... the Raspberry Pi is not!

I just got mine, after months of waiting...

First task: Try to communicate with it.

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On 10/12/2012 2:26 PM, clipka wrote:
> First task: Try to communicate with it.

Second task: Port Pov to it.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen wrote:
>
> Second task: Port Pov to it.
>

I'm curiously waiting for official benchmark results.

-Aero

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On 10/12/2012 4:00 PM, Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>>
>> Second task: Port Pov to it.
>>
>
> I'm curiously waiting for official benchmark results.
>
> -Aero

Third task:   ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> Second task: Port Pov to it.

Nitpicking but...

There's a difference between "porting" a program to a platform, and
simply "compiling" it for that platform. Porting would require code
modifications, and povray probably doesn't need any for the Raspberry Pi.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Am 10.12.2012 16:37, schrieb Stephen:
> On 10/12/2012 2:26 PM, clipka wrote:
>> First task: Try to communicate with it.
>
> Second task: Port Pov to it.

Exactly.

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Am 10.12.2012 18:38, schrieb Warp:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>> Second task: Port Pov to it.
>
> Nitpicking but...
>
> There's a difference between "porting" a program to a platform, and
> simply "compiling" it for that platform. Porting would require code
> modifications, and povray probably doesn't need any for the Raspberry Pi.

Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find 
that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't 
satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have 
been there).

That's when I decided to order one myself.

So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find 
> that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't 
> satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have 
> been there).

> That's when I decided to order one myself.

> So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.

Sounds more like bug-fixing rather than porting, unless it really is
something that has to be modified because the platform, for some strange
reason, works differently from all other platforms. Which would sound
really strange given that it runs Linux and BSD...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 10/12/2012 07:01 PM, Warp wrote:
> clipka<ano### [at] anonymousorg>  wrote:
>> Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find
>> that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't
>> satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have
>> been there).
>
>> That's when I decided to order one myself.
>
>> So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.
>
> Sounds more like bug-fixing rather than porting, unless it really is
> something that has to be modified because the platform, for some strange
> reason, works differently from all other platforms. Which would sound
> really strange given that it runs Linux and BSD...

It probably doesn't implement IEEE-754 arithmetic correctly or something 
daft like that.

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Am 10.12.2012 20:01, schrieb Warp:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find
>> that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't
>> satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have
>> been there).
>
>> That's when I decided to order one myself.
>
>> So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.
>
> Sounds more like bug-fixing rather than porting, unless it really is
> something that has to be modified because the platform, for some strange
> reason, works differently from all other platforms. Which would sound
> really strange given that it runs Linux and BSD...

Not so strange if you recall that the porting work for Linux (and 
probably also BSD) to run on ARM platforms had been done already.

One possible difference might be the floating point math, which doesn't 
seem to be as straightforward as we're used to on x86 machines. I guess 
there is /some/ reason why the official reference Linux distro for the 
Pi is built to use software-emulated floating point math, rather than 
the on-chip floating point hardware.


Even if it turns out that there's nothing else to do, there's still 
porting work to be done in the sense of checking whether the 
platform-specific header files make sense for the ARM.

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