On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 2:40 PM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
nice work Bill, I don't get much time to tinker with simH in recent years But this info helps even the already initiated yet encumbered people I might just have to get PiDP to stay fluid with using the simH
About the Orange Pi, I'm amazed how much progress as been taken. Together with this and then
the
Banana Pi -- which they have a 8-core board now -- they are presenting fierce competition to the Raspberry Pi group, that is, in the hardware aspect. What the RPi group has in it's favor though is the immense documentation, and support, and then 3rd party support via their forum to promote this. You can almost say this is comparable to the TRS80/Tandy days with their high level of support. But I think since it revolves about the same OS, there's still an edge in the competition for support. Because the info is widely available on the interwebs, not just on one website as with RPi. Dan
Dan I am pretty much going to stick with Raspberry Pi and CHIPs for now. Good enough for simH and what I have been doing with them. It's getting to the point that it does not really matter to me what I use, I prefer Debian as long as I have that...but really it's all the same thing after a while. Whatever is cheapest that gets the job done.
b
oh yes, most times it doesn't matter, You can't always peddle over performance for most situations. I was kinda reflecting on the hobbyist scene The past 10yrs has been somewhat of a revival, a renaissance, with SBC's almost like the 70s with the first homebrew kits, then the 80s with the home computer version Some may recall the "Dark Times", the hobbyist scene was rather stagnant in this market. You still had the commercial and industrial suppliers for embedded SBC's, like the PC/104 But it was certainly not economical for the hobbyist. It didn't matter how cool something you made at work was great, when it came down to brass tax, unless you got that free from work, you still rather save money in the hobbyist market. But then nobody else could make it cause yours was one of a kind. The 70s and 80s paradigm where if they built more, it would get cheaper, was not really transcending to the hobbyist/SBC market, as it did with the computer kits and home computers. They actually gutted the market, look how many of those Ads are a faint memory. And in the 90s, it was the 68HC11 family and 8051 with it's derivatives While the documentation and support were very high for these, The cost effectiveness for buying their complete boards was inordinately high for the hobbyist So most times one would rather homebrew a controller first than burn a hole in their wallet. Again work doesn't count, many of us designed with these for company projects, but not the hobbyist. during the 2K yrs, some may recall the BASIC Stamp, another popular SBC with immense support, little competition, and no clone market. I switched to the Atmel 8051 derivative as it provided a economical alternative, but still homebrewed. Plus it was getting cheaper to make pcb's, so clubs could make their own line of boards. Then the Arduino led the challenge to strip the BASIC stamp from dominance. Some may say this was the beginning of this new "renaissance" in the hobbyist scene. Because this opened up the "Clone Wars" with the Arduino, not just because they had a slightly inflated value, But because it was open source, so anybody could manufacture them. All were still limited in horsepower, I recall some would resort to converting a motherboard into an embedded SBC with bare metal development using C code, all running on batteries and just a console with a myriad of interfaces stacked on it. But these new turn of events has been a resurgence. Some might say it was due to cheap labor in China to make you feel guilty. I can see their point. But the new development of the ARM processors really led the way. Much like Intel, Zilog, and Motorola did in the 70s Dan -- _ ____ / \__/ Scotty, We Need More Power !! \_/ _\__ Aye, Cap'n, but we've only got 80 col's !!