Build the 2006 Prototype $25 PC

An anonymous reader writes "As the launch of the $25 PC gets ever closer (sometime next month), members of the Raspberry Pi team have found time to start blogging about the history of the project. Eben Upton, director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has been working on the project for many years, and decided to share a couple of very early prototypes for the $25 PC with the community. The 2006 edition of the PC used an Atmel ATmega644 microcontroller. It ran at 22.1MHz with 512K of SRAM. Compare that to the final version of the PC, which will use a 700MHz ARM11 processor and 128MB/256MB of SDRAM. Five years clearly brings a massive leap in performance. For those of us happy to play around with components at this level, Eben has made the schematics and PCB layout available to download (ZIP file). Armed with this information you can create your very own 2006 Raspberry Pi machine."

Comments

Re:Useless

[Oswald McWeany]

Of course it isn't useless.

Students can learn about the components that make up a computer and learn the basics of computers all for $25.

That's way cooler than anything we did in IT when I was in high-school.

At the end of it- you get a takehome computer capable of playing Quake 3.

That's how you get the kids interested in this.

I've never used Linux. For $25 I may buy a kit for my son for Xmas. He can learn about computers- and then I can steal it from him and teach myself linux.

needs a VGA output

[Blaskowicz]

HDMI displays are rare, VGA displays are plentiful, higher quality and more versatile than the offered alternative which is a old TV with composite input.

a Rasperry with VGA would be better for its obvious use, as a game console loaded with emulators. there are truckloads of perfectly good 15" and 17" displays awaiting destruction as hazardous waste, having to buy a new hdmi display for a $25 toy or haul a big ass CRT TV and live with interlaced 640x480 is not fun.

Re:needs a VGA output

[psergiu]

As it turns out, the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC they have chosen for the project has only HDMI, Composite & DSI-LCD outputs. No VGA, no Component, no S-Video.

And it seems that there are no SoC's with VGA output available that:
- are cheap enough;
- are low-power enough;
or
- have all the other required interfaces (USB, Ethernet, sound, SDIO ...)

Getting cheaper

[bigredradio]

If they are sticking to the $25 cost, this is getting cheaper every year even though they are increasing performance. If you figure the future value in 2005 of the cost at 2011, it should be around $39.

FV=(25*(1+4.5%)^6)*(1+3%)^6
= $38.87

Re:Needs more Ram

[psergiu]

Raspberry PI uses a package-on-package technology (RAM chip on top on the CPU).

They covered this on their forum:
- There are no 1Gb SDRAM chips with that size available;
- The 512Mb ones are too expensive - if Raspberry PI rev.A (128Mb) and rev.B (256Mb) are a success, they will consider a more expensive rev.C with more options.

Re:ARM

[micsaund]

Yes, because PC doesn't necessarily mean Wintel -- it means Personal Computer as well. One particular flavor of the Personal Computer happens to be the IBM PC, which features the xxx86 architecture. Remember, the concept of a "personal computer" came from the days when the big iron was locked-up in universities and companies, so it was a revolution to make a computer one could own personally, hence the phrase. This "2006" Atmel based computer is very certainly a "personal computer" since you build and own it.

Re:Refurbished Dell

[spire3661]

And they would consume orders of magnitude more power. Also, all refurbished means is that the board is tested for electrical continuity, its still old, in a power hogging design. The goal is not CPU power, it is low cost and ubiquity.

Vaporware

[Animats]

They've been talking about this since 2006. They've built prototypes. They have a web site, logos, a wiki, and a fan club.

What they don't have is shipping product.

They really need to shut up and ship. They we get to see if their price point is real.

GuruPlug, the $99 Linux wall wart, is real and available. Gumstix has been offering machines around $100 for years.

Re:Needs more Ram

[grub]

I'd rather it have 2 network ports.

VLANs, baby!

How about

[HalAtWork]

How about putting together a software suite that runs efficiently on this hardware? The hardware can be made even more cheaply through refinement, and the software can be fine-tuned to target these specs,it could lead to affordable and efficient computing in general. If the goal is to benefit the poor, or even to create a platform that will waste less resources, then don't create multiple targets, that will diminish the value of the lowest common denominator and undermine the ultimate efficiency and benefits of the platform.