Right now, I'm online using a computer that's about 2 by 3 inches and runs on a USB port. I've got a full 1080P screen, a web browesr and a multitasking operating system (Linux). The board is plugged into my monitor, a USB keyboard and USB mouse are plugged into the board (as is the network cable). The board costs under $30.00.
This is what I'm running right now:
...and it uses about 3 watts of power. Absolutely incredible.
It's not quite as fast as my main PC, but for a tiny board... wow.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
Link?
If we refuse to rule ourselves with reason, then we shall be ruled by our passions.
He, Who Will Not Reason, Is a Bigot; He, Who Cannot, Is a Fool; and He, Who Dares Not, Is a Slave. -Sir William Drummond
There are some things I will not abide within my sight!
ooh a rasberrri pi
so its good?
Gunsnet member since 2002
Salt Water Cowboy - Dolphin 38
Stuff (computers) have come a long way since the IMB desk top XT model.
Nice. I've been looking at Pi on Adafruit. I still compare everything to the Apple II and this is light years beyond that.
Got any special projects going?
CHOOT UM!
Neat but don't tablets have the same abilities yet have their own monitor and kb/mouse?
"And how we burned in the camps later thinking, what would things have been like, if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain, whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?"
Ask and ye shall receive: LINKOriginally Posted by Oswald Bastable
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
Yeah, but the cool thing is it's a complete computer for under $30 that can run on a few tiny batteries or a USB cable.
The WHOLE computer (CPU, memory, video "card", USB ports, disk access, etc..) is ALL in one chip about 1/2 inch square (and that's the outside of the package. The silicon chip inside can't be more than a 3/8 inch square piece... as thick as 2 sheets of paper).
That's what amazes me... the tip of a teaspoon's worth of beach sand, a little magic and you have a small shard of purple glass that is a complete computer that uses less power than a flashlight.
It's gotta be alien technology!
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
im slow to accept change. when everyone else has moved on to something else and its old tech, then ill look at the pi.
oh the good ol' days! i had a Pine Com PC XT 8088 with 64K RAM running 4.7MHz and a 1200 baud internal modem. 10MB hard drive, 5 1/4 floppy and Hercules monochrome graphics. what more could a guy ask for back then? it was a big step up from the Commie 64!
I'm the one that's gonna die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.Jimi Hendrix
NRA Benefactor Member & 03 FFL
Very cool...and they have 5 megapixel cameras that can be used with them...looks awesome for an interlinked security system in a very concealable package...
If we refuse to rule ourselves with reason, then we shall be ruled by our passions.
He, Who Will Not Reason, Is a Bigot; He, Who Cannot, Is a Fool; and He, Who Dares Not, Is a Slave. -Sir William Drummond
There are some things I will not abide within my sight!
The Raspberry Pi is more of a controller or a platform to build some kind of dedicated device (like, for example, what Ozzie said, a small, concealable Internet spy camera).
Although you can actually use this as a "home PC" and browse the web and such, it's not meant for that purpose. Plus, it's WAY too slow to use as a "home PC".
Speed wise, using it as a "home PC", it feels like an old 486 machine (or maybe one of the first Pentiums).
Not something you would want on a desktop today.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
My VERY first computer was a home made (wire-wrapped) 8008 with 256 bytes (yes, BYTES) of ram, a video display generator and 16 toggle switches (8 for address, 8 for data) plus a few pushbuttons (enter and reset).
After building it with my buddy, we sat in his basement while his GF fed us iced tea and sandwiches. We worked on it all day, only stopping to flush out the iced tea.
After THREE DAYS of looking up processor opcodes, calculating branch offsets, learning how the video display chip worked and writing the code for it by hand (and entering it byte by byte using the toggle switches), we finally got it to work. After three days and tens of failed attempts, we finally flipped a coin to see who would get to press "reset" and see if it worked.
I won the toss, pressed reset, the 9 inch B&W TV connected to it jumped and a bright white letter "A" appeared on the upper left corner of the screen.
We both yelled "YEAH!!!!!!" I jumped up with my fists above my head and rammed my knuckles into the ceiling (the floor joists of the first floor). Ouch.
We literally had to code like this:
Code we wanted:
MOV AL,65
MOV DX,8000h
MOV DX,AL
Which in machine code was something like this (don't remember the actual codes now):
0xB4,0x41,0xB8,0x00,0x80,0xC4,0xB2
Then we had to convert it into binary:
Address 0: off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off
Data 0: on, off, on, on, off, on, off, off
(press the enter button)
This was for just the FIRST byte (the 0xB4). We did this for each byte and had to get the binary pattern right, as well as remembering to increment the address switches each time. And there was a LOT more than just the few things I showed above.
It got so that I thought in binary. How many fingers do I have? 00001010 fingers!
Of course, the program was stored in the 256 bytes of ram, so if we turned it off, all the data went away and we had to start from scratch.
No keyboard, no mouse, no icons not even an error beep. If there was a mistake, it just sat there dead and did nothing.
Many years later I "graduated" to a Cromemco Z-80, then a Commodore PET (the expensive one with 64K of memory!), then a Radio Shack Color Computer II and III, then finally a 386SX PC.
That's why I get so annoyed at people who click an icon and then whine "it doesn't work - can you help me?". Geez try doing it the way WE did it back in the day!
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
I read/heard some time ago that a modern basic calculator is more powerful than the room-sized computers from decades ago. I don't know if that's true, but either way, it's amazing how fast electronic technology evolves.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but only when you're shoving it through your enemy's throat.
USMC Active Duty, 2004-2008
Gunsnet Member since January 2003
i respectfully disagree. raspberry pi is much more than that, as you demonstrated by connecting a keyboard and monitor to it and connect to the internet.
if i were to do something as simple as an internet camera, i could just as easily do that with an arduino.
like i said, i stay a step behind in tech. when the arduino hit the market, it renewed my interest in microcontrollers. but fuck learning something new, so i channeled my renewed interest into the more vaguely familiar platforms like stamp, avr, and pic. it was not until recently, when the pi started coming out, that i have ventured into arduino. im more into the hardware side of it instead of the software side, another reason the pi is less appealing to me.
thought you might like this:
HOT NEWS: The Raspberry Pi 2 is out!
5 Things You Need To Know About RPi 2:
1. Raspberry Pi 2 has a faster processor -- a Quadcore ARMv7.
2. Double the RAM (up to 1GB)
3. Users will see 6x performance over the existing Raspberry Pi B+.
4. The price will be the same as the price of the B+: $35 exclusive of taxes.
5. It's backward compatible with the original Raspberry Pi.
"We’ve worked very hard to make sure everything’s backwards-compatible with the original Raspberry Pi."
-- Liz Upton, Head of Communications, Raspberry Pi Foundation
just saw this as well...
Microsoft To Offer Windows 10 Free To Raspberry Pi Devs
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/win...ntent=FaceBook
Damn. Windows is up to version 10 now? I'm still sporting Vista - set in classic XP mode - on my 7-year-old Gateway laptop.
That's what I have. A Model B+, version 1.2 (your pic shows a v1.1).
(edit to add): Here's my board... in fact I took this pic while I was typing the original post in this thread...
(click pic for larger)
Last edited by Krupski; 02-02-2015 at 06:23 PM.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
That will never work. People who use things like Arduino, Raspberry Pi and other open source hardware have been using Linux for years and have no love for Microsoft's security hole ridden, bloated junk.
A few may grab a copy of WinBlows just for the hell of it if it's free, but Microsoft made their bed a LONG time ago and us "hacker types" feel pain merely THINKING about Microsoft let alone USING their shit.
Only the "unwashed masses" use Windows... mostly because they don't know any better...
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
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