Where's my Raspberry Pi?

When I started out in the wonderful world of computers there was little choice. In fact my first computers were a Z80 developer's kit (with hexi-decimal keypad), a Nascom and Tangerine's Tanbug. All of these gave me the opportunity to enter into the wonderful world of computing at a time when there was little else out there (it was the end of the seventies don't forget!).

I learned a lot about programming (and soldering) from these early days and later forays into such wonderful objects as the Commodore PET, Apple][ and, of course, the BBC B I cut my teeth on hardware and software engineering. How I wished that these opportunities to do the same existed for my children, especially in our consumer-led, 'works out of the box' existence.

Well someone must have heard my cries for we have been blessed with a wonderful opportunity to return to the breadboard computing days with a superb project from a 'non for profit group', the Raspberry Pi foundation, by the name of the 'Raspberry Pi - Model B'.

The spec's for which (for those interested parties) are:

• Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM1176JZFS processor with FPU and Videocore 4 GPU
• GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
• GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
• 256MB RAM
• Boots from an SD card (Fedora version of Linux)
• 10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket
• HDMI socket
• USB 2.0 socket
• RCA video socket
• SD card socket
• Powered from microUSB socket
• 3.5mm audio out jack
• Header footprint for camera connection
• 85.6 x 53.98 x 17mm

And costs less than £25!

So, if you have children (or are even a bit interested in computing at the grassroots level - this is the toy for them (and you).

Now - what can I do with it to justify using them in church (which has to be done - doesn't it?), after all it can do everything the big boys do, once you've made it do it of course - and that's the attraction (or perhaps not for those who are happy to be consumers!

First there was

And now, thinking of Windoze I can offer a heartfelt

:-)

The computer as a mirror

My foray into the issue of the unopenable Publisher has started me thinking about my own path along the world of computing starting back in the late seventies with a Commodore Pet, a majestic machine with 16k of memory and a screen 40 characters wide. This later grew to an 8032 (80 columns, 32k of memory) and a dual (5 1/4") disk drive, tractor-feed printer (yay, no more tapes) - a machine that lives in our garage and now and then awakes to play.

Life was exciting, I played games on my Apple ][e, which I filled with cards and added peripherals (my first FlightSim version!). CP/M and assembler ruled. This was the time when spreadsheets were new and exciting (3D too!) and the world expanded with the addition of a 300 Baud acoustic coupler. Life on the superhighway indeed!

Like any good addict life was taken away by Nascom computers (built them yourself - version 1 and 2), Z80 development kits (a week to program a ball bouncing on the screen all lost when plug removed!!! No storage!! The Osborne luggable (orange screen), the Dragon (6809 processor, mmmmm), the BBC (A & B - still a couple in the garage), the Radio Shark TRS-80 (trash eighty) and a host of other machines (never had Sinclair's ZX or Plectrum offerings)kept me sleepless and poor.

Then came the Apple Mac 512 and life was Gucci! Apache Strike, Zork (aah, Infocom - played them all), Larry and of course, FlightSim. MacWrite and Works made me productive when I wasn't being dissipated. I've probably owned most of the Apple products (some live in our garage) at some time and worked alongside those with some good DOS and windows machines (many of them) too! It's funny but my computing life has paid me (well), made me efficient and inefficient in equal measure. It's made me friends and cost me loads but I don't regret it (well perhaps the Trash 80).

I wonder if I have put in half as much time, energy, life, love or passion into my faith life?

Pax