What are your guys views, on the raspberry pi? Tons of kids in my school are like "OMG IT'S LIKE A COMPOOTER YOU CAN PROGRAM YOURSELF LOOK I MADE IT SAY HELLO WORLD IN PYTHON" now don't get me wrong, everyone needs to start somewhere, it's just why with this, what's wrong with just installing linux on your laptop, it's just a slow linux computer. As far as I can tell it's only use is teaching intermediate programmers lower level stuff when they start using the GPIO pins and such.
It's feasible to furnish a whole class of students with a standard machine to learn programming using a Raspberry Pi. It's not always feasible to ask students to buy a laptop computer if they don't have one. With a Raspberry Pi, students can do their development on a school computer then transfer the results to their Pi.
As for possible applications for the Pi, here is a list:
Flawless 1080p playback
Hardware decoding for all the major video & audio formats
5.1 Surround sound with DTS or Dolby Digital using HDMI pass-through
Apple AirPlay support (play straight from your iPhone/iPad to the TV)
Stream content straight from the Internet
A full vehicle diagnostic computer with a USB OBD2 adapter
Digital radio in the car with a USB DVB-T adapter
Have Internet in the car with a USB 3G Dongle
A media player with a 32GB SDHC card and XBMC
Add a relay and turn on and off anything from IP.
Add a USB webcam and monitor from afar.
Add environmental sensors and build your own EMS
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Anonymous2013-05-28 9:01
Back in my day we built our own computers, with wire wrap or a soldering iron. Now get off my lawn!
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Anonymous2013-05-28 9:38
not x86, no thank you
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Anonymous2013-05-28 10:05
This code runs on a Unisys (Burroughs) A-series mainframe. This program has NOT been tested due to the inability to locate the necessary compiler.
// the main program (this is a comment)
BEGIN
FILE F (KIND=REMOTE);
EBCDIC ARRAY E [0:11];
REPLACE E BY "HELLO WORLD!";
WHILE TRUE DO
BEGIN
WRITE (F, *, E);
END;
END.
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Anonymous2013-05-28 10:13
>>11
Every PROGRAM must have an END as its last statement. The END of the program must be punctuated with a period. This is the only place that a period is used to punctuate a Pascal statement.
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Anonymous2013-05-28 23:58
>>8
As for possible applications for the Pi, here is a list:
Flawless binary blob playback
Hardware decoding for all the binary blob formats
5.1 Surround sound with DTS or Dolby Digital using binary blob pass-through
Binary blob support (play straight from your iPhone/iPad to the TV)
Stream binary blobs straight from the Internet
A full binary blob diagnostic computer with a USB OBD2 adapter
Binary blob in the car with a USB DVB-T adapter
Have binary blob in the car with a USB 3G Dongle
A binary blob with a 32GB SDHC card and XBMC
Add a binary blob and turn on and off anything from IP.
Add a USB webcam and Broadcom can monitor you from afar.
Add binary blob sensors and build your own RMS
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Anonymous2013-05-29 0:27
>>13
Open source is for people too stupid to understand machine code.
It's feasible to furnish a whole class of students with a standard machine
Guess what, there already IS a "standard machine". It's called a PC! You can get used hardware for free and people learning programming do NOT need the latest and greatest, 2-3 year old machines are getting thrown out all the time by some wasteful bastards! In fact that's already far faster (P4/Core/i7 level) than they should ever be starting with - a 486 or Pentium is more like it. Encourages them to actually write efficient code.
The RPi is a 100% proprietary smartphone SoC. I'm almost disappointed that someone didn't leak a datasheet yet. In a few years when it goes out of production maybe some people will hack it and get more life out, but otherwise they're just going to end up in landfills just like smartphones, and no one will know any more about how to use them.
A PC isn't like that. You can get documentation on just about any part on them or the architecture freely long after they're obsolete. Parts are standardised and interchangeable and the standards are pretty open too. Some things like GPUs are not documented completely but that's where backwards compatibility comes to the rescue. A GTX 680 will work as a standard VGA card if you want to program it and the docs for IBM VGA are everywhere. BIOS is mostly a blob but you don't need to use it, since the hardware is so well documented.
If you really want ARM take a look at TI OMAP. There is really no "standard ARM architecture", all the peripherals are different on each system.
>>19
The point is to get started on hardware hacking using one machine that's affordable and easy to modify - the Raspberry Pi. It's a system on a board with built in GPIO and USB connections so it's far easier to use it in a hardware hack than your average x86 machine. The students of hardware hacking don't require high performance machines to learn their craft, a cheap and practical device like the Raspi is designed for this very purpose.
While it's true that there is no datasheet now for the Raspi, there are software hackers out there who care about freedom and will take the effort to study the system for the sake of the community. I'll be givinig 15 years for the community to mature its understanding about the Pi internals - consider how long it took the Nouveau team to develop their system.
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Anonymous2013-05-29 12:51
The RPi is a 100% proprietary smartphone SoC.
What part of it is smartphone-like? There's no wireless: 3G, 4G, wifi, etc.; only the more expensive model has any networking at all and that's Ethernet. There's no touchscreen, or any sort of display included. Other than the fact that it's small form factor, though it wouldn't be after adding all the external components needed for a phone, I don't see it.
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Anonymous2013-05-29 14:24
Pi is cheap for everyone but me who lives in a shitty country where a $35 model won't go for less than $75.
I wouldn't care to use an old $25 PIII, but where will I get the GPIOs? That's right, it's better to stay with PICs, AVRs and sub-$5 usb programmers.
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Anonymous2013-05-29 15:55
>>27
Get a really old motherboard with ISA slots. Make your own memory mapped IO card with some 74 series logic to do address decoding to a handful of latches.
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Anonymous2013-05-29 18:43
>>27 I wouldn't care to use an old $25 PIII, but where will I get the GPIOs?
how fast do you need yo'ure GPIOs to go, and how many pins do you need?
>>26 I'll be givinig 15 years for the community to mature its understanding about the Pi internals - consider how long it took the Nouveau team to develop their system.
Unless someone leaks out the datasheet for (at least) the GPU architecture, forget it. Just buy a {beagle,panda,cubie}board or a parallella and be done with it.
>>19 The RPi is a 100% proprietary smartphone SoC.
The Pi SoC was originally designed for some kind of graphics card, which is why it's got such a slow CPU combined with a stupidly powerful GPU.
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Anonymous2013-05-30 1:00
I ate a raspberry pie once. It gave me both constipation and diarrhea. Would not recommend.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 1:10
>>32
You ate the whole pie? Typical fatass glutton American. No wonder why your digestive system is so fucked up.
>>19 A GTX 680 will work as a standard VGA card if you want to program it and the docs for IBM VGA are everywhere. BIOS is mostly a blob but you don't need to use it, since the hardware is so well documented.
I know you know better than this. The only reason things like 8259, 8042, and VGA compatibility modes still exist is because 32 bit Windows 7 and earlier require them. Once the retail pipeline for systems with those OSes is flushed, hardware manufacturers will drop support for the compatibility modes so fast your head will spin. Integration testing all that compatibility gunk every cycle is ungodly expensive, and vendors won't pay if they can get away with not doing it.
>>19
I think standard machine in this context means the whole machine is 100% equal; it's not enough to have a x86 machine with different Windows systems and hardware. Delivering a programming lesson is difficult enough in itself, teachers don't need the effort needed to troubleshoot the differences in computing environment.
>>19
>Guess what, there already IS a "standard machine". It's called a PC! You can get used hardware for free and people learning programming do NOT need the latest and greatest, 2-3 year old machines are getting thrown out all the time by some wasteful bastards! In fact that's already far faster (P4/Core/i7 level) than they should ever be starting with - a 486 or Pentium is more like it. Encourages them to actually write efficient code.
Not sure if you see how you're contradicting yourself here.
The RPi is slow (but can be overclocked etc), and can teach efficient programming, that was one of its purposes. It also uses a ton less power than any i7 machine or P4 machine
>>25
Affordable? Can't beat free. Easy to modify? An SBC where everything is soldered together, compared to a standard desktop PC?
I'll be givinig 15 years for the community to mature its understanding about the Pi internals
Broadcom isn't going to keep producing the '2835 for 15 years so anything they learn won't really have any applicability anymore.
>>26,31
The SoC itself, duh. And who says smartphones can't have powerful GPUs?
>>29
If it leaks whoever did it will be very easily tracked down. Have you looked at the one they did release publicly? Those spelling errors and omissions are intentional. They create a fingerprint that allows them to know who got what. Some of the register addresses might be at different places for the same device across different datasheets. Not saying it won't happen but as Broadcom loves lawyers and the only motivation to do it would be for lulz, I don't see it being that simple.
>>35
Wrong. The "legacy" hardware is there as a fail-safe fallback. Something like a 8259 or 6845 costs basically NOTHING on a modern deep sub-micron process. The testing required is minimal since this stuff isn't new at all - it's well-known, stable and mature.
>>37
Hardware differences don't matter all that much if you're treating the machine like a standard PC.
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Anonymous2013-05-30 3:59
>>41
I don't know about >>3-kunt, but I wasn't trolling. A massive questionable binary blob that must absolutely run before anything else on an undocumented coprocessor sounds like a security threat to me. PC BIOS you could attempt to reverse engineer (and, to a certain degree, even succeed), but this is as impenetrable as your mom's diseased anus.
Now, if they provided some documentation about the GPU or provide an open source option (even lacking video/3d acceleration), things would be very different.
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Anonymous2013-05-30 4:04
>>43
Could you please stop wasting your fucking time on /pork/ and port coreboot to some newer devices (e.g. thinkpads or chromebooks)?
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Anonymous2013-05-30 4:29
>>44
What threat could the Raspi possibly pose without network access?
>>43
Sometimes free isn't cheap. It's not necessarily cheaper to ship school loads of 5kg computer systems around countries rather than 50g computer on a board.
>Easy to modify? An SBC where everything is soldered together, compared to a standard desktop PC?
Modify in this case doesn't mean attaching more RAM or soldering in a co-processor chip. It means hacking the system to form a different device like these http://hackaday.com/category/raspberry-pi-2/
Most PC systems use the ATX form factor for the motherboard which means it's hard to use it in the same manner.
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Anonymous2013-05-30 4:41
>>46 What threat could the Raspi possibly pose without network access?
None, except you can't use it for anything even remotely sensitive. So forget about using it as a dumbed down PC. Forget about using it as a little development/text-editor machine since you can't sign your code since that would require putting your GPG private key on it and that's not a good idea.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 4:47
>>47
What's stopping you to signing your code with a key generated on the Raspi? It is only yourself that's stopping yourself from using multiple keys to identify yourself.
I think the expectations students have of a Raspberry Pi vs a regular PC is an important part of the potential value for teaching.
Kids see a generic PC, get upset that it isn't running Windows, and immediately want to hop onto the internet and start looking at Youtube.
Kids see this weird tiny little thing and have no preconception of what it can and can't do, or how the interface should work. That might be enough to pique their curiosity long enough to start messing around with Lua or something.
Also to the people saying "why not just have them install a compiler on their home or school computer":
1. Those school computers running Windows are insanely locked down.
2. Not everyone owns a computer at home. Some kids' only exposure to the internet is through cell phones.
3. If they do have a computer at home, it's running Windows, which is not exactly a comfortable environment for anyone to learn to program in. They sure as hell won't be allowed to put Linux on the family machine.
4. Thus the need for a cheap computer that the kid (or the school) can put Linux on. Netbooks are cheap, Raspberry Pis are cheaper.
Sure, a good parent would give their kid an old computer running Linux at a young age to screw around with, but not everyone has good parents. Same deal with reading to your kids, which is enormously helpful for their development, but not everyone does for some reason. Same reason why people use their TVs as babysitters.
Jesus, why is the average parent so bad? I have no idea how I would properly handle temper tantrums and whatnot, but these kinds of opportunities for bonding and mental development seem like no-brainers to me.
>>60 Netbooks are cheap
Netbooks are ALMOST COMPLETELY PHASED OUT already and replaced with tablets and the useless chromebookks. Trust me, I went shopping specifically for a Netbook recently and no brick & mortar establishment had a single one.
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Anonymous2013-05-30 20:26
brick & mortar establishment
If by that you mean the nearest Apple store, then yes, you'll never find a netbook there.
You could always try looking for an ultrabook, though.
>>63
No, I mean Fry's, Best Buy, Office Depot/Max, electronics sections in department stores (Walmart/Sam's, K-Mart, Target, et cetera) everywhere BUT the fucking apple store. I would only go into an apple store if I had dynamite strapped to my chest.
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Anonymous2013-05-30 20:54
I would only go into an apple store if I had dynamite strapped to my chest. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALSALALLALALALLAALLAILALAALLAH
KILLKIKESBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
>>35,43
Wrong. The BIOS code that allows legacy emulation modes to work changes with each new generation of chipset. Regressions in compatibility code are incredibly common, and rarely fixed. If you're a hardware vendor, there's little incentive to find or fix bugs that don't impede booting the latest generation of Windows.
Also, no "standard PC" has really existed since the XT was released in 1983. There are scads of undocumented quirks and generational nits (Mode X, the VGA latch flip flop status bit, the ever changing contents of the EBDA) that make bare metal programming PC family machines a real pain.
>>79
It's not "emulation" at all; it's just stuff that's been there since the beginning and not touched. E.g. an 8254 is an 8254 no matter if it's the one in a PC AT or an i7 system, and works exactly the same.
The "undocumented quirks" you're mentioning are no longer undocumented, having been around for so long; FYI the standard VGA has NOT changed even in the latest GPUs, as otherwise the BIOS would have no idea how to even display the initial POST info. You seem to be talking about the time when PCs were a lot less compatible with each other, but that was the pre-Pentium days.
ACPI is another matter altogether, but if you need to interact with that then it's beyond basic PC programming.
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Anonymous2013-05-31 23:32
>>71
buy an ARM niggerboard, a screen (and LVDS adapter, if required), an AA battery compartment, and a high-efficiency 5V down-converter and then kill yourself you fat lazy fuck
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Anonymous2013-06-01 0:00
>>81
wow what a hacker
wat u gonna do
ddos the whitehouse?
>>80
Every modern BIOS does INT10 calls to display POST messages. If you think a modern graphics card can do anything but VGA output at 25/28 MHz without calling the video BIOS, you're in for a surprise. No PC with a digital display can so much as set the video mode without that "binary blob".
And don't count out ACPI either. You can't even tell whether your beloved 8254/8259 are even set up in the old fashion without checking for the damn ACPI tables. I'd say booting the CPU and initializing system bus controllers is pretty basic PC programming. The eternal desire to preserve DOS compatibility isn't helping things here.
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Anonymous2013-06-01 4:37
low-level computer with gpio and shit non RTOS linux
These pigs aren't even trying.
Give me xenomai or give me death. But seriously, give me xenomai out of the box - I never played with real-time programming and don't mind to start.
>>83
Did I say anything about super-VGA functionality (although there's always VESA for that...)?
You can't even tell whether your beloved 8254/8259 are even set up in the old fashion without checking for the damn ACPI tables. [...] The eternal desire to preserve DOS compatibility isn't helping things here.
WTF are you saying? DOS compatibility is precisely one of the reasons why the initial boot environment must be identical to that of a PC AT.
>>85
What I'm saying is that DOS compatibility no longer serves any useful purpose. Powering on in AT compatible mode just means that every modern OS has to jump through extra hoops to get the system into a state that's actually useful.
>>86
BIOS development tools are still almost exclusively DOS-based. There's no need to change what works. Updating the BIOS, various other devices' firmware, and basic hardware testing and recovery are some other uses where DOS is still very much alive.
Powering on in AT compatible mode just means that every modern OS has to jump through extra hoops to get the system into a state that's actually useful.
Those "extra hoops" are, once again, minimal. The PC architecture (and x86) has lasted so long precisely because they've followed this very important principle of backwards compatibility and progressive enhancement. No one wants to buy something that won't work with what they already have, and telling them to just upgrade everything is arrogant and a ridiculous waste of time and other resources. No one wants to relearn everything about the hardware and software, nor rewrite all the documentation. One only has to look at the failure that was Itanium to see this in practice.
Contrast this with the Raspberry Pi: no one except Broadcom really knows how it works, any other SoC is likely to be very different and require completely new software, and I'll be eating my hat if they still make the chip or a compatible version in 10 years. It was designed for planned obsolescence, an evolutionary dead-end.
EFI is downright retarded. It's so complex that manufacturers can't implement it correctly. BIOS isn't trivial either but it's certainly a lot simpler in comparison, and its long evolution means most bugs are either fixed or known already. Funny how the fix for EFI problems is "boot it in BIOS compatibility mode"...
Last comment about the stupidity that is EFI for today... I promise.
Apparently the "list of operating systems to boot" is stored in NVRAM in EFI. I have no problems with this, except for the fact that the BIOS/EFI setup program is one of these entries, and removing or overwriting this entry means you can no longer enter the setup! That such a critical function can be so easily destroyed/disabled shows that not much thought has been put into the design... or maybe too much thought ("the setup program is all gooey and shiny like an OS so let's make it look like one too...")
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Anonymous2013-06-02 12:51
>>91 DO NOT WANT!
Cudder-sama, why do you love spewing ``old /b/'' ``memes'' so much? You once used LE EPIC FAIL /B/RO XDDDDDD too.
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Anonymous2013-06-02 12:54
-Jewish
-nonfree
-enemy of your freedom
Shalom!
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Anonymous2013-06-02 19:03
>>94
Fuck you, it's just a way to vent your anger.
I would love Cudder先生 anus venting as my throbbing hard penis was going inside... > <