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A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

bbenchoff.github.io

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Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#81

Post by anthk »

guessbest wrote: post #59

We had something like this in 2001. It was called the Agenda vr3 and it ran a full X session with the FLTK in 16meg of RAM. However, the history of PDA's that run linux is mostly lost since LinuxDevices.com doesn't really exist anymore. I owned several of these including Agenda VR3, Vtech Helio, Zaurus, etc. It was quite a nice system even without wireless unless you count IrDA. It used FTP over RS-232 for installing…

I had a zipitz2 with OpenWRT and some SDL bsaed UI. I played nethack, chatted on IM via bitlbee and some light IRC client... good times.

If people says a 500Mhz and 16MB are not enough to play music, they couldn't be more wrong.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#82

Post by bryanlarsen »

wanderingjew wrote: post #65
bryanlarsen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "screw with" means "block" in this case. But there is one moderately famous blog that does block HN: https://www.jwz.org/

yeah I asked jwz how to do that, but I can't figure out a way to make that work with Github pages.

JWZ appears to use Apache, so he probably does something like http://www.htaccess-guide.com/deny-visitors-by-referrer/

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#83

Post by addaon »

jsheard wrote: post #79
undecisive wrote: post #25

> I’m changing the title of this page just to screw with mods on the orange website Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about? I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)

Advanced HN mod troll: write a dozen slightly different titles and pick a random one on page load

Ars Technica basically does this (with two headlines), since the Conde Nast acquisition. Drives me nuts, and makes a significant portion of the post-article discussion incomprehensible.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#84

Post by Inhibit »

undecisive wrote: post #25

> I’m changing the title of this page just to screw with mods on the orange website Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about? I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)

As the practical build here shows you simply need 15$ and one capable engineer. To be fair you'll also need something to tool a case out of, be it FDM or extractive machining.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#86

Post by londons_explore »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #74
nine_k wrote: post #7

This is nice. This is a simple, straightforward design, and a reasonably convenient form factor. Two biggest limitations are RAM and wireless interfaces, or rather lack thereof. This thing has less RAM than my router (admittedly a $70 box), and has neither WiFi nor BT. It does not seem to have many GPIO pins, too. With the amount of RAM installed, it's mostly a handheld terminal, and maybe a handheld console with emu…

Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. After all Linux used to run on 486, BSD ran on 386.

ESP32 is a custom CPU architecture... But they recently released an ESP32 varient with a RISC-V core. Still don't think it has an MMU though, which linux requires.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#87

Post by cwt137 »

sokoloff wrote: post #62
undecisive wrote: post #25

> I’m changing the title of this page just to screw with mods on the orange website Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about? I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)

> I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? A Raspberry Pi Zero?

Raspberry Pi Foundation does the "minimum order of 1000" and passes the savings on to you. Try and buy all the individual components of a RPi Zero and see how much it costs. It is way more than $15.

P.S. The RPi Zero does not come with a display and keyboard like the computer in this article does. So, we are talking about two different types of computers.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#88

Post by guessbest »

anthk wrote: post #81
guessbest wrote: post #59

We had something like this in 2001. It was called the Agenda vr3 and it ran a full X session with the FLTK in 16meg of RAM. However, the history of PDA's that run linux is mostly lost since LinuxDevices.com doesn't really exist anymore. I owned several of these including Agenda VR3, Vtech Helio, Zaurus, etc. It was quite a nice system even without wireless unless you count IrDA. It used FTP over RS-232 for installing…

I had a zipitz2 with OpenWRT and some SDL bsaed UI. I played nethack, chatted on IM via bitlbee and some light IRC client... good times. If people says a 500Mhz and 16MB are not enough to play music, they couldn't be more wrong.

Not only that but these were older processors which in 2003 and before, it was a SoC in name only. They didn't put 30 to 60 cores on these embedded processors until the mid-2000's.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#89

Post by zozbot234 »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #74
nine_k wrote: post #7

This is nice. This is a simple, straightforward design, and a reasonably convenient form factor. Two biggest limitations are RAM and wireless interfaces, or rather lack thereof. This thing has less RAM than my router (admittedly a $70 box), and has neither WiFi nor BT. It does not seem to have many GPIO pins, too. With the amount of RAM installed, it's mostly a handheld terminal, and maybe a handheld console with emu…

Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. After all Linux used to run on 486, BSD ran on 386.

ESP32 is a microcontroller with tiny amounts of RAM and flash storage (smaller than any 386 machine). It's not going to run anything close to a "real" OS. You'd want to do the opposite: use a machine like OP's for near bare-metal programming, where the only things it's running are a minimal kernel and a custom init binary with your actual, single-purpose app. That way you make the best use of a limited amount of RAM.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#90

Post by jrockway »

For those interested in getting something going off the shelf:

Keyboard Featherwing: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4818

Linux-capable Feather: https://www.crowdsupply.com/groboards/giant-board

Add a lithium polymer battery of your choosing to compute on the go. (Also possible to add WiFi or SMS with a Featherwing for people that are interested in that. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4264 etc.)

OK, it's not really off the shelf. No doubt many hours involving pulling out your hair to set up the device tree are involved before you can do anything fun.

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