Raspberry Pi and the MagPi

ChuckT · **Joined:** Wed May 20, 2009 1:06 pm **Posts:** 491

Seeing that most of us can't get a Rasberry Pi, should you be interested in an alternative? It is painful to watch something I can't have.

ODROID-X: The $129 Quad-core Alternative to Raspberry Pi
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ODROID-X- ... 39078.html

It sounds like four times the fun of a Raspberry Pi. So what is four times Pi?

Here is Hardkernal's website:
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/ ... &tab_idx=3

BigEd · **Posted:** Sat Jul 14, 2012 4:59 pm

Any idea about GPIO? (Edit: yes, there is the usual GPIO it seems)

Another possibly interesting machine, but again with limited peripherals, is the VTech Innotab - not much CPU or RAM, no networking, but battery powered and with a touchscreen.
http://hackaday.com/2012/05/24/putting- ... h-innotab/
http://hackaday.com/2012/07/11/turning- ... ux-tablet/
About £56

Dajgoro · **Posted:** Sat Jul 14, 2012 6:37 pm

The thing that makes the pi a unique device it it's cost, and the huge community supporting it.
That is why i would like to have the pi. Until then the 6502 will have to do

.

GARTHWILSON · **Posted:** Sat Jul 14, 2012 7:17 pm

The 6502 will be supported long after the pi no longer is though.

BigEd · **Posted:** Sat Jul 14, 2012 7:25 pm

They say that they've already sold half a million systems. I think that's fantastic, even if those systems are only in use for a year or two, that's a lot of learning.

ChuckT · **Joined:** Wed May 20, 2009 1:06 pm **Posts:** 491

Quote:

The Efika MX Smarttop is a cloud computer with the following specifications:

Freescale i.MX515 (ARM Cortex-A8 800MHz)
3D Graphics Processing Unit
WXGA display support (HDMI)

Multi-format High-Definition hardware video decoder

512MB RAM
8GB Internal SSD
10/100Mbit/s Ethernet
802.11 b/g/n WiFi
SDHC card reader
2x USB 2.0 ports
Audio jacks for headset
Built-in speaker
Size: 160x115x20mm
Weight: 250 grams

http://www.genesi-tech.com/products/efika

BigDumbDinosaur · **Posted:** Sun Jul 15, 2012 2:11 am

GARTHWILSON wrote:

The 6502 will be supported long after the pi no longer is though.

Hear, hear!

Nightmaretony · **Posted:** Sun Jul 15, 2012 2:18 pm

If you want quick support, get into Arduino. I definitely question the Pi 20 years from now. SMD chips I personally abhor for llong range project work since you can always make a sub board to fit a DIP socket if you need to extend the life of a project. A friend showed me once a robotics controller formerly used by a giant animatronics company. they cannot use the board as it uses a flat pack 80188 processor and can no longer find it.

(personally, am staying away from the raspberry, not enough time. pinball mind is my platform of choice. much more primitive but it does my bidding

Dajgoro · **Posted:** Sun Jul 15, 2012 8:48 pm

Nightmaretony wrote:

personally, am staying away from the raspberry, not enough time. pinball mind is my platform of choice. much more primitive but it does my bidding

I can't remember when i saw a pinball machine for the last time, it must have been in the 90'...

The pi should be excellent for robotics, the problem with the 6502 is the speed, i can't stream video properly if i want a decent robot...

BigDumbDinosaur · **Posted:** Mon Jul 16, 2012 1:05 am

Dajgoro wrote:

The pi should be excellent for robotics, the problem with the 6502 is the speed, i can't stream video properly if i want a decent robot...

I wouldn't be so quick to condemn the 6502 over speed. The NMOS processor, yes, but not the CMOS versions, which can run at high clock speeds and achieve commensurate throughput. Also, a 6502 core in an FPGA can be clocked many times faster than the discrete chips (up to 200 MHz, in some cases).

Quote:

The Raspberry Pi is gaining popularity fast, and there is also the MagPi magazine...It seems that the 80' computer programming era just got a reboot with a bit of the 80' nostalgia.

I think this is worth following and commenting, so i started this topic...

I personally would like to see this topic brought to a close and future topics of its type discouraged.

6502.org is about the 65xx family, not microcontrollers powered by a brand-A microprocessor. The Raspberry Pi is as related to the 6502 as the AMD Opteron is to the Commodore 64's 6510. About all they have in common is they use electricity and go about their work using ones and zeros. That doesn't qualify the Raspberry Pi (or the Opteron, for that matter) for anything other than peripheral discussion here.

The primary reason I visit this forum is its narrow focus on the 65xx family and hardware with which it can be used. I see nothing about the Raspberry Pi that fits that description. There's no 65xx anything in it and as far as I can tell, it has a relatively opaque architecture that discourages hardware experimentation, unless said hardware plugs into the Pi's PC-like interfaces (e.g., USB and Ethernet). Just how does the Pi fit into the theme of a scratch-built 65xx computer and/or 65xx-powered systems, and why are we going on and on here about yet another off-the-shelf device? As Garth pointed out and history will probably bear out, the 65xx family will continue to be a going product well after the Raspberry Pi has been relegated to last year's toys.

Now, I know at least one denizen here is going to get on my case about this post, castigating me for "being discouraging," but such is life. If I want to get immersed in Raspberry Pi stuff (I don't) I can hit their website for details. Or I can search for information about it on-line (Ixquick returns nearly a half million pages on "Raspberry Pi"). How about if we avoid unnecessary dilution of the 6502 forum with content totally unrelated to the 65xx family?

Dr Jefyll · **Posted:** Mon Jul 16, 2012 1:13 am

Quote:

How about if we avoid unnecessary dilution of the 6502 forum with content totally unrelated to the 65xx family?

Hmmm... I see your point, BDD, and I don't disagree. But (speaking for myself) I'm glad to have some variety sprinkled into this forum. I will readily admit it's possible to carry such a thing too far. But the way things stand right now, I like the mix just fine. I wouldn't want an extreme amount of dilution, as you say, but sometimes I hear about things here that I might not've become aware of otherwise. Pi is an example of that.

cheers,

Jeff

GARTHWILSON · **Posted:** Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:13 am

The appropriateness of the pi discussion on a 65-family forum lies in what we can learn from it to apply to the 65-family projects and ideas. This should also be the limit.

As for speed, yes, the fastest 6502 cores are running at over 200MHz. It would be great if we can eventually make the all-32-bit 65Org32 upgrade to the '816 a reality, and get it into the 100MHz area, which would do some things as fast as a multi-GHz 6502. Video however, which requires a lot of computing power, has only a few applications in embedded systems, while the rest really have no use for video. But even the low-speed 6502's just got a huge boost in math processing speed in the huge 16-bit math look-up tables.

BigEd · **Posted:** Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:20 am

Hi BDD

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Now, I know at least one denizen here is going to get on my case about this post, castigating me for "being discouraging," but such is life.

Actually, no... I was going to post last night, because I felt the thread was descending into a tit-for-tat bashing of alternate topics of interest. But given recent discussions, I thought I should stay out of it. My input was going to be on the lines that internet discussions proceed well when we talk about the things we like (hypothetically, the Z80) and we are at our worst when we start to compare them with something which someone else holds dear (my CPU is better than your CPU). People type things which they wouldn't say face-to-face, and in any case text doesn't carry tone or humour very well.

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Dajgoro wrote:

The pi should be excellent for robotics, the problem with the 6502 is the speed, i can't stream video properly if i want a decent robot...

I wouldn't be so quick to condemn the 6502 over speed.

Indeed, that was an unhelpful comparison which was only going to lead to trouble. Especially on a 6502 forum.

Quote:

The Raspberry Pi ... I think this is worth following and commenting, so i started this topic...

I personally would like to see this topic brought to a close and future topics of its type discouraged.

6502.org is about the 65xx family, not microcontrollers powered by a brand-A microprocessor.

It is, but it's very easy to stay out of a thread which isn't of personal interest. We are not overwhelmed with such threads. I'm in favour of including ARM projects just as we include 6800 projects, so long as they are hobbyist in flavour. ARM is not the dreaded x86.

Edit to add: there's a very active set of forums at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/ and we shouldn't dream of duplicating that. Much better help will be found over there, having brought the Pi to the attention of people over here. The Pi is just fractionally too high-level a system for this forum, unless we're discussing some 6502-related project. IMHO. Soldering some ARM Soc to a board is more the kind of thing I was thinking of. Using an ARM in a 6502 system or to emulate a 6502 would of course be on-topic. But it's a subtle thing and I don't see that we need to be especially strict.

Cheers
Ed

BigEd · **Posted:** Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:47 am

I see Raspberry Pi general orders are now open with no limit on per-customer quantity:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1588
Delivery in 4-6 weeks, or by end September, according to the two suppliers respectively. Manufacture is at 4000 daily.

BigDumbDinosaur · **Posted:** Mon Jul 16, 2012 4:11 pm

Dr Jefyll wrote:

Hmmm... I see your point, BDD, and I don't disagree. But (speaking for myself) I'm glad to have some variety sprinkled into this forum. I will readily admit it's possible to carry such a thing too far. But the way things stand right now, I like the mix just fine. I wouldn't want an extreme amount of dilution, as you say, but sometimes I hear about things here that I might not've become aware of otherwise. Pi is an example of that.

I agree: some variety is good. However, I also feel that it should somehow fit into the 6502 theme. Otherwise, 6502.org will eventually degenerate into a talkfest about anything and everything. Mentioning products like the Pi is fine, but devoting page after page of discussion to it defeats the purpose of having a forum devoted to a particular microprocessor family.

Now, if someone was able to demonstrate how the Pi can be integrated with, say, a 65C816, I'd be reading all about it.

GARTHWILSON wrote:

The appropriateness of the pi discussion on a 65-family forum lies in what we can learn from it to apply to the 65-family projects and ideas. This should also be the limit.

My point exactly! I don't see where much can be learned from the Pi that is directly applicable to 65xx hardware. As I earlier said, much of the Pi's architecture is opaque and is reminiscent of the early Macintoshes.

Quote:

Video however, which requires a lot of computing power, has only a few applications in embedded systems, while the rest really have no use for video.

And if video is required, there are relatively low-cost solutions that can be readily integrated with a 65xx unit, and are able to off-load the most computationally-intensive work, which is calculating which bit in the video bitmap is to be set/cleared and how to go about doing so.

Quote:

But even the low-speed 6502's just got a huge boost in math processing speed in the huge 16-bit math look-up tables.

Imagine what that would do for you with a 200 MHz 6502-in-an-FPGA.

When I hear something to the effect that the 65xx isn't "fast enough," my response is define what you mean by "fast enough." Anyone who is familiar with the Commodore 64 demo scene knows that "fast enough" is a relative term. Oftentimes, not being "fast enough" has more to do with the software than the hardware. The most powerful MPU in the world will perform like a slug if forced to run sloppy, inefficient code.

BigEd wrote:

My input was going to be on the lines that internet discussions proceed well when we talk about the things we like (hypothetically, the Z80) and we are at our worst when we start to compare them with something which someone else holds dear (my CPU is better than your CPU). People type things which they wouldn't say face-to-face, and in any case text doesn't carry tone or humour very well.

As you note, processor comparisons can escalate to the level of jihad, so they are best limited to helping someone make a choice. Given that this is the 6502 forum, it's only natural to promote the 65xx family as the next best thing to really hot sex. However, most of us would also temper that promotion with the caveat that all processors have strengths and weaknesses. Discussion of another processor should therefore be limited to drawing out those strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the 6502. Point in comparison: relative interrupt latency between the 65C816 and its contemporaries, such as the Motorola 68K. Also, discussion of a non-6502 processor would be relevant in the context of helping someone familiar with, say, a Z80, make the transition to the 65xx family.

Quote:

It is, but it's very easy to stay out of a thread which isn't of personal interest. We are not overwhelmed with such threads. I'm in favour of including ARM projects just as we include 6800 projects, so long as they are hobbyist in flavour. ARM is not the dreaded x86.

Except that this is supposed to be a forum about the 65xx family, so the ARM not being an x86 isn't, in my mind, justification for posting about it. Open-ended discussions about the ARM and 6800 represent forum dilution. Both devices have plenty of other places on the web in which one can post about their projects.

Now, if an ARM or 6800 is attached to a 65xx system then, yes, we should encourage posting about it, especially the low-level technical details. I have non-65xx hardware in my POC unit (e.g., the DUART) and would be happy to post the details about how I got that hardware to work with the 65C816. However, I would not start a topic devoted strictly to those devices outside of a 65xx context, as doing so represents a form of forum dilution.

Quote:

The Pi is just fractionally too high-level a system for this forum, unless we're discussing some 6502-related project. IMHO. Soldering some ARM Soc to a board is more the kind of thing I was thinking of. Using an ARM in a 6502 system or to emulate a 6502 would of course be on-topic. But it's a subtle thing and I don't see that we need to be especially strict.

Using an ARM to emulate a 65xx would be interesting and could be a topic in the emulation and simulation area of the forum, although it wouldn't be of any particular interest to me—my interest is in using the genuine 65xx. Reading about the hardware that would be required to interface the ARM to the 65xx bus would be interesting and might promote the use of the ARM for a useful function in a 65xx system, such as playing the role of a DMA controller. However, a discussion of the ARM in the context of being an ARM is, I think, outside of the scope of 6502.org and doesn't belong here. It's not a matter of being strict, only one of maintaining forum topical relevancy.

Raspberry Pi and the MagPi

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