

Raspberry Pi $25 PC goes into alpha production - adeelarshad82
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-25-pc-goes-into-alpha-production-20110728/?hy=2

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wccrawford
"The planend hardware included a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB RAM, OpenGL ES
2.0, and 1080p output."

Is it just me, or does that sound like it might make a decent gaming machine,
if you don't get too greedy about graphics?

If that's the case, the consoles are in trouble!

~~~
politician
Graphics or simulation complexity -- I don't think it'd run Dwarf Fortress
very well, for example.

~~~
shaggyfrog
In all fairness, by the colony's fourth year (given enough animals), multi-GHz
machines with GBs of memory start groaning.

~~~
politician
I need to convince pg that an open source Dwarf Fortress implementation is
worth funding. Either that, or figure out how to build a cryptocurrency around
it so that all of those Bitcoin miners can help simulate my fortress when its
deflationary period starts.

~~~
sitkack
Just pay them bitcoins to simulate your dwarves and your fortresses.

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ChuckMcM
I was wondering when this might come to fruition. Enthusiasts are often
willing to put up with a tremendous amount of inconvienience. I remind folks
of this that the Altair 8800 (and IMSAI) were, in their base models, something
you toggled in your machine code into directly. PDP-8's and PDP-11's had core
but if you had corrupted memory you had to toggle in the boot loader to get
them restarted.

On a whim I wrote a quick 'virtual machine' (which is to say an emulator) for
the PDP-11 on an Arduino 328. It runs faster than a 'real' PDP-11/40 (on which
it was modelled).

My thought was that you could pull a copy of 2.9BSD or V6 UNIX from the PUPS
archive and build an equivalent of the same system Dennis and Ken developed C
on pretty easily. Add a terminal and you're good to go. However, I recognize
that if you're going to the trouble to do it you should really take advantage
of modern gear.

I'm glad to see that these guys are taking that approach, Linux might be a bit
heavyweight (you could do a much simpler and cheaper DOS like OS) but it does
have the advantage of lots of available software.

~~~
retube
Standard modern distros are fairly heavy, agreed. But a custom distro can be
super-lightweight and still include most features you'd expect from a desktop
OS. In 2003 I was running desktop redhat on an old IBM thinkpad with just 32MB
of RAM. So 128 should be plenty!

And here's a list of out-of-the-box light-weight distros:
[http://www.tuxradar.com/content/whats-best-lightweight-
linux...](http://www.tuxradar.com/content/whats-best-lightweight-linux-distro)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Great link, thanks!

One of the more interesting questions (and the Rasberry Pi creator is
investing in) is 'learning about computers.' Which I truly support. (Local
high school computer class was about how to use Microsoft Office, bleh!) Its
one of the reasons have felt that Arduino's and their spawn are doing a great
service of getting people interested in understanding what the computer is
doing at a more complex level, before they open up their first kernel file and
gaze upon the complexity therein.

~~~
retube
No probs. And of course roll your own with Linux From Scratch:
<http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/> A great way to really learn Linux too :)

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Swannie
Original article here:

<http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=28>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2815724>

~~~
cormullion
Thanks for link. Original unreadable on iPad...

~~~
__mark
There is a gear on the lower left that will give you the desktop version, but
I must say this kind of behaviour by web publishers putting tablets into such
a weird format is annoying.

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savrajsingh
This is cheaper than the Arduino Uno from Sparkfun. Arduinos are running code
in a loop -- this brings the benefits of an operating system to the world of
hobbyist projects. I think it's a game changer if they can deliver on it.

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thasmin
I'd be interested in what this guy can do with a $100 price point.

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pbhjpbhj
Wonder how feasible it would be to have a similar device that you could
cluster by simply direct connection, modular computing anyone?

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lancefisher
It would be really cool if they offered this in an arduino form factor with
i/o pins.

~~~
Swannie
There will be a JTAG port, so there may/should be the option of some very
basic I/O, but not to the arduino level as far as I can tell.

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jcromartie
Now THIS is a modern Commodore 64. Really, really, really awesome. It's
exactly what I've been hoping for for a while... USB in/out, HDMI out, and all
in an unbelievably cheap package.

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ramidarigaz
I can't wait to buy one! The $35 option looks great!

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chubot
This is cool, but how is it different/better than a plug computer (honest
question)? It looks smaller and cheaper. But not fundamentally different.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_computer>

One difference seems to be that it is started by a nonprofit vs. a commercial
venture.

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ori_b
It's smaller and cheaper. Why isn't that enough?

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gvb
It also has a video output, making it a computer that can be used directly
(especially the $35 version with ethernet and 2x USB). The "*plug" computers
are more geared to non-interactive use (file sharing / backup / etc).

The Raspberry Pi is more comparable to a BeagleBoard
<http://beagleboard.org/>.

~~~
ori_b
Well, there's the Guruplug Display, which also has a video output.

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fharper1961
Isn't the absence of wifi hardware pretty crippling for a small portable
device like this?

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ukdm
Surely you can add that yourself with a USB dongle?

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iuguy
I'd definitely buy a couple, just to use them for streaming video around the
house. Plug one into the screen, use a WiFi dongle or the 10/100 port and with
a bit of code you have a streaming video receiver.

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pbhjpbhj
It's a £15 (GBP) device. Does that mean it'll be $25 shipped??

Technology/Gadgets are usually quite a lot more in the UK than the simple
dollar conversion.

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sunsu
this combo bluetooth + wifi usb adapter would work well with it:
[http://www.amazon.com/Combo-Adapter-
Bluetooth-802-11g-Antenn...](http://www.amazon.com/Combo-Adapter-
Bluetooth-802-11g-Antenna/dp/B002KHF2AE)

~~~
noonespecial
That one is unavailable. I'd suggest this one.
[http://www.amazon.com/External-Antenna-
Wireless-802-11G-Netw...](http://www.amazon.com/External-Antenna-
Wireless-802-11G-Network/dp/B0037G2BMY/ref=pd_cp_e_3)

Its only $8.40, it has an external antenna, and a ralink chipset that I've had
much success using on all kinds of linux distros. (Its internal antenna cousin
is _less_ than $8)

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fleitz
I wonder how the $35 version would work as a web server with an ARM11 & 256 MB
of ram it might make a cost effective web front end.

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epochwolf
128mb is enough to run nginx with static files.

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natural219
I'm so excited about this. I want to get one for my 8-year-old nephew -- does
anyone know of any good simple tutorials / manuals for linux for somebody just
starting to program?

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drivebyacct2
I'd love if this thing could be used as a boot jump drive in a fully featured
computer as well. My dream scenario is having my work house computer with my
file server, music and video streamer with a netbook thin client and a
portable way to securely connect to it from anywhere. If I can connect to any
monitor and keyboard and be remoted to my machine, or even better, boot into a
thin client on a fully fledged computer and have _my_ environment with me all
the time... that'd be great.

I'm basically all of the way there, if I could only get an NX client built for
my Cr-48. I think that things like this Raspberry Pi and Motorola's
smartphone-dock-powered-netbook are going to be rather big soon.

