Old MIPS/ARM PDAs for Teaching?

Posted by Cliff on Tuesday December 25, 2001 @08:46AM from the tax-writeoffs-as-corporate-xmas-presents dept.

Barak Pearlmutter asks: "I'm teaching computer architecture this spring. The course involved a lot of assembly programming, and in the past has used a SPARC simulator. I'd like to get a bunch of PDAs with RISC processors (ARM or MIPS) instead. This requires a development environment that runs under Linux and supports assembler...and some PDAs. The less memory and the slower the CPU the better! Also no virtual memory or real OS to get in the way - best to have direct access to the display and buttons."

"It seems like companies must be sending 128k MIPS handhelds to the landfill at this point, so giving them to us to use in teaching would be a win/win, since they'd get a tax writeoff and some good will instead. But even if they cost $20/ea, that would be fine. Any suggestions on what hardware to use, or what companies to contact? Remember, there must be a convenient way to download executable code into them, using a cable rather than a flash ROM. And we're pretty much a Debian GNU/Linux shop, so a working cross-compiler based on the GNU toolset would be best. An emulator would be even peachier, so students could debug without downloading the code after each little change, although that's not strictly necessary."

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Re:SPIM! by jcwren · 2001-12-25 15:44 · Score: 3, Interesting

My only disagreement with this is that the satisfaction of seeing something run on a real piece of hardware is far higher than seeing the output of the simulator.

And, perhaps if done correctly, the student could keep the PDA with his/her code. After all, if PDAs are constantly becoming obsolete, turnover shouldn't be a problem, right?

--jcwren