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You seriously think this will ever be a threat to Microsoft? On what planet?

This system reminds me of the COSMAC ELF of the early 1970s, but with a an ethernet port and an HDMI connection for the TV. Those who think this is revolutionary need to expand their knowledge of computer history to at least a point prior to Saint Linus came down from the Mount with his Linux Kernel...

yes but we had to hand assemble the code and toggle in the bit pattern one byte at a time!
Actually I have a COSMAC ELF collecting dust in the garage.

Too bad the CDP1802's architect, Joe Weisbecker, didn't live to see his microprocessor become the first in interstellar space. Coincidentally, this month also marks the 30th anniversary of his Popular Electronics article on the COSMAC ELF; Nuts and Volts magazine is covering it.

The COSMAC ELF still has its fans. There's a history site (links to many other sites besides), an active discussion group, even an updated kit (the trick is finding an 1802!).

There are numerous emulators around as well: Unix/Linux/Windows, OS X, Palm... even an emulator in Javascript!

Great little computers to learn on...

The COSMAC ELF still has its fans. There's a history site (links to many other sites besides), an active discussion group, even an updated kit (the trick is finding an 1802!).

There are numerous emulators around as well: Unix/Linux/Windows, OS X, Palm... even an emulator in Javascript!

Great little computers to learn on...

This was my first computer too, built in 1978. A strange little CPU, the RCA 1802. It is probably what led to my eventual writing ground-test code for satellites that used them, and my general career using microcontrollers. You could battery power an ELF project, which made robots kind of neat for high-school projects. The 1802 still has a following, too: http://www.cosmacelf.com/

But in seriousness, I'm worried about the use of 'like' in such a fashion in colloquial speech. It emits a lack of confidence of the writer, afraid to commit opinions, facts or asertation.

There is a large Cosmac Elf Community that would die for this... although most of the fun is finding the original parts and building the computer yourself.
-m

The COSMAC ELF website has a memorial up. On the the message board someone pointed out that at an impact velocity of 108,000 miles per hour, this makes the old 1802 quite a bit faster than a Pentium.

Just because software environments have become more complex doesn't mean that the opportunity for learning in a simpler environment has vanished. Those old 8-bit micros might not be good for teaching 3D rendering, but they're still good for teaching microprocessor fundamentals. There's no need to go antique shopping on eBay, either: emulators for these simple machines can be found all over the web. How about an Altair, an IMSAI, or a COSMAC ELF for your Windows system? Or emulating an Apple II on OS X? I've even written an ELF emulator for Palm handhelds, and secured permission to publish Tom Pittman's "A Short Course in Programming" to help educate the curious on the good old CDP1802.

The problem isn't that the educational tools of the past have disappeared, it's that there's a wide gulf between learning the fundamentals and writing modern software. What I wonder, however, is just what sort of foundation is really necessary to become a programmer these days. Hardware guys benefit from understanding things like a microprocessor's addressing modes and register usage, as do compiler developers... but to the average programmer, what difference does it make?

I don't think there's any single correct answer, any more than there's one single curriculum that will cover the full breadth of today's software technologies. The challenge of knowing where to start is knowing where you want to end up. Once you know that, the tools and literature needed to acquire that knowledge are all readily available.

Just because software environments have become more complex doesn't mean that the opportunity for learning in a simpler environment has vanished. Those old 8-bit micros might not be good for teaching 3D rendering, but they're still good for teaching microprocessor fundamentals. There's no need to go antique shopping on eBay, either: emulators for these simple machines can be found all over the web. How about an Altair, an IMSAI, or a COSMAC ELF for your Windows system? Or emulating an Apple II on OS X? I've even written an ELF emulator for Palm handhelds, and secured permission to publish Tom Pittman's "A Short Course in Programming" to help educate the curious on the good old CDP1802.

The problem isn't that the educational tools of the past have disappeared, it's that there's a wide gulf between learning the fundamentals and writing modern software. What I wonder, however, is just what sort of foundation is really necessary to become a programmer these days. Hardware guys benefit from understanding things like a microprocessor's addressing modes and register usage, as do compiler developers... but to the average programmer, what difference does it make?

I don't think there's any single correct answer, any more than there's one single curriculum that will cover the full breadth of today's software technologies. The challenge of knowing where to start is knowing where you want to end up. Once you know that, the tools and literature needed to acquire that knowledge are all readily available.

Pioneer used the Intel 4004; Voyager, Galileo, and Viking used RCA's COSMAC CDP1802.

The 1802 was a popular choice for many satellite applications (including telecommunications and GPS) because of its early use of low power CMOS technology and radiation tolerance. It was also a fully static part, allowing the clock frequency to drop down to nothing for further power savings.

The chip still has a fan club of sorts, and some old 1802 microcomputers sell at more than 3x their original price on eBay.