A new smaller Pi microcontroller

These platforms are awesome for house automation, small and powerful.

Ill have to get one of those for my home project.

But remember... They are not as "comfortable" as a raspberry pi: On a raspberry pi, you can run most normal Linux commands and distributions because you have a "normal" amount of memory. The VOCORE has only 32Mb, which means that things are a bit cramped. But as an embedded Linux machine, doing wifi stuff and maybe a few GPIO things, it is a great platform.

Agreed these aren't "'PIs" at all just Linux microcontrollers. Obviously if he didn't call them Pi's no one would be interested in the blog post.  Pi this and Pi the other

Roger Wolff wrote:

 

But remember... They are not as "comfortable" as a raspberry pi: On a raspberry pi, you can run most normal Linux commands and distributions because you have a "normal" amount of memory. The VOCORE has only 32Mb, which means that things are a bit cramped. But as an embedded Linux machine, doing wifi stuff and maybe a few GPIO things, it is a great platform.

I first used Unix on a PDP-11/45 with 256KB of memory (yes, K as in Kibble).  It was a time-sharing system, with multiple terminals.  It really only dragged if several people tried to compile at the same time, or worse, run the Ingres database.

So, yeah, you can do quite a bit with 32 MB, especially with no GUI.

So basically you are saying that we can run a Nuclear Power station on one of these modules as long as we use an old Wyse Terminal and avoid the Zork Text adventure

So basically you are saying that we can run a Nuclear Power station on one of these modules as long as we use an old Wyse Terminal and avoid the Zork Text adventure

John Alexander wrote:

 

So basically you are saying that we can run a Nuclear Power station on one of these modules as long as we use an old Wyse Terminal and avoid the Zork Text adventure

Très amusant.  Should I add that the PDP-11/45 cycle time was a lot slower than 360 MHz? 

My experience starts with the VAXen really do you have any PDPs hanging around ... I do have a PDP8 clone kit but that's not the same

I still have my PDT11.... My first Unix was a PDP11/60. Microprogrammable! I think it too had 256k RAm.

John Alexander wrote:

 

My experience starts with the VAXen really do you have any PDPs hanging around ... I do have a PDP-8 clone kit but that's not the same

No PDP-11 hardware, but I still have PDP-11 (and also VAX) books, and plenty of punched cards and paper tape with PDP-11 assembly language

For a 32-bit PDP-11 follow-on, I prefer 680X0 and Coldfire.

I do have some TI MSP430 boards: the MSP430 was obviously influenced by the PDP-11.

The 68K and thus the Coldfire  were supposedly developed from an analysis of PDP 11 code and what instructions were most executed etc...

In theory a PDP11 instruction is: 4-bit opcode, 6-bit source, 6-bits dest.

Each 6-bit source or dest is a 3-bit register number and a 3-bit adressing mode. The addressing modes are direct (use the register, indirect (use the register as an address), auto increment or decrement (also with indirect options) and another two I don't directly remember.

Very regular. Now the "4 bits opcode" is a bit too little.  So they had to trick things. Some instructions have a 7-bit opcode, and no adressing modes. Or no source/dest at all.

All that can become much neater if you go to a 32-bit instruction format. Additionally you can increase the number of registers to 16 or 32, That's more-or-less what 68000 did. Nice archtiectures. As a teenager I stopped designing my own CPU when my father brought home the 68000 reference manual. Good architecture, has been done before. No longer interesting.....