Raspberry Pi

Well, probably. But I am wondering jsut who the Rpi is marketed at. It's not really suitable as an ambedded controller (nowhere near enough I/O, and a dififuclt PCB to mount). It's not really suitable as a machien to laarn programming on if you don't have anything else. BEcuase you need 'something else' to use it. Like the internet connection. OK, the book does suggest it's to be used by children (teenagers) who want to learn to program and who only hacve access to their paren'ts PC which siad parents don't want messad about with. OK, but wait a second. Firstly, said parents are not going to want to lend the keyboard, mouse, etc form that PCB, so you have to buy another of each to use the Rpi. Thsi emans the cose is almost tripled. And more imporatly, if you want to downlaod the OS for the RPi usign said PC, you need rawwrite or similar. I may be missign something, but I feel a utility that can overwrite a masss storage device is a lot more dangerous than a C complier. Oh well.... Gettign back to the requirement for itnernet access, by all means make it networkable., But don't require it. Have a docuemnted way (i.e. one that does not require you to geusess at the dpckg command) to install from local storage devices. And make a complete archive of sources and bianries aviaalble on soemthign that can be read by the Rpi, possibly with an add-on device (I have no idea if the Rpi supports USB CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives). Hmmm.. DOcuemtnatio nsi a sore point with me. My view is that no matter how good a product, it's useless if you can't work out how to use it. For a machine aimed at beginners, you need simple (not dumbed-down and content free, but explaining things from step 1) docuemtnation. If people get lost in the first few minutes, they are not going to carry on with the thing. They'll find soemthign else ot play with. I have a similar feelign about the GPIO connecotr. Make a msitake, you've wreked the Rpi. Yes it's cheap enough to replace, I guess (even though that doens;'t fit with how I work). But people starting out make a lot of mistakes. If they blow up 3 or more Rpis is quick succession, they will give up. On the other hand, if they blow up a repalcable chip, even if it's not cheap, they will not feel the same loss. Or at least I wouldn't. How do you go aobut that? There is no obvious way to download it. Don;t worry, I ahve no intetion of downlaoding several gigabytes at 14k4 :-) Most machiens with user I/O ports have some buffering/proteciton on them Or at least the ones I am used to do. That is the biggest problem. I had considred using thr Rpi for the often-taleked-aboput and never-made HPIB disk unit replacement. But there simply aren't enough I/O lines to make am HPIB port. I can probalby design soemthing that hooks up to the I2C port, but it's more work than it should be. It is claimed to be the 'spiritual successor' of the BBC micro. Well, yes, that machien only had a single 8 bit user port -- along with 2 handshake lines. It also had am 8 bit output-only pritner port (which could be hijackked to select devices hung off the unser port) and a the 1MHz bus (basically the 6502 bus, only the bottom 8 address lines are there, along with a couple of page select lines). That adds up to a lot of I/O. Now I realise, of course, that bringing out the bus of the CPU in the Rpi is impractical if not impsssible. But given the mioght higher CPU speed, it would have been a GOod Thing to have enough I/O lines to simulate an 8 bit data bus, read/write control, 8 address lines, etc. Just ot be able to hang whatever peripheral chip you might want on the device . -tony