Raspberry PC? Like the type you'd find in a second hand store?

Eric The Pilot: Raspberry PC? Like the type you'd find in a second hand store?

No, the type they sell at Safeway.

I looked there and did everything but watch the video and I don't know what it is.

Eric The Pilot: Raspberry PC? Like the type you'd find in a second hand store?

It'll keep you warm enough that you won't need much more.

Happy.

Just the other day, I was telling my wife that this is probably the worst time in history to be interested in personal computers. When I was a kid you could assemble one from a kit or, if you weren't handy with a soldering iron, at the very least understand everything that was going on.

At some point in my lifetime, personal computers will be sophisticated enough that will be able to diagnose and fix their own configuration and driver problems as readily as my media player fixes up the metadata on my MP3s (and probably using many of the same concepts).

But today? Today you have to make do with a machine that is too complex for almost anybody but the most dedicated technician to know what is going on. You're running on an operating system with hopelessly antiquated ideas of process, memory protection, file security, and a driver model almost guaranteed to fail. Nothing is properly isolated, and everything constantly treads on everything else. You have to endure a filesystem designed for administrators not users (seriously? ordinary user tasks still require you to know about your physical disk configuration?) and, if you're unlucky enough to be using Windows, all of this is made even more obscure by an incomplete attempt to hide the reality under a thin and easily-punctured veneer.

So I for one am really looking forward to getting my hands on a system that I can actually grok in my head at one time.

TripSixes: I looked there and did everything but watch the video and I don't know what it is.

Did you read the first entry in the FAQ?

What's a Raspberry Pi?

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It's a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

and the first one to sell (#10) is already at 1,750 british pounds with more than 5 days left in the auction... yikes. but it's all going to their charity to promote science and computers in schools..

I can think of a dozen uses I would personally like to be able to do that this thing could do.

Too bad it will never get anywhere. Sorry, if you have been farking with it since 2006 and haven't got something that can be produced (and IS produced) by now you lack the skills to follow through.

hmmm...
raspberry pi or the imsai kit...

Can you surf porn with it? If not, it's DOA

Do they come with 10 year old load balancers?

256MB of system memory? In 2012?

RAM chips are selling at retail for under $10/GB. A PC selling at $50 would be no less affordable than one at $35, and would be orders of magnitude more useful.

poot_rootbeer: 256MB of system memory? In 2012?

RAM chips are selling at retail for under $10/GB. A PC selling at $50 would be no less affordable than one at $35, and would be orders of magnitude more useful.

Actually, it'd be $15 less affordable. If their goal is for education, then the cheaper the better. A school isn't going to order a certain quantity of them, they're going to order a certain dollar amount of them.

TripSixes: I looked there and did everything but watch the video and I don't know what it is.


The video's not much help. The guy's speaking in some weird unintelligible language.

Let see. I could buy 100 $25 units and donate them to a third world school, orphanage, or some such, OR I could use that $2500 on my new Ivy Bridge build in a few months.... Decisions, decisions. I suppose I could go with a hard drive instead of two 512 GB SSDs. Nah, fark those little foreign bastards, they'd probably just end up hackers.

/$2500 isn't even a hard core build

This actually looks pretty cool. It does have USB 2.0 ports and is running Linux, so there's plenty of opportunity for expansion of storage and addition of other devices. Something in that price range would also be great for electronics and science hobbyists.

You could build a dedicated powerful controller for small projects. Add a GPS and some i2c/TWI/SPI accelerometers and gyro's and you'd have a strong UAV platform. You can make custom process controllers for less than commercially available process controllers. ( I paid $50 just for a nice used thermal control unit for a CuCl laser project I have yet to finish, as an example. ) It's certainly powerful enough to be the computer for a CNC machine or a MakerBot or what have you, removing the need for a full size PC clogging up useful work space. 1080p/30fps with H.264 codec built in, that's not bad either.

With more and more platforms coming out like this it makes it a lot easier and affordable for people to get involved with building customized equipment with real high quality visual displays and interfaces. While you can do this with micro-controllers, something like this is much more accessible to everyone who's interested in doing those kind of things who don't have uC programming/wiring experience.

Might buy one. Had a 80816 computer that bolted onto the side of a disk drive ... a long time ago.

picturescrazy: If their goal is for education, then the cheaper the better.

If their goal is education, I don't think they're going to accomplish their goal.

From what I've seen, this project has done even less logistical and pedagogical planning for educational deployment than the OLPC project. Distributing very cheap computers with Python runtimes is only a small part of the necessary infrastructure; there needs to be an understanding of how educational bureaucracies work in the target markets, how technology should be incorporated in the curriculum, a realistic plan for getting customers the technical support they will inevitably require.

And, in the specific example of Raspberry Pi, a TCO analysis where the micro-PCs are still more affordable than netbooks or 7" tablets once the costs of USB peripherals, HDMI-capable displays, and other non-included necessities are factored in.

Realistically, this is a project by adult hardware hackers, for adult hardware hackers. For every order from a school, there are going to be at least fifty from Make Magazine subscriber-types who are looking for an embeddable computer with more power than an Arduino.

I wonder how one of these would fare if it were set up as a Fark server. Does it come in a beer-proof case or something?

jafiwam: I can think of a dozen uses I would personally like to be able to do that this thing could do.

Too bad it will never get anywhere. Sorry, if you have been farking with it since 2006 and haven't got something that can be produced (and IS produced) by now you lack the skills to follow through.

Well, not to be snarky, but THIS. Five years? You could have learned VHDL and designed your own CPU, ethernet MAC and USB controller in an FPGA by now.

Of course, an issue here is dealing with Broadcom. They probably went through three generations of parts trying to get an NDA in place.

I know I want one......

Just see how well it interfaces with my hdmi 52 inch plasma.

poot_rootbeer: 256MB of system memory? In 2012?

RAM chips are selling at retail for under $10/GB. A PC selling at $50 would be no less affordable than one at $35, and would be orders of magnitude more useful.

Except that the RaspberryPi uses a SoC (system on a chip), so the price of RAM sticks are not applicable... the memory is on the same wafer of silicon as the CPU.

WegianWarrior:
Except that the RaspberryPi uses a SoC (system on a chip), so the price of RAM sticks are not applicable... the memory is on the same wafer of silicon as the CPU.

Doesn't necessarily plug any holes - a lot of components with on-die memory has some sort of provision for external RAM, although I don't use Broadcom SOC parts and I'm not familiar with this one.

s/has/have

Broadcom is notoriously painful to get data sheets and development info from - we used to have OEM access to their ethernet line back when they were into that but if it's not a part you're actively designing with you won't see diddly on the design level data. It might be what slowed down this thing. I'd have used someone else's part.

WegianWarrior: Except that the RaspberryPi uses a SoC (system on a chip), so the price of RAM sticks are not applicable... the memory is on the same wafer of silicon as the CPU.

Well, that was a bad design decision for an ultra-low-cost PC, then, wasn't it?

And do you know why the decision to base the design on a Broadcom SoC was made? Because Eben Upton, executive director of the non-profit "Raspberry Pi Foundation", is an employee of Broadcom (look him up on LinkedIn).

The cynic in me suggests the whole project is a way for Broadcom to increase their public profile and develop a reputation for supporting charity.

And maybe instigate a price war. In 1975, MOS introduced the 6502 CPU at a $25 price point, and forced Intel and Motorola to cut prices on their CPUs by 60%, literally overnight. If Broadcom's Videocore IV is demonstrated to be powerful enough for general-purpose computing, also at that $25 price point, will Nvidia still be able to command the same prices from OEMs for Tegra SoC components?