Raspberry Pi: the Upcoming $25 1080p-Capable ARM-Based Hobby Computer

[Completely Bonkers]

Yes, in theory the C64 had a (slightly) better processor than the Acorn 6502. But the coding of the Acorn OS , "BBC Basic", the floating point routines, quality of the display output, inbuilt assembler, and the hardware expandability of the BBC Micro meant it was a far superior product. The only "win" the C64 had was the "sprite generator" within the VPU (what we now call GPU).

I actually think that the BBC Basic ROM, a full Basic Interpreter and 6502 Assembler, built within 16K, was one of the best "codings" of all time. How so much was squeezed into so little space, and how routines were designed to be re-usable by other functions. When the 65C02 came out, which added just 7 new instructions: PHX PHY PLX PLY INC A DEC A and STZ, Acorn developed Basic 4 that fitted an even better expanded BASIC, increased floating point accuracy by one digit, and even speeded up the interpreter, and all into the same 16K space. It is one of the "Wonders of the Programming World". It's up there with DOOM, HTML, Google Earth/Maps, etc.

Cool, nice and cheap. I might go ahead with my car pc project after all. I had considered a Via Nano board but prices are through the roof.

If you are happy to use ARM rather than x86 in the car, consider something like this with display included.

http://www.watterott.com/de/Boards-Kits/ARM/ARM11

Actually that whole website is fascinating... build your own robots etc. Website is a mix of english and german.

Err. Look what I just found on that website. This is what The W1zzard wears at parties! LED cufflinks! LOL http://www.watterott.com/de/iCufflinks-v10

 

[horik]

117,17 €,cheap...

 

[JrRacinFan]

I want a 256MB model, rather stinks there isn't a pre-order option available.

 

[Easy Rhino]

does the board conform to any industry standard? i would obviously like to put this into a case...

 

[sneekypeet]

with its size it just needs one screw....I was thinking of something like a passport (HDD) shell.

Also in the first image in the OP, where is the SD card slot? I sort of got the feeling that they would have an SD slot on the PCB.

 

[Easy Rhino]

strange. this schematic looks different.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Raspi-Model-AB-Mono-1.png

 

[qubit]

does the board conform to any industry standard? i would obviously like to put this into a case...

Well, as far as I can see, the only standards supported is the video playback & HDMI, Ethernet and that it runs Linux.

with its size it just needs one screw....I was thinking of something like a passport (HDD) shell.

Also in the first image in the OP, where is the SD card slot? I sort of got the feeling that they would have an SD slot on the PCB.

It's a picture of the prototype, so that could be why.

 

[sneekypeet]

I was just wondering if it was on the back, maybe blocking installation, only reason it really peaked my interest in its location. I sort of figured it was a pre-release in the image I asked about.

 

[qubit]

Yes, it could well be on the back. One could trawl through some of the many links in the wiki perhaps, where photos of the back might exist.

Ya know, this thing is so cheap, with the $35 one costing around £20 in UK money, that getting one is almost a no-brainer. I'm certainly gonna be keeping my eye on this. This was a really great find by Easy.

 

[HalfAHertz]

does the board conform to any industry standard? i would obviously like to put this into a case...

I don't think so but I read in one of the interviews that it's exactly the same size as a credit card.

 

[Kreij]

With a little ingenuity you could rig this thing up to sit in your pocket and supply a heads-up display on your glasses so you could surf TPU at work without your boss knowing.

Not that I condone something like that. (snort)

 

[qubit]

With a little ingenuity you could rig this thing up to sit in your pocket and supply a heads-up display on your glasses so you could surf TPU at work without your boss knowing.

Not that I condone something like that. (snort)

This would actually be handy for me, as I'm always watching over my shoulder to make sure the boss doesn't catch me...

 

[Wile E]

Cool, nice and cheap. I might go ahead with my car pc project after all. I had considered a Via Nano board but prices are through the roof.

Exactly what I thought of immediately. If you could get an android build on it, it would be great.

 

[1freedude]

I saw this Wednesday morning. I didn't think enough of it to share. I'm in the FXI camp.

 

[newtekie1]

Hmmm... I hope they port DD-WRT to it!

 

[RejZoR]

Hm, no memory card or other storage medium? Where do you install OS ? Or does it come with onboard chip with Android on it or something?

 

[newtekie1]

Hm, no memory card or other storage medium? Where do you install OS ? Or does it come with onboard chip with Android on it or something?

There is an SD card slot. What is shown in the picture in this news article is actually an Alpha board, it does have an SD card slot on it as well, but it is on the bottom under the USB ports, so it is impossible to see in the picture, but it is there. The final design has an SD card slot as well.

 

[NC37]

Ohh, possible release date! BTW, if you're interested there's an old thread about it here.

Do wantwantwant noew!

@C Bonkers: When was that released?

Oh, and here we can see it playing Quake 3!

From the look at that FPS counter, it runs it about as good as PCs did back then. Still, not bad. I'd like to see a UT99 timedemo. Bit more CPU bound.

 

[Fx]

Complain all you want the low specs, but at this price it's pretty damn cool. Could make a very cheap alternative to an HTPC for those on a tight budget.

bingo

 

[Peter1986C]

For those who think that the performance of that ARM chip is crap:

And now for that video. The short video below, originally found in an interesting geek.com article, compares a 1.6 GHz dual core Atom CPU in a netbook against a development board using a Cortex-A9 ARM CPU, configured as a dual core system, running at a mere 500 MHz. Yes, just 500 MHz. The results? Even with the netbook having a graphics accelerator and the ARM dev system not having one, the ARM was only slightly slower than the Atom! Of course, it consumed a lot less power than the Atom CPU too, which is critical. Note that this video dates from Jan 2010 and there's newer versions of both products now. However, it's still valid today, as the performance balance hasn't changed much between the two processor architectures. This is because the differences are inherent to them (x86 is hot and inefficient, basically) so it doesn’t really matter how much each one is tweaked, the performance ratios will stay roughly the same.

 

[Disparia]

Thanks for confirmation.

 

[Wile E]

For those who think that the performance of that ARM chip is crap:

It is crap. But it's good enough for what I would use it for, which is essentially a music player.

 

[newtekie1]

For those who think that the performance of that ARM chip is crap:

So showing that it is noticeably slower than a POS Atom at even the basic task of loading webpages, is proof that ARM isn't crap? No, ARM is crap for anything a real computer would be used for, but for applications where utterly shit performance doesn't matter, it works.

It is kind of like saying riding your bike to work gets you there so it isn't a crap method of travel. And the proof is in the fact that riding your bike is slower than riding a MoPed to work, but not that much slower...

 

[Easy Rhino]

power : performance the ARM wins hands down. power : performance is where corporations are moving as the cost of energy skyrockets. we have hit a point where you dont need much computing power to run a browser and email. all of that processing can be done in the cloud. there is a sea change ahead and if you don't get on board you will drown.

 

[Wile E]

power : performance the ARM wins hands down. power : performance is where corporations are moving as the cost of energy skyrockets. we have hit a point where you dont need much computing power to run a browser and email. all of that processing can be done in the cloud. there is a sea change ahead and if you don't get on board you will drown.

My job uses Atoms and cloud.

It sucks total shit. Horribly slow and actually hurts production. ARM would only exasperate the issue.

It may be the future, but that future isn't viable for a long time to come.