On 26/10/2015 11:31 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:38:03 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> I guess the Pi by itself doesn't do a lot; it's great for building crazy
>> robots, if *electronics* is what you're trying to teach. But you need
>> more components to make a usable computer out of it. And then there's so
>> many other bits plugged in, you lose sight of the fact that the little
>> circuit board in the middle is the part that's actually "doing" stuff.
>
> I've got OpenELEC running on one; it makes a reasonable media server.
>
> Nothing else really plugged in, either.  HDMI, external hard drive,
> power.  Wireless keyboard/mouse combo that I generally don't use.

At that point, doesn't it kinda make it look like *the screen* is all 
the smarts? Not the inconspicuous little box in the corner?

>> It wouldn't hold my attention for ten seconds. And that's kinda my
>> point; kids these days have smartphones in their pockets. Why would they
>> bother with this obsolete thing? (Unless you manage to convince them
>> that its arcane-ness makes it "special" rather than just dumb.)
>
> Lower end equipment can help kids and students understand where the
> technology comes from and how it developed over time.  Understanding the
> past is useful to seeing ways in which things can be done in the future.

Oh, I *totally* agree with what you're saying. My question is how you 
keep the kids from just glancing at it and going "this is lame!" and 
going back to playing Angry Birds or something.

>>> You certainly can do system-level programming on the RPi.  How do you
>>> think you get a kernel developed to run on it? ;)
>>
>> You're aware that to this day, the OS includes a closed-source binary
>> blob that only people who sign an NDA are allowed to look inside, right?
>> Literally, you cannot operate the GPU without signing an NDA or using
>> closed-source code. And since this is a mobile phone SoC, the GPU
>> controls the CPU, not the other way around...
>
> Yes, but that's true on a lot of PCs that run Linux as well.  That
> doesn't mean you can't do system-level programming on it.

Thanks to backwards compatibility, every IBM PC-compatible starts up in 
8080 emulation mode, and has a BIOS that lets you do stuff without even 
knowing what model of video card you have. Even then, it surely has 100% 
VGA register compatibility, so you can program it that way.

On the Pi, until you poke the GPU, the CPU isn't even *turned on*...

> I think there's a lot you can do that's interesting without any video at
> all.

Oh, really?

[That maybe sounded sarcastic. It wasn't meant to.]

Clearly you've got different ideas to me... What kinda thing are you 
thinking?

[Genuinely interested here.]

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