Eben Upton Remembers The Years Before the First Raspberry Pi (techrepublic.com) 106
Tech Republic re-visits the story of the earliest attempts to build the Raspberry Pi, and the dramatic launch of a quest "to rekindle the curiosity about computing in a generation immersed in technology but indifferent to how it worked."
[T]he dominant computers -- games consoles and later tablets and smartphones -- no longer offered an invitation to create, but rather to consume. Eben Upton recalls a bonfire party in 2007 where an 11-year-old boy told him he wanted to be an electrical engineer, and his disappointment at realizing the boy didn't have access to a computer he could program on. "I said, 'Oh, what computer have you got?'. He said, 'I've got a Nintendo Wii'. And there was just that awful feeling about there being a kid who was excited, a kid who was showing concrete interest in our profession, and who didn't have access to a programmable computer, a computer of any sort. He just had a games console."
At this time Upton was working as a system-on-a-chip architect at chip designer Broadcom, and realized he had the skills to try to halt this drift away from computers that encouraged users to code.
Upton describes the Raspberry Pi as "a very conscious attempt" to bring back the easily programmable home computers that he remembered as a child in the 1980s -- and he was gratified at its success. "Even early on you started to see those pictures of kids lying on the living room floor, looking up at the TV with Raspberry Pi plugged into it, the same way we used to."
It was named "Pi" because it booted into a version of Python, and Raspberry because "There's a lot of fruit-named computer companies, and the 'blowing a raspberry' thing was also deliberate."
It's gone on to become the world's third best-selling general-purpose computer.
At this time Upton was working as a system-on-a-chip architect at chip designer Broadcom, and realized he had the skills to try to halt this drift away from computers that encouraged users to code.
Upton describes the Raspberry Pi as "a very conscious attempt" to bring back the easily programmable home computers that he remembered as a child in the 1980s -- and he was gratified at its success. "Even early on you started to see those pictures of kids lying on the living room floor, looking up at the TV with Raspberry Pi plugged into it, the same way we used to."
It was named "Pi" because it booted into a version of Python, and Raspberry because "There's a lot of fruit-named computer companies, and the 'blowing a raspberry' thing was also deliberate."
It's gone on to become the world's third best-selling general-purpose computer.
GPIOs are Wimpy (Score:3)
Re:GPIOs are Wimpy (Score:4, Informative)
but when there's current issues--even driving optocouplers, it takes the fun away from it.
That is what a 74LS244 is for. If you want more than just a logical output, use a driver.
Adruinos are hearty.
You are comparing apples and raspberries. Arduinos are dedicated embedded devices. They aren't general purpose computers and don't have HDMI ports, browsers, or Python interpreters. RPs do.
Re: GPIOs are Wimpy (Score:1)
74ls244? At 3.3V?
Re: (Score:2)
74ls244? At 3.3V?
The 74LS244 is powered at 5V as it must be. Then its inputs are driven from a GPIO line. Low voltage is the same for both the R-Pi and the LS-TTL chip; they are in perfect agreement of that, High voltage thresholds of LS-TTL (2V) are compatible with the High voltage outputs of the 3.3V CMOS outputs from the Raspberry Pi.
The GPIO output does not have any problems driving the 0.2 mA LOW input current, nor the 0.02 mA HIGH input current required by the 74LS244 input. So a direct connection here is good to go
Re: GPIOs are Wimpy (Score:2)
Do people still *use* "LS" chips? I thought HC & HCT were the default families used by most hobbyists now.
Re: (Score:2)
Do people still *use* "LS" chips?
I use LS because I bought a 5 pound "grab bag" of salvaged chips for $10 when WeirdStuff went out of business, and they are "good enough" for hobby projects.
I thought HC & HCT were the default families used by most hobbyists now.
The "default" is what is on the shelf. HC/HCT is what you get if you have money to burn and are willing to wait a week for DigiKey to deliver.
Re: (Score:2)
There is nothing wrong with LS. HCT is not in all cases better than LS.
Re: GPIOs are Wimpy (Score:2)
Are "LS" the ones widely sold by Radio Shack back in the early 80s, or were those L/C/{other}-series? I just know that HC/HCT chips seem to be capable of surviving things that used to EASILY destroy chips ~35 years ago. I remember destroying chips all the time back then, but never seem to have that problem anymore despite occasionally connecting voltages backwards, hitting chips with unregulated 6v instead of carefully-regulated 5v, static electricity, sourcing/sinking too much current, etc. It seems like w
Re: (Score:2)
Arduinos are dedicated embedded devices. They aren't general purpose computers and don't have HDMI ports, browsers, or Python interpreters. RPs do.
That's irrelevant to the argument. The GPIOs are supposed to be a selling point. But if you can't hardly use them, they're not much of one.
Re: (Score:2)
the real problem is that the io latency/bandwidth/determinability sucks.
that's why the atmels were/are so popular for 3d printers, cnc machines and lots of other things.
the raspberry had a niche market and it found it quite well though, however programmability etc whatever is not what drove that niche market, even if it works for marketing, as you could do all of the same programming and whatever on pretty much any sbc.
except that some sbc's like beaglebone black etc are hell of a better choice for some(mos
Re: (Score:1)
The RPi is generally pretty badly engineered and has a really stupid choice of SoC. This is one of the effects.
Not much of a homecomputer (Score:4, Interesting)
Calling it a "home computer" always bothered me a little, as while the Raspberry Pi has it's uses, it really doesn't look or feel anything like the home computer of yesterday. You don't really have much low level hardware access on the thing outside of the GPIOs (which were not even a goal of the initial design), it doesn't instantly boot, it doesn't give you an instant programming environment like BASIC did and it runs painfully slow compared to a regular old PC. So it's really just a regular old Linux running on slow hardware and not a very stable one at that (e.g. hot plugging USB devices crashes the device).
For learning hardware I find Arduino's far more useful and for learning software I much rather have a real PC than using a slow and bugged RaspberryPi. Of course when you already know hardware and software well, you can take a RaspberryPi and build a TV box or a emulator out of it, but as a learning device the RaspberryPi always felt very ill suited to me.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There are better choices on the market now though, that didn't exist before the Raspberry Pi or the Arduino. Many of which in fact only exist now because competition validated the demand for such devices.
Mind you, most of them still aren't as moddable as an early Commodore but some of them are actually decent from a performance standpoint now days.
Re: Not much of a homecomputer (Score:1)
Can you give me some examples please?
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much any of those cheap Arm bases boards perform better.
Re: Not much of a homecomputer (Score:1)
I'd like a concrete example of a board that competes with the Pi on price, form and intended use (boot to a Linux based desktop)
Re: Not much of a homecomputer (Score:1)
Odroid C2
Orange Pi.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget, it is very instructional to do the porting of Linux yourself. There are other boards running Linux out of the box (kinda boring though), but I'm just suggesting an alternative for people who don't mind doing hard stuff now and then and actually learning something.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice article on Ken Shirriff's blog on the Beaglebone Black: http://www.righto.com/2016/08/pru-tips-understanding-beaglebones.html [righto.com]
These remind me a bit of the SPUs on the Playstation 2. Lots of real-time bang for the buck, although not necessarily helpful for n00bs who are just starting to get into the SoC scene.
Re: (Score:2)
These remind me a bit of the SPUs on the Playstation 2.
Make that Playstation 3...
Re: (Score:2)
These remind me a bit of the SPUs on the Playstation 2.
Make that Playstation 3...
Better make those SPEs while you're at it.
Re: (Score:1)
Someone below mentioned rock64 [pine64.org]. I'm seconding that one. Actually anything from pine64.org seems to be a good deal.
Re: (Score:2)
I always felt that Arduino's and Raspberry Pis were dumbing down everything. They are not like the old days of home computing where you'd figure out the assembler or how the hardware worked and stuff like that, instead they main difference between those two products and the loads of other similar processor evaluation boards is that the Arduino and Pi are marketed as easy to use for non-programmers.
Now sure, you can dump the Arduino hand-holding framework and program on the bare metal, but at that point why
Re: (Score:1)
If hot plugging USB devices is crashing your PI, then put a better power supply on it. Your PI is crashing cause the power supply cannot supply enough power for the initial draw of power when the usb device is plugged in and the voltage rails sag.
I never have problems with my PIs, but i also use good quality usb power supplies that can supply at min 2amp
Re: (Score:3)
boot speed has nothing to do with feeling like a home computer. Tell me more about built-in hardware access on apples, commodore, atari, or TRS-anything, because every one of them had various kinds of limitations including fucked up serial/parallel ports, unbuffered I/O, needed software debouncing on switches, lacked sane code elements for I/O, etc.
Python is inches away. Scrounging up keyboards or mice or HDMI screens is trivial. And WTF on 'painfully slow'? Forty years later it's still deep in my skull
Re: (Score:1)
"while the Raspberry Pi has it's uses"
So does the apostrophe.
That wasn't one of them.
Re:Not much of a homecomputer (Score:4, Interesting)
"it doesn't instantly boot, it doesn't give you an instant programming environment like BASIC did"
it just runs a regular linux, you can hack it so that it boots up an c64 emulator that will throw you into basic, boots in 2 seconds.
if you don't want to hack something quick together, there are specific raspi distro's available that turn it into some kind of retro computer, the most known is probably amibian, which transforms it into an Amiga.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be confusing a "home computer" and "a home computer from 1983".
IMO It's all about the price point (Score:5, Interesting)
And it always has been.
As teenagers in the 70s my brother and I drooled over the S100 Z-80-based computers but couldn't come up with the minimum $2000 or so to play
The early Apple ][s in 1977 at around $1200 or so started to be affordable, and were built to tinker with.
The Commodore C64 in the 1980s at under $200 was a huge deal.
Nobody was going to risk blowing up a $3000 Mac tinkering with it
At $30, the rPi takes us back to Commodore C64 times. If you brick it, no big deal. I'm not at all surprised it's as popular as it is.
Re: (Score:3)
It's really simple actually: do experimental stuff with the device however you want, because $30 isn't a large amount of money wasted if you destroy it by accident especially versus $200, $1200 or even $3000.
The best alternative to Intel machines (Score:2, Informative)
One of the nice things about the Raspberry Pi is that it's immune to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities because it uses the ARM Cortex-A53 processor.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/why-raspberry-pi-isnt-vulnerable-to-spectre-or-meltdown/ [raspberrypi.org]
Of course, it's not the only company producing computers based on the ARM Cortex-A53. Pine64 [pine64.org] is another example. But these sorts of computers seem to be the best option for secure computing that's current available.
Re: (Score:2)
I want to just get a Cortex-M3 board, if I had the time. I want to program on the metal not just load up Linux to put some stupid scripting language on top.
Try playing around with simulators maybe - you can run a PDP-11 running a 1979 version of Unix on your PC.
Geek plaything (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the secret to the success of the Pi has been the fact that its an appealing platform for messing around with all kinds of things.
I don't think it would have taken off as well if it had only been useful as a kids toy or educational learning tool.
But by creating a generally useful cheap linux capable machine, they created a whole market segment with enough demand to drive the product forward. The original goals are almost a side effect at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
The original intent was to me made as cheaply as possible so students could afford them. Before the $35 Pi you couldn't find single board computers for under $100 as they were for industrial and embedded applications.
Re: (Score:2)
Not for a student, it's not. We're also talking about a nearly 3:1 price difference. I don't call that negligible either.
Re: (Score:3)
But $35 vs. $100 is not a meaningful comparison; a minimal RPi kit costs about $70 (with enclosure, power supply, and an sd card that can handle lots of small files), and that's still without keyboard, mouse, and hdmi cable.
How much would one of those $100 SBCs cost including periphrals?
Minimal cost (Score:3)
But $35 vs. $100 is not a meaningful comparison; a minimal RPi kit costs about $70
Not necessarily. This device is specially intended for geeks, and wanna be geeks. /.ers and their kids)
(i.e.: for
People with usually lots of junk laying around.
(with enclosure,
Cool to have one, but not necessary. If you're careful enough (try to avoid shorting pins or whatever) you could begin using your Pi without one.
And then any non conductive box (including random cardboad and plastic box) could serve as a good enough make-shift case in most situations.
(Been there, done that with my first Pi)
power supply,
The most common power suppl
Re: (Score:2)
You can today though. Some of those industrial and embedded evaluation boards now let you debug them using the same USB you power it up with. No more buying $700 JTAG debuggers and scrounging for a $30 wall wart power adapter.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The RaPi really does only one thing well: It's cheap enough to have an extra computer for things to which you wouldn't dedicate a real machine. It has too little RAM to be a desktop, it is to slow to even be a good media player, it uses too much power for most embedded applications and it's very finicky about the power supply, you need a separate controller for GPIO if the timing is critical, analog sound output is atrocious, networking and storage are limited by the USB speed, It is a shame that the commun
It's a product of its time (Score:3)
Back at the turn of the century ( man that still sounds weird) we had mini ITX , ya they were small, but not as small as a pi, and required a small pc power supply, now we have something smaller, faster, powered by a wallwart that does what most tinkerers want do, for 10 quid ! (/for a zero) fuck me they were packaging the zero in magazines!! And some people still find a way to bitch about them :(
Re: It's a product of its time (Score:2)
How does âoeturn of the millenniumâ sound?
People drive cars (Score:1)
People drive cars and don't know how the engine works. It's a shame but that is how it is.
But at least with the Raspberry Pi, there is a low cost option to learn what is under the computing bonnet.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not do the hardware in the UK too?
Why support a Communist government in China when people in the UK can get new computer jobs?
Re: (Score:2)
Production line jobs in Wales and around the UK was a huge political promise back in the 1980's.
To get into UK education the idea was to set up a new UK computer design and "production".
That need in the UK to create advanced low level code, software, the OS, some design of the needed chip sets and production never went away generations after the many 1980's attempts to gro
Re: (Score:2)
At least this noname Chinese factory managed to not screw up with first production batch
Sure they did, they made an unauthorised substitution of the Ethernet port (fitting a plain jack instead of a jack with integrated magnetics) that meant the first production batch had to be re-worked.
Re: (Score:2)
STFU, AmiMoJo.
When the Welsh start putting plastic in baby milk you might have a point.
Re: (Score:2)
" And it wasn't hot glued shut with industrial epoxy."
The power supply sure was... One of my first memories of electronics in high school was building a monster (in physical size) power supply for my 64. A metal case with two 9VAC transformers from VIC-20 power supplies. One was rectified and regulated to 5V with a big TO-3 3 amp regulator on a heat sink. That thing still works today!
The Visible Computer: 6502 (Score:3)
Here's some info from the manual:
"The Visible Computer: 6502 Machine Language Teaching System combines
this manual with a 6502 simulator program to provide a systematic way
to learn machine language programming on Apple II computers.
The Visible Computer is a program that teaches programming. The title
is a takeoff on those transparent plastic models of men that once (and
maybe still do) populated sixth grade classrooms. Like The Visible
Man, The Visible Computer lets you see into a place not normally
accessible to the eye. Places like chest cavities and accumulators,
address latches and pancrei. Unlike The Visible Man, TVC requires no
assembly, no careful painting, and no smelly airplane glue."
TVC was a powerful combination of text, graphics and a kind of animation that showed things like registers changing as a program was executed. You could slow or even step thru a program and watch all elements moving around. At its fastest, the emulated program was still very slow in the early Apple computer, but the important thing was seeing it in action and really understanding what's under the hood. Simple to look at, elegant in execution. A version was available for Commodore 64, both by Charles Anderson.
This concept could be done today for modern computers if someone cared enough about coding education. You can see the 1982 manual here: https://archive.org/details/Th... [archive.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Don't think so. Unless they've started spelling it as pancreus.
Re: (Score:2)
What it boots into depends on what you put on the SD card.
Soekris much? (Score:2)
Anyone here remember Soekris boards? There have always been single board computers and test setups. Price may have varied from time to time, but they've pretty much always been available.
PDAs and phones kids could program? (Score:1)
Psion PDAs had a built-in programming language, with which anyone, even kids, could write any app, from tiny little tools they wanted, to full-scale retail applications.
In 1998 Psion's PDA platform turned into Symbian, the Phone OS of choice for most of the 2000's - BUT the muppets from Nokia who ran Symbian decided at once to drop the programming language.
There could, should have been an easy-to-use programming language built as standard into every single phone, in every adult and child's pocket. (And litt
RPi (Score:3)
Certainly not the first nor the most powerful of its kind, but among the most popular. I didn't think much about this until I saw Raspberry Pi 3's sitting on the shelf at Target a few weeks ago.
I still have my first gen that I used for many years as an SSH tunnel, Mumble server and LAMP development server. I could just leave it running 24/7 at home and it barely sips any power.
Nowadays I have it mounted to a clipboard with a breakout and some breadboards to try to encourage interest in programming and electronics for my children... back to the roots of what these things were originally conceived to be.
Re: (Score:1)
Honestly... that's the most trivial and childish possible use, probably the only one that matters to you, agreed. In the world of things that matter to ADULTS however, https://pi-hole.net/ is actually pretty useful. YMMV, child.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Honestly... that's the most trivial and childish possible use, probably the only one that matters to you, agreed. In the world of things that matter to ADULTS however
I'd hate to live your miserable life.
Re: (Score:1)
There's only one use of a Raspberry Pi that matters...
https://www.thegeekpub.com/450... [thegeekpub.com]
Agreed, and that dude has several fantastic cabinets. I could only dream of owning his tools.
My other favorite rapi project is the magic mirror people are doing. I want one but again not tools!