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My Business Card Runs Linux

thirtythreeforty.net

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Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#321

Post by kragen »

paganel wrote: post #251
kragen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are flagging your comments because they aren't innumerate enough to be taken in by your silly argument that this project is somehow relevant to our current environmental catastrophe.

> is somehow relevant to our current environmental catastrophe. And you think our "current environmental catastrophe" is caused by big giant anti-environmental alien monsters that do their anti-environment stuff against the wishes of all the good people in here? No, they're caused by you and me and this guy who thinks that a paper-only business card that can self-decompose if left in the elements in a matter of month…

No, it is caused by ignorance and foolishness.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#324

Post by shakermakr »

tarruda wrote: post #238
jbuzbee wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were living large! My first Linux computer was a 20Mhz 80386SX with a 40MB hard drive partitioned half for Windows 3.0 and half for Linux (SLS) and swap. It had a whopping 4MB of RAM and I also compiled my own kernel making sure to trim down features as much as possible. It was magic seeing X11 come up for the first time just like the big-bucks Sun boxes!

I was a kid when my father first acquired a similar computer. We ran Windows 3.0 and my father configured a boot entry for running Doom or Ultima 7, which required so much memory that it wasn't possible to run Windows, only DOS. I remember feeling a bit envious about my neighbor having the more powerful 486, which could run Doom much faster than in our PC

Made me laugh about “Dad configured a boot entry”...I remember the hours with my Dad trying to stuff whatever device drivers into that 640K via Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. Got the CD-ROM running but damn if sound now doesn’t work. Those were the days trying to get Tie Fighter in my case to work.

Worse part was my Dad in his wisdom bought a family PC without a Pentium, but a Cyrix P166. Had zero floating point processing. Ran like a damn dog on any 3D game.

Any Brits out there might remember Time Computers. On every back page of any newspaper ever selling PoS computers with whatever subpar hardware they could cram into a big beige box ;-)

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#325

Post by xenospn »

cubano wrote: post #307
xenospn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to brag but I got a 4.77MHz 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday :) It had a whopping 256KB of RAM, a monochrome display (later upgraded to a 4 color CGA that blew my mind), and two (yes, TWO) Floppy drives.

My dad got one of those for us both to use...what was truly "whopping" about it was its price... If I remember right it was almost $3k...but that included that blazing fast 300bps Hayes modem for wide-area networking. And my mind was truly blown when we replaced the 2nd floppy with a more-memory-then-we-will-EVER-need 20MB hard drive...what could we do with all those bits??

Same! We got 640kb of ram and a mouse! The HDD didn’t arrive until we got a 286, tho.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#326

Post by snagglegaggle »

nl wrote: post #17
bsaul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the post, i was under the impression that the author really did some shopping for major components and assembled everything into a fun shape. Obviously i know nothing about electronic board design, so could you explain which extraordinary skill this required ? EDIT : ok, i missed the part where he actually designed the whole board, obviously..

Embedded systems engineers are (usually) paid a lot less than full stack engineers. Edit: I seem to be getting (a lot!) of downvotes on this. I thought it was quite well known, but apparently not. Full Stack Engineer salary: $93,598 [1] Embedded Software Engineer salary: $74,758[2] [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Full_Stack_Engineer... [2] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Embedded_Engineer/S...

This is true, had to turn down various jobs in big cities due to very low pay. Guys looked like I'd just slapped them when I'd named my price (previously done fullstack).

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#328

Post by paxys »

jokoon wrote: post #287
neurostimulant wrote: post #67

To me it's truly mind-bogging that a tiny $1.42 chip contains almost everything needed to boot Linux: a 500mhz cpu, 32MB SDRAM, 2D GPU, SD/MMC support, and USB controller, all packaged inside a 10mm x 10mm chip? It makes me really want to get into embedded development.

I wish raspberrypi could release something similar. Their product are still too powerful for my taste.

Raspberry Pi's goal is computer science and coding education. They aren't going to make anything that isn't beginner friendly, and can't at least run a Linux GUI, have basic networking, support standard peripherals etc.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#330

Post by YZF »

znpy wrote: post #314
cubano wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just flipped a bank of 16 switches by hand with vacuum tube gates and core memory...punch cards are for sissies!

oh kids! i used to crank the wheel by hand on my analytical engine that my hacker friends and me built after there was a leak of babbage's plans! he never knew! you kids and you petabytes of ram! back in my day.... /s (i'm looking forward for these comments to be commented on a certain website i'm not supposed to name)

you kids. We calculated with charcoal on the cave's wall while the adults were out hunting for wooly mammoths...

ZX81: Z80/1KB RAM... more recently though PIC12 (C501 IIRC) ...

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