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Eben Upton Remembers The Years Before the First Raspberry Pi (techrepublic.com)
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.
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.
I like the price-point and the processor speed, but when there's current issues--even driving optocouplers, it takes the fun away from it. Adruinos are hearty. I think that I have only ever blown a single pin, on any of the ones I have, in years of use. I am not so sure why they don't put more RAM on them, either.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
There's only one use of a Raspberry Pi that matters...
https://www.thegeekpub.com/450...
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!
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.
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.
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.
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/
Of course, it's not the only company producing computers based on the ARM Cortex-A53. Pine64 is another example. But these sorts of computers seem to be the best option for secure computing that's current available.
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.
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 :(
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.
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...
...omphaloskepsis often...
AC the UK always wanted its production lines back. The UK gov pushed for a lot of production work for UK computers back in the 1980's.
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?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
AC the UK always really wanted local production. The UK gov was really supportive of production in the UK going back into the 1980's.
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 grow UK computer production.
Re the "is not a UK company btw."
The UK never cared about the origins of the parts needed.
The idea was new production line work in the UK.
Jobs for workers in the UK that could export a new product globally.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
" 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!
Mostly random stuff.
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 supply that you are (or at least: "...were...", back when the Pi launched) going to have laying around at home is a micro-USB charger. Virtually anything uses them (smartphone, rechargeable gadgets, powerbanks, etc.)
So that's why the RPi went for a micro-USB connector instead of a barrel like some are complaining :
because in a pinch you can grab whatever you have around and plug the Pi and at least boot it
(even though you might not provide enough watts for the full 1-point-something GHz speeds of modern RPi 2 and 3 to be available, and might end up throttling down to base 600Mhz with "Undervolt" warnings. But you can still get some (albeit slow) work out of it)
Now with the industry shift from micro USB to USB-C, raspberry pi are probably going to shift to USB-C at some point in the future (Pi 4 ?) because now that's the one you'll end up having around.
and an sd card that can handle lots of small files),
everybody has tons of SD cards laying around given that's the format used by pretty much everything (smartphone, photo camera, portable gaming console, etc.)
again you could grab one laying around.
Whether it will handle the abuses of running an OS is a different matter (that's probably what you meant with 'that can handle...') or if it will die soon is a different matter.
But that won't stop you from experimenting
and that's still without keyboard, mouse, and hdmi cable.
which are exactly of the type (USB HID devices) that you'll have around.
TL;DR: the type of people who are likely interested to experiment with a Pi have a high change of having hte (extremely standard) accessories laying around, and can progressively buy more adapted (e.g.: 3A power supply, SD card with ECC, etc.) at a later point in time.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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 little need for any Raspberry Pi.)
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.
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STFU, AmiMoJo.
When the Welsh start putting plastic in baby milk you might have a point.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What it boots into depends on what you put on the SD card.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register