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Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

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Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#81

Post by moomin »

JamesAn wrote: post #27
DanBC wrote: post #17

I'm really excited by this project. I think it's a great idea. I very much hope they sell them to anyone, maybe at a slightly higher price to subsidise the others. But there's a tiny [1] hint of regret that modern programming is necessarily abstracted away from the hardware. When people were using the popular home computers of the 1980s they would be able to use some version of BASIC, and then also some machine code…

One of the operating systems that may be ported to the Pi is RISC OS, which includes a reasonably decent implementation of BASIC ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC ) which itself contains a built-in ARM assembler. A student could quickly and easily start writing graphical programs (plotting randomly coloured circles onscreen, for example) or simple games, without needing to download, install and use a compiler.…

Also, if you wanted to learn bare-metal programming, the entire RISC OS Api was defined in terms of assembler. It's not open source, though.

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#82

Post by DanBC »

kennywinker wrote: post #80
srl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_I was not aware it's "easy" to run other OS's on Apple hardware. Knowing Apple, I'm still not sure I believe it._ I run linux (arch now, but once ubuntu) on a MacBook5,4. It's somewhat harder to get set up if you want to dual boot (the dual partitioning scheme is finicky, and although linux doesn't need it, OS X forces you to use it if there's a foreign OS, ugh..). See http://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleMacbook and https:…

I tossed a ubuntu cd in my MacBook Pro, rebooted holding down option, and it booted up just fine. Could it be easier?

One thing that could be easier is booting MacBook Pro from USB stick. A Unetbootin that works on Mac, and builds usb sticks bootable on Macs, would be good.

Or maybe bootcamp could mention Linux.

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#83

Post by dguaraglia »

rosstafarian wrote: post #40
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

Cool. Portable. Cheap. Can run Quake II. But what does that get you? Still need to plug into a monitor, keyboard, mouse. So you can only use it where those things are. For real portability, how about an SD system thumb drive I can plug into any computer, and it boots as my computer. That would be portable. Useful for a student lab, at my Mom's house, in a hotel. Just a thought.

This thing does 1080p through hdmi and has a hardware video decoder. An xmbc port is being worked on for it, i plan on getting a few of these and using them as xbmc server's on my hdtv's. Can't beat it for $25/$35 + a few bucks for a 4 gig memory card

My thoughts, exactly. That's what I have in mind as my first project with these babies. It's the easiest thing to get right the first time around (as it's mostly playing around with software).

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#84

Post by joshu »

beagle3 wrote: post #31
kvermeer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that's suspicious is the $25 price point (the BeagleBoard is $125, the BeagleBone is $90, the Gumstix is $150-$250 depending on configuration). How many products can you name for under $50 (2x the cost of the Raspberry Pi) that approach its specs and capabilities? Also, they're aiming for user-friendliness to the point where it is supposed to be an educational product for young people. These are both really,…

Actually ... Roku has something with similar specs for $50 retail (which means they sell it to retailers at $30 at most). And Apple has something called "AppleTV", which has a little more hardware on it (wifi, power supply, ir remote receiver + remote, 8GB of flash), and sells for $90.

anyone gotten linux on the roku?

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#85

Post by 101000101 »

DanBC wrote: post #82
kennywinker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tossed a ubuntu cd in my MacBook Pro, rebooted holding down option, and it booted up just fine. Could it be easier?

One thing that could be easier is booting MacBook Pro from USB stick. A Unetbootin that works on Mac, and builds usb sticks bootable on Macs, would be good. Or maybe bootcamp could mention Linux.

My preference is to use only the bootloader for the OS I'm booting, as opposed to a "boot manager" that presents a menu of OS's. I avoid using chaining techniques the way something like GRUB does. And I don't use MBR's if I don't have to. Disklabels alone will suffice. So the stick contains only an OS-specific bootloader and the OS, usually just a kernel with embedded ramdisk or a loadable kernel module containing a filesystem and userland. I keep it very simple.

This works well for me with PC's. Would this work with today's x86 Macs?

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#86

Post by winter_blue »

This is quite awesome. I can imagine many great things coming out of this. Such cheap computers, will bring computers (and therefore the internet) within range of many people in developing countries.

One potential problem will be the cost of monitors, which might exceed the cost of the computers itself :-( But hopefully someone can make cheap monitors soon..

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#87

Post by zachbeane »

joshu wrote: post #84
beagle3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually ... Roku has something with similar specs for $50 retail (which means they sell it to retailers at $30 at most). And Apple has something called "AppleTV", which has a little more hardware on it (wifi, power supply, ir remote receiver + remote, 8GB of flash), and sells for $90.

anyone gotten linux on the roku?

It runs Linux, just not a Linux they want you to access.

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#88

Post by JoeAltmaier »

vidarh wrote: post #55
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Photoshop for linux? Mac dev tools? What apps?

Why don't you go look up Linux, that way I don't have to list tens of thousands of applications, including dozens of language implementations. If you want someone to learn software development, or computing in general, Linux is a far better starting point than Windows or OS X.

Yeah, yeah. Lots of open-source half-baked projects with no support and incomplete features. Advertised as "photoshop replacement" or "complete IDE" but turns out, missing critical features, crash right and left, won't work on modern hardware etc etc.

Been down that road, burned more times than I can count. I wish it were true, but I don't fool myself into believing it.

Re: Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC

#89

Post by joshu »

wzdd wrote: post #38
kvermeer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that's suspicious is the $25 price point (the BeagleBoard is $125, the BeagleBone is $90, the Gumstix is $150-$250 depending on configuration). How many products can you name for under $50 (2x the cost of the Raspberry Pi) that approach its specs and capabilities? Also, they're aiming for user-friendliness to the point where it is supposed to be an educational product for young people. These are both really,…

The tplink wr703n is a 400mhz MIPS computer with a USB port, an Ethernet port, and wireless networking which sells for about $20 (on volumerates.com, which is unfortunately down at the moment). It has a completely functional Linux port and is supported by OpenWRT. Not as fast, and fewer peripherals than the Raspberry Pi, but an indication that the $25 price point on the pi is doable, I think.

if that had just a BIT more flash I would be all over that.
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