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

Did you look here:

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/index.html

The benefit of the pi over IBM-compatible is that (IMHO) the assembler 
is much easier to learn and use.

I think if children could see their simple first creations running on 
their smartphone or tablet that would encourage them a lot. However you 
need a massive chunk of experience and knowledge to even *install* the 
Android SDK, let alone start writing a new app.

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On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 06:35:54 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> On 10/28/2015 11:25 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> So many questions.
> 
> Are we there yet?

On first. :)

>> I think you did it for the points.;)
> 
> And points mean...?

Junctions on railroad lines, naturally. ;)

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 10/29/2015 5:15 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> And points mean...?
> Junctions on railroad lines, naturally.;)

Oh! I thought it was 1⁄72 of an inch.
Thanks for that. :-P

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 29/10/2015 11:37 AM, scott wrote:
> The benefit of the pi over IBM-compatible is that (IMHO) the assembler
> is much easier to learn and use.

Yeah, I haven't done a lot with x86 assembly, but with 40 years of 
backwards-compatibility, it's pretty complicated. And ugly to start 
with, it seems! (Well, it was originally designed for low-cost pocket 
calculators, not supercomputers!)

I often wished more stuff could be like the Motorola 68000. That seemed 
like a really nice architecture to work with.

> I think if children could see their simple first creations running on
> their smartphone or tablet that would encourage them a lot.

Agree.

> However you
> need a massive chunk of experience and knowledge to even *install* the
> Android SDK, let alone start writing a new app.

Also agree!

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On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 18:50:51 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> On 10/29/2015 5:15 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> And points mean...?
>> Junctions on railroad lines, naturally.;)
> 
> Oh! I thought it was 1⁄72 of an inch. Thanks for that. :-P

Always glad to be of service. :)

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 10/30/2015 12:05 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Always glad to be of service.:)

:-)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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> Yeah, I haven't done a lot with x86 assembly, but with 40 years of
> backwards-compatibility, it's pretty complicated. And ugly to start
> with, it seems! (Well, it was originally designed for low-cost pocket
> calculators, not supercomputers!)

You could probably explain the vast majority of ARM assembler in a 
single newsgroup post. The syntax is very simple, and the mnemonics are 
mostly obvious or very easy to remember. You're free to use any register 
for source or either of the destinations, and all registers are the same 
bit-width.

>> However you
>> need a massive chunk of experience and knowledge to even *install* the
>> Android SDK, let alone start writing a new app.
>
> Also agree!

Someone needs to write a wrapper to go on top of the Android SDK that is 
a) easy to install and b) uses an easy language that allows you to just 
start writing commands to draw stuff without tons of boiler-plate code.

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On 30/10/2015 08:48 AM, scott wrote:
>> Yeah, I haven't done a lot with x86 assembly, but with 40 years of
>> backwards-compatibility, it's pretty complicated. And ugly to start
>> with, it seems! (Well, it was originally designed for low-cost pocket
>> calculators, not supercomputers!)
>
> You could probably explain the vast majority of ARM assembler in a
> single newsgroup post. The syntax is very simple, and the mnemonics are
> mostly obvious or very easy to remember. You're free to use any register
> for source or either of the destinations, and all registers are the same
> bit-width.

The M68k has 8 "data registers" and 8 "address registers", which you can 
freely use for any purpose (although the address registers are somewhat 
optimised for holding addresses).

x86 has... what... FOUR main registers? And the FPU register stack... 
which is also the MMX registers... but then a separate set of XMM 
registers added for the SSE instruction set?... but then SSE2 made them 
wider, so there's XMMX... WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!

I gather ARM is quite a popular architecture. I don't know whether 
that's because there's readily available chips and IP-cores, because 
it's low-power, or because it's really easy to program...

> Someone needs to write a wrapper to go on top of the Android SDK that is
> a) easy to install and b) uses an easy language that allows you to just
> start writing commands to draw stuff without tons of boiler-plate code.

Meh. Just use Haskell. ;-)

(Seriously, people occasionally ask about cross-compiling to ARM. I 
can't think of any other reason why somebody would do that. Apparently 
it even *works*, vaguely...)

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> x86 has... what... FOUR main registers? And the FPU register stack...
> which is also the MMX registers... but then a separate set of XMM
> registers added for the SSE instruction set?... but then SSE2 made them
> wider, so there's XMMX... WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!

Backwards compatibility is what's going on.

> I gather ARM is quite a popular architecture. I don't know whether
> that's because there's readily available chips and IP-cores, because
> it's low-power, or because it's really easy to program...

Low power.

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On 02/11/2015 08:25 AM, scott wrote:
>> x86 has... what... FOUR main registers? And the FPU register stack...
>> which is also the MMX registers... but then a separate set of XMM
>> registers added for the SSE instruction set?... but then SSE2 made them
>> wider, so there's XMMX... WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!
>
> Backwards compatibility is what's going on.

The root of all evil, right there.

But hey, Intel invented the Itanium to get away from all that... and 
nobody bought it.

>> I gather ARM is quite a popular architecture. I don't know whether
>> that's because there's readily available chips and IP-cores, because
>> it's low-power, or because it's really easy to program...
>
> Low power.

Why is that? It is because there's something particular about this 
instruction set which makes it especially suitable for low power? Or is 
it merely that a lot of people have spent R&D on making low-power 
implementations of it?

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