And happy days those were when mini-computers and mainframes were laughably inferior to anything modern but still did the job. Then even less capable microprocessors and microcontrollers came along but still created the Home Computing revolution.While Linux has grown since the 1.0.x kernels, the original Unix design was intentionally minimal so it would work on 16-bit computers such as the PDP-11.
Many who never lived through that do seem to believe that systems need to be running at GHz speeds, have multiple MB of memory, multiple TB of disk space, and a Gbps ethernet link to somewhere, for them to even be usable. But there's no reason a modern microcontroller with more than what those ancient systems had can't do the things they did, even do it better.
I can applaud anyone and everyone who sets about demonstrating that.
Of course, it's never going to compete with a fully tricked-out desktop PC or a modern Pi SBC because micros can't compete with those, but RP2 chips and boards are impressive in what they can do, and all for a few dollars.
The Pico has Flash larger than a 1.4MB floppy and 256KB memory. The Pico 2 offers the equivalent of two floppies and twice as much memory. Third party offerings add up to 8MB of RAM via PSRAM. It's easy to add an SD Card and have GB of disk. It doesn't surprise me that what we did, what was bleeding edge and pushing the limits back then, has become the vogue again.
It seems youngsters and sentimentalists are walking the path of the past and I don't see that as any bad thing. Sometimes it's good to get back to our roots, rediscover what may have been lost.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Wed Aug 28, 2024 6:58 pm
