is pretty agreeable.

The main idiosyncrasy with ARM assembly that bothers me is how immediate
values can only be values that you could obtain with an 8-bit number + 4 bit
rotation. So for anything else I have to use a literal pool somewhere nearby
my code.

Still, I think 32-bit ARM is the best architecture to introduce to first time
assembly students.

If anyone out there wants to learn it, get a $10 Orange Pi and Pyeatt's
"Modern Assembly Language Programming with the ARM Processor" textbook. Hell,
you could just get Qemu with a Debian armhf image if you don't want to buy the
board and search for free ARM assembly tutorials.

