• New Pico2

    From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to All on Sun Aug 11 21:45:42 2024
    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or
    RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Larkin@3:770/3 to All on Sun Aug 11 14:04:36 2024
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk>
    wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or
    RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> ><https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Larkin@3:770/3 to jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com on Sun Aug 11 14:07:59 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:04:36 -0700, John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk>
    wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or >>RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> >><https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Sun Aug 11 22:20:59 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    John Larkin wrote:

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2

    Just the "pirate brand" boards for now, official boards on pre-order,
    but i prefer USB-C to the official ones with micro-B

    and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!

    RP2040 is 644 pages, is the extra all accounted for by RISC-V info?
    Regardless, SumatraPDF viewer whizzes through the pages

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Sun Aug 11 22:32:38 2024
    On Sun, 2024-08-11 at 21:45 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or
    RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    Pimoroni Pico plus 2 is sitting on my desktop ready for me to play with
    it.

    This beast also has 16MB of flashram and 8MB of PSRAM. I've also got a
    SD card board and some headers I need to solder on to use with it.

    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on this
    device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor used, it's
    only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor mode and no paging.
    It does not even support any of the Sv pagetables so that's a
    challenge.

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Sun Aug 11 22:37:04 2024
    Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    That's what I meant by "perm any 2 from 4", fun with the inter-CPU
    doorbells ...

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Sun Aug 11 23:50:36 2024
    On Sun, 2024-08-11 at 22:37 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
    Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV
    core and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed
    processor cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    That's what I meant by "perm any 2 from 4", fun with the inter-CPU
    doorbells ...

    Perhaps someone really, really smart might figure out how to get all
    four cores running.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Mon Aug 12 12:04:43 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:07:59 -0700
    John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!

    The days of fitting an instruction set on a page or two are long
    gone.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Kerr-Mudd, John@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Mon Aug 12 13:30:52 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 12:04:43 +0100
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:07:59 -0700
    John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!

    The days of fitting an instruction set on a page or two are long
    gone.


    I liked the irony implied (or is it just me?) by wrapping that word. WYSi
    WYG!

    --
    Bah, and indeed Humbug.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Mon Aug 12 17:23:50 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    In comp.sys.raspberry-pi Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:07:59 -0700
    John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!

    The days of fitting an instruction set on a page or two are long gone.

    These days, when you've got a 1K+ page manual you know it's the actual
    manual. If it's 10 pages it's just a 'product brief' that shows some basic information about the chip but not nearly enough to program it (contact the
    OEM and they'll make you sign an NDA for the actual details, and maybe only
    if you're going to buy a million units).

    Most of the time you can ignore huge chunks of the manual - if you never use the CAN bus transceiver, skip that section. But better to have the
    information there if you need it.

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lasse Langwadt@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Mon Aug 12 18:41:59 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 8/11/24 23:07, John Larkin wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:04:36 -0700, John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk>
    wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or
    RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603>
    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!


    read the part on how the build in buck converter needs a custom inductor
    with polarity marking to work, and tell there is something seriously
    wrong with it

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Phil Hobbs@3:770/3 to Theo on Mon Aug 12 16:42:54 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    In comp.sys.raspberry-pi Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:07:59 -0700
    John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!

    The days of fitting an instruction set on a page or two are long
    gone.

    These days, when you've got a 1K+ page manual you know it's the actual manual. If it's 10 pages it's just a 'product brief' that shows some basic information about the chip but not nearly enough to program it (contact the OEM and they'll make you sign an NDA for the actual details, and maybe only if you're going to buy a million units).

    Most of the time you can ignore huge chunks of the manual - if you never use the CAN bus transceiver, skip that section. But better to have the information there if you need it.

    Theo


    As long as the silicon errata sheet isn’t 1000 pages!

    Cheers

    Phil Hobbs

    --
    Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Dennis@3:770/3 to Theo on Mon Aug 12 13:28:28 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 8/12/24 11:23, Theo wrote:

    These days, when you've got a 1K+ page manual you know it's the actual manual. If it's 10 pages it's just a 'product brief' that shows some basic information about the chip but not nearly enough to program it

    Actually the "Product Brief" is 25 pages.

    https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/pico-2-datasheet.pdf

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to TNP on Mon Aug 12 19:44:47 2024
    TNP wrote [direct via email, not the group]

    Andy Burns wrote:

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)

    No according to what I have read. RISC or ARM. Not one of each,

    Section 3.9 of the datasheet says ...

    "There are two processor sockets on RP2350, referred to as core 0 and
    core 1 throughout this document. Each socket can be occupied either by a Cortex-M33 processor (implementing the Armv8-M Main architecture, plus extensions) or by a Hazard3 processor (implementing the RV32IMAC
    architecture, plus extensions)."

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to All on Mon Aug 12 21:10:06 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    T24gMTIvMDgvMjAyNCAxNzo0MiwgUGhpbCBIb2JicyB3cm90ZToNCj4gQXMgbG9uZyBhcyB0 aGUgc2lsaWNvbiBlcnJhdGEgc2hlZXQgaXNu4oCZdCAxMDAwIHBhZ2VzIQ0KDQpUaGF0IHJl bWluZHMgbWUgb2Ygb25seSBJbnRlbCdzIGF0dGVtcHQgYXQgYW4gQVJNIGRlc2lnbjsgdGhl eSB3ZXJlIA0KdGFza2VkIHdpdGggdXBkYXRpbmcgdGhlIFN0cm9uZyBBUk0sIGluc3RlYWQg dGhleSBtYWRlIHRoZSBYU2NhbGUgd2hpY2ggDQp3YXMgYSBjb21wbGV0ZSBkb2cgb2YgYSBj b3JlLCBhbmQgdGhlIGVycmF0YSBhbG9uZSB3YXMgYWxtb3N0IHRoZSBzaXplIA0Kb2YgdGhl IGNvbXBsZXRlIFNBMTEwIG1hbnVhbC4NCg0KLS0tZHJ1Y2sNCg0K

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From David Higton@3:770/3 to druck on Mon Aug 12 22:18:58 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    In message <v9dq6u$3epka$1@dont-email.me>
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    On 12/08/2024 17:42, Phil Hobbs wrote:

    As long as the silicon errata sheet isn’t 1000 pages!

    That reminds me of only Intel's attempt at an ARM design; they were
    tasked with updating the Strong ARM, instead they made the XScale which
    was a complete dog of a core, and the errata alone was almost the size
    ofthe complete SA110 manual.

    When it comes to bugs in chips, Intel certainly have form.

    David

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Mon Aug 12 21:27:36 2024
    On Mon, 2024-08-12 at 19:44 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

    TNP wrote [direct via email, not the group]

    Andy Burns wrote:

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)

    No according to what I have read. RISC or ARM. Not one of each,

    Section 3.9 of the datasheet says ...

    "There are two processor sockets on RP2350, referred to as core 0 and
    core 1 throughout this document. Each socket can be occupied either
    by a Cortex-M33 processor (implementing the Armv8-M Main
    architecture, plus extensions) or by a Hazard3 processor
    (implementing the RV32IMAC architecture, plus extensions)."

    It also says you can have mixed cores too, one of each. That looks like
    fun.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to David Higton on Mon Aug 12 23:05:18 2024
    On Mon, 2024-08-12 at 22:18 +0100, David Higton wrote:
    That reminds me of only Intel's attempt at an ARM design; they were
    tasked with updating the Strong ARM, instead they made the XScale
    which was a complete dog of a core, and the errata alone was almost
    the size ofthe complete SA110 manual.

    When it comes to bugs in chips, Intel certainly have form.

    Yes, they keep frying 13th gen and 14th gen with spurious voltage
    spikes!
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Mon Aug 12 23:48:24 2024
    On 11/08/2024 22:32, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on this
    device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor used, it's
    only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor mode and no paging.
    It does not even support any of the Sv pagetables so that's a
    challenge.

    The joys open "open source" CPUs with no standardised feature sets.

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    I think they did that for all the people who keep insisting they should
    move to the "new future" of RISC V. Now they can find out how badly it
    compares to a contemporary ARM core.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Chris Townley@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Mon Aug 12 23:24:20 2024
    On 12/08/2024 23:05, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    On Mon, 2024-08-12 at 22:18 +0100, David Higton wrote:
    That reminds me of only Intel's attempt at an ARM design; they were
    tasked with updating the Strong ARM, instead they made the XScale
    which was a complete dog of a core, and the errata alone was almost
    the size ofthe complete SA110 manual.

    When it comes to bugs in chips, Intel certainly have form.

    Yes, they keep frying 13th gen and 14th gen with spurious voltage
    spikes!

    To quote Kenneth Williams in "Carry on screaming"

    Frying tonight

    ;)

    --
    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to David Higton on Tue Aug 13 00:22:18 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 2024-08-12, David Higton <dave@davehigton.me.uk> wrote:

    In message <v9dq6u$3epka$1@dont-email.me>
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    On 12/08/2024 17:42, Phil Hobbs wrote:

    As long as the silicon errata sheet isn’t 1000 pages!

    That reminds me of only Intel's attempt at an ARM design; they were
    tasked with updating the Strong ARM, instead they made the XScale which
    was a complete dog of a core, and the errata alone was almost the size
    ofthe complete SA110 manual.

    When it comes to bugs in chips, Intel certainly have form.

    I am Pentium of Borg.
    Division is futile.
    You will be approximated.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
    / \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Larkin@3:770/3 to All on Mon Aug 12 19:43:38 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 18:41:59 +0200, Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk>
    wrote:

    On 8/11/24 23:07, John Larkin wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:04:36 -0700, John Larkin
    <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk>
    wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or
    RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603>
    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!


    read the part on how the build in buck converter needs a custom inductor
    with polarity marking to work, and tell there is something seriously
    wrong with it

    The polarized inducor is strange. I'd expect that a small shielded
    inductor would work fine. It is interesting to have a switching
    regulator on a CPU chip... near a 12-bit ADC!

    The Pi designs struggle to save pennies and microwatts, which not all
    of us care about.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Edward Rawde@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Tue Aug 13 00:02:00 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    "John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in message news:kmhlbjt3ksvti8080moo983dgfa6ljul1r@4ax.com...
    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 18:41:59 +0200, Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk>
    wrote:

    On 8/11/24 23:07, John Larkin wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:04:36 -0700, John Larkin
    <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk>
    wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or >>>>> RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> >>>>> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!


    read the part on how the build in buck converter needs a custom inductor >>with polarity marking to work, and tell there is something seriously
    wrong with it

    The polarized inducor is strange.

    I've had buck converters sensitive to inductor orientation before.
    Last time was with MIC4576
    It was sensitive to the orientation of an inductor with the winding horizontal, similar to that shown in the RP2350 data.
    But the inductor had no polarity markings.
    It was changed to a stand up toroid which had no orientation issues.

    I'd expect that a small shielded
    inductor would work fine. It is interesting to have a switching
    regulator on a CPU chip... near a 12-bit ADC!

    The Pi designs struggle to save pennies and microwatts, which not all
    of us care about.




    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Tue Aug 13 04:05:24 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:43:38 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

    The Pi designs struggle to save pennies and microwatts, which not all of
    us care about.

    There are products other than the Raspberry Pi available for those with
    more money to thr^H^H^Hspend.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Aug 13 08:40:26 2024
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> writes:
    On 11/08/2024 22:32, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on this
    device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor used, it's
    only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor mode and no paging.
    It does not even support any of the Sv pagetables so that's a
    challenge.

    Also no floating point, if I’ve understood correctly?

    The joys open "open source" CPUs with no standardised feature sets.

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    I think they did that for all the people who keep insisting they
    should move to the "new future" of RISC V. Now they can find out how
    badly it compares to a contemporary ARM core.

    It’s a slightly odd device, isn’t it?

    If you wanted to explore RISC-V then there’s more flexible options. If
    you just wanted a microcontroller for something and didn’t care too much about CPU architecture then the dual-architecture thing is wasted. Two
    entire CPU cores that you don’t get to use.

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Richard Kettlewell on Tue Aug 13 10:22:19 2024
    On Tue, 2024-08-13 at 08:40 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> writes:
    On 11/08/2024 22:32, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on
    this device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor
    used, it's only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor
    mode and no paging. It does not even support any of the Sv
    pagetables so that's a challenge.

    Also no floating point, if I’ve understood correctly?


    I just had to re-check the datasheet and you're right, the Hazard3
    cores do not handle floating point. That's deeply disappointing.

    The M33 cores do support single and double precision floating point,
    single floating point within the M33 cores and double precision maths
    using one of its three coprocessors (gpio, maths and the other I
    forget). I guess we could just ring the doorbell to get the ARM core to
    do the maths for the Hazard3 core. :-D

    The joys open "open source" CPUs with no standardised feature sets.

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one
    RISCV core and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores.
    Mixed processor cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with
    that.

    I think they did that for all the people who keep insisting they
    should move to the "new future" of RISC V. Now they can find out
    how badly it compares to a contemporary ARM core.

    It’s a slightly odd device, isn’t it?

    If you wanted to explore RISC-V then there’s more flexible options.
    If you just wanted a microcontroller for something and didn’t care
    too much about CPU architecture then the dual-architecture thing is
    wasted. Two entire CPU cores that you don’t get to use.

    Yes the datasheet says the unused cores are gated off.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Aug 13 11:25:19 2024
    On 12/08/2024 23:48, druck wrote:
    On 11/08/2024 22:32, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on this
    device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor used, it's
    only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor mode and no paging.
    It does not even support any of the Sv pagetables so that's a
    challenge.

    The joys open "open source" CPUs with no standardised feature sets.

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    I think they did that for all the people who keep insisting they should
    move to the "new future" of RISC V. Now they can find out how badly it compares to a contemporary ARM core.

    ..or not...

    (I have no dog in this fight. I grew up on CISC. I use whatever works.
    All I care about is price power performance )

    ---druck

    --
    I would rather have questions that cannot be answered...
    ...than to have answers that cannot be questioned

    Richard Feynman

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Richard Kettlewell on Tue Aug 13 14:01:07 2024
    Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    It’s a slightly odd device, isn’t it?

    If you wanted to explore RISC-V then there’s more flexible options. If
    you just wanted a microcontroller for something and didn’t care too much about CPU architecture then the dual-architecture thing is wasted. Two
    entire CPU cores that you don’t get to use.

    Microcontroller RISC-V cores are so small that I presume it's just thrown on there as a test to see how things pan out. You can do a basic RV32 in a few hundred lines of SystemVerilog and, if it doesn't have its own on-chip
    memory, it takes pretty minimal area. It's the area for on-chip RAM, on-chip flash, registers, caches and TLBs that costs.

    It sounds like one of their devs had a hobby core on his github and they put
    it on the chip just because they could. What I'm more interested in is what
    QA they did on it and what tools they used. It's easy to write a core but embarassing if it doesn't do what you think it does[1]. Perhaps the 'enabling/disabling' mechanism is a chicken bit to wall it off in case something bad is discovered in it.

    Theo

    [1] https://ghostwriteattack.com/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From mm0fmf@3:770/3 to Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Tue Aug 13 13:31:02 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 13/08/2024 05:05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:43:38 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

    The Pi designs struggle to save pennies and microwatts, which not all of
    us care about.

    There are products other than the Raspberry Pi available for those with
    more money to thr^H^H^Hspend.

    +1

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Theo on Tue Aug 13 15:20:50 2024
    On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST)
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    It's easy to write a core

    I wish I could take that statement back to say 1975.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Tue Aug 13 15:42:47 2024
    Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
    On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST)
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    It's easy to write a core

    I wish I could take that statement back to say 1975.

    In those days you'd 'write' the core... by drawing the transistors with
    pens (or sticky tapes, hence 'tape out').

    But those cores gave us computing power which we could use to design the
    next generation of chips. Repeat for 50 years and now the computer does the drawing and we just have to tell it what to draw (and write the compiler, of course).

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Larkin@3:770/3 to alex.buell@munted.eu on Tue Aug 13 09:07:18 2024
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 22:32:38 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:

    On Sun, 2024-08-11 at 21:45 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or
    RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603>
    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    Pimoroni Pico plus 2 is sitting on my desktop ready for me to play with
    it.

    This beast also has 16MB of flashram and 8MB of PSRAM. I've also got a
    SD card board and some headers I need to solder on to use with it.

    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on this
    device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor used, it's
    only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor mode and no paging.
    It does not even support any of the Sv pagetables so that's a
    challenge.

    Our computer thinking evolved when CPUs filled rooms and cost
    megabucks, and RAM cost a dollar per byte. Things have changed.

    Virtual memory worked around the cost of RAM and encouraged complexity
    and bloat. Similarly, c calling conventions gave us hazards.

    It's time to rethink things. CPUs and RAM are cheap, bloated buggy
    code is expensive.


    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    In real life, done is better than fun.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Larkin@3:770/3 to ldo@nz.invalid on Tue Aug 13 08:55:32 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 04:05:24 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
    <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:43:38 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

    The Pi designs struggle to save pennies and microwatts, which not all of
    us care about.

    There are products other than the Raspberry Pi available for those with
    more money to thr^H^H^Hspend.

    I like the Pi for more reasons than the cost. The chips have long-term availability guarentees, the documentation is excellent, and there are
    zillions of kids out there who are familiar with the Pi culture.

    Even ignoring the 70 cent price, the RP2040 is an amazing part.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Larkin@3:770/3 to theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk on Tue Aug 13 09:12:24 2024
    On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST), Theo
    <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Its a slightly odd device, isnt it?

    If you wanted to explore RISC-V then theres more flexible options. If
    you just wanted a microcontroller for something and didnt care too much
    about CPU architecture then the dual-architecture thing is wasted. Two
    entire CPU cores that you dont get to use.

    Microcontroller RISC-V cores are so small that I presume it's just thrown on >there as a test to see how things pan out. You can do a basic RV32 in a few >hundred lines of SystemVerilog and, if it doesn't have its own on-chip >memory, it takes pretty minimal area. It's the area for on-chip RAM, on-chip >flash, registers, caches and TLBs that costs.

    It sounds like one of their devs had a hobby core on his github and they put >it on the chip just because they could. What I'm more interested in is what >QA they did on it and what tools they used. It's easy to write a core but >embarassing if it doesn't do what you think it does[1]. Perhaps the >'enabling/disabling' mechanism is a chicken bit to wall it off in case >something bad is discovered in it.

    Theo

    [1] https://ghostwriteattack.com/

    Long term, the ARM license may be a liability.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Tue Aug 13 18:04:07 2024
    John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
    On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST), Theo
    <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    Microcontroller RISC-V cores are so small that I presume it's just thrown on >there as a test to see how things pan out. You can do a basic RV32 in a few >hundred lines of SystemVerilog and, if it doesn't have its own on-chip >memory, it takes pretty minimal area. It's the area for on-chip RAM, on-chip >flash, registers, caches and TLBs that costs.

    It sounds like one of their devs had a hobby core on his github and they put >it on the chip just because they could. What I'm more interested in is what >QA they did on it and what tools they used. It's easy to write a core but >embarassing if it doesn't do what you think it does[1]. Perhaps the >'enabling/disabling' mechanism is a chicken bit to wall it off in case >something bad is discovered in it.

    Theo

    [1] https://ghostwriteattack.com/

    Long term, the ARM license may be a liability.

    Arm are an investor in RPi, so not sure why they would give them a hard time over licensing.

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Tue Aug 13 18:56:57 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 13/08/2024 16:55, John Larkin wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 04:05:24 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:43:38 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

    The Pi designs struggle to save pennies and microwatts, which not all of >>> us care about.

    There are products other than the Raspberry Pi available for those with
    more money to thr^H^H^Hspend.

    I like the Pi for more reasons than the cost. The chips have long-term availability guarentees, the documentation is excellent, and there are zillions of kids out there who are familiar with the Pi culture.

    Even ignoring the 70 cent price, the RP2040 is an amazing part.

    I agree. Being able to build a wifi connected mcrocontroller project for
    under £10 including PCB and case is a win for me.

    --
    "And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch".

    Gospel of St. Mathew 15:14

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Tue Aug 13 20:21:26 2024
    On Tue, 2024-08-13 at 09:07 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 22:32:38 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:

    I've got a RISCV baremetal operating system I might bring up on
    this device but looking at the datasheet for the RISCV processor
    used, it's only got machine mode and user mode, no supervisor mode
    and no paging. It does not even support any of the Sv pagetables so
    that's a challenge.

    Our computer thinking evolved when CPUs filled rooms and cost
    megabucks, and RAM cost a dollar per byte. Things have changed.

    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.

    We now have glorious displays with a billion colours, mulitmedia
    capability and different ways to interact with these machines. 

    I think it's worth the tradeoffs.

    Virtual memory worked around the cost of RAM and encouraged
    complexity and bloat. Similarly, c calling conventions gave us
    hazards.

    It's time to rethink things. CPUs and RAM are cheap, bloated buggy
    code is expensive.


    There's limited forms of memory protection that can mitigate not having
    a MMU.

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV
    core and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed
    processor cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    In real life, done is better than fun.

    Floating point only available with the M33 cores. Hazard3 cores don't.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to Richard Kettlewell on Tue Aug 13 20:24:13 2024
    Richard Kettlewell wrote:

    It’s a slightly odd device, isn’t it?

    If you wanted to explore RISC-V then there’s more flexible options.

    Maybe the RISC-V cores are to "send a message" to ARM?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Tue Aug 13 21:19:57 2024
    On 13/08/2024 17:12, John Larkin wrote:
    Long term, the ARM license may be a liability.

    WTF?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Tue Aug 13 23:27:32 2024
    Andy Burns wrote:

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    They arrived today (quite good for ordering on Sunday)

    The tiny one lives up to its name, about the size of a mini SIM
    card, even the PGA one is only an inch square, has nothing but 1/10" pin layout, should be good for embedding ... I'll get a picoplus2 when the
    second batch become available

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Wed Aug 14 00:41:02 2024
    On Tue, 2024-08-13 at 23:27 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
    picoplus2

    That's on my desk already. Had a play with it yesterday. Led fading
    works, as does usb serial comms. Might have to solder the headers and
    get uart comms up and runinng for debugging.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to Theo on Wed Aug 14 09:01:10 2024
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
    John Larkin <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
    Long term, the ARM license may be a liability.

    Arm are an investor in RPi, so not sure why they would give them a
    hard time over licensing.

    Indeed. Also, picking on RPi would be particularly bad publicity.

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Wed Aug 14 11:20:10 2024
    Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
    Andy Burns wrote:

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    They arrived today (quite good for ordering on Sunday)

    The tiny one lives up to its name, about the size of a mini SIM
    card, even the PGA one is only an inch square, has nothing but 1/10" pin layout, should be good for embedding ... I'll get a picoplus2 when the
    second batch become available

    It's nice how they've integrated more stuff into the SiP, so you can make things smaller. The trouble with the original Pico was that it took up more board space than say an ESP32.

    Now, if somebody would do a module pin-compatible with the ESP32 modules
    that includes wifi, then things will be Very Interesting. Looks possible - there's a board with the RP2350 and an ESP32-WROOM side by side which shows
    the comparison: https://www.switch-science.com/collections/%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89/products/9796
    and there might be space to get the wifi chip inside the footprint.
    Couldn't say whether the RF performance would let you though.

    What's nice also is that it's a Proper Arm Chip, rather than the weird Tensilica Xtensa CPU architecture in the base ESP32s. Some programming languages like Rust are better supported on Arm than on oddball CPUs. ESP32 have gone to RISC-V for some of the newer ones (but not all, so you can't
    get all the features with a RISC-V CPU) which is better, but with the RP2350 you get all the boxes ticked in one package. Aside from wifi, of course.

    (apparently the wireless version of the Pico 2 is due end of the year - meanwhile people are putting RP2350s with ESP32 modules on boards like the above. Maybe RPi have do some certification work before releasing).

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Joe@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Wed Aug 14 11:17:20 2024
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:21:26 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:


    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.


    You sound like a young'n.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Joe on Wed Aug 14 13:27:53 2024
    On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 11:17 +0000, Joe wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:21:26 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:


    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.


    You sound like a young'n.

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Wed Aug 14 14:57:51 2024
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 13:27:53 +0100
    Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.

    Well I could - and mention the joys of using a card saw to unblock
    the 1442.

    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...

    If you prepared the cards with sequence numbers in columns 73-80
    then you just dropped them into a sorter (if the site had a sorter) -
    otherwise it was less easy. It's the paper tape that someone trod on while
    you were feeding it into the spooler that was less fun.

    No I do not miss those days, nor the overflowing box of waste paper beside the printer under the notice ...

    TOWARDS THE
    PAPERLESS
    OFFICE

    That adorned one place where I worked on developing machines with
    64K and twin floppies.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Dennis@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Wed Aug 14 10:24:10 2024
    On 8/14/24 07:27, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:


    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...
    That is why you put a sequence number in col 73-80. A few passes on the
    sorter and no problem.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From john larkin @3:770/3 to alex.buell@munted.eu on Wed Aug 14 09:55:50 2024
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 13:27:53 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:

    On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 11:17 +0000, Joe wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:21:26 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit
    <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:


    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.


    You sound like a young'n.

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...

    My first real computer was a PDP-8 with 4K of 12-bit core memory and a
    teletype machine with a 10 char/sec paper tape reader-punch.

    It was actually useful, running the Focal interpretive language. I
    modeled a steamship propulsion system and got us some megabucks of
    business. Actually, I was just a kid at the time.

    Cards were a great improvement over paper tape. Draw a diagonal stripe
    (color coded!) across each subroutine in case you ever droppped them,
    but don't drop them.

    You could look at a 2-foot long card deck and *see* the program
    structure.

    Computers used to boot a lot faster in those days. And had less bugs.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to Dennis on Wed Aug 14 16:52:27 2024
    On 2024-08-14, Dennis <dennis@none.none> wrote:

    On 8/14/24 07:27, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...

    That is why you put a sequence number in col 73-80. A few passes on the sorter and no problem.

    Sometimes you got lucky, and the dropped deck would smear itself
    across the floor in such a way that, if you were careful, you could
    gather the cards up in sequence.

    The sequence numbers in columns 73-80 were primarily for source code.
    Data decks were usually sorted on various other columns (e.g. customer
    number and/or date).

    I soon gave up on punching sequence numbers in source decks.
    Our programs were subject to frequent modifications that required
    moving large blocks of code around, which meant that the sequence
    numbers became meaningless. You would have to re-punch the deck
    using a utility that re-generated the sequence numbers - and then
    you'd need to run the new deck through an interpreter so you could
    read what was on the cards. It usually wasn't worth the effort.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
    / \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Wed Aug 14 19:44:41 2024
    On 14/08/2024 13:27, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 11:17 +0000, Joe wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:21:26 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit
    <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:


    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.


    You sound like a young'n.

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...

    My first exposure was paper tape. I typed in my program one week, left
    it, and it came back the next with syntax errors.
    I treble checked it and could see none.
    I resubmitted it and the next week it ran,. Well sort of. there was a
    software bug ,
    I gave up completely on computers until they turned up with keyboards
    screens and floppy disks.


    --
    Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
    Mark Twain

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  • From Chris Townley@3:770/3 to john larkin on Wed Aug 14 19:40:25 2024
    On 14/08/2024 17:55, john larkin wrote:
    <snip>

    Computers used to boot a lot faster in those days. And had less bugs.


    Not sure about that - in the late 80's our Vax8530 took about 30 mins
    for a reboot.

    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a minute
    to reboot

    --
    Chris

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  • From john larkin @3:770/3 to All on Wed Aug 14 12:07:19 2024
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:40:25 +0100, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk>
    wrote:

    On 14/08/2024 17:55, john larkin wrote:
    <snip>

    Computers used to boot a lot faster in those days. And had less bugs.


    Not sure about that - in the late 80's our Vax8530 took about 30 mins
    for a reboot.

    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a minute
    to reboot

    MS-DOS was a lot faster, on a 2 MHz 8088.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From druck@3:770/3 to john larkin on Wed Aug 14 21:06:02 2024
    On 14/08/2024 20:07, john larkin wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:40:25 +0100, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk>
    Not sure about that - in the late 80's our Vax8530 took about 30 mins
    for a reboot.

    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a minute
    to reboot

    MS-DOS was a lot faster, on a 2 MHz 8088.
    The BBC Micro (2MHz 6502) was even faster booting from it's OS ROM.
    The longest part was doing the startup beep.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to john larkin on Wed Aug 14 22:07:50 2024
    On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 12:07 -0700, john larkin wrote:
    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a
    minute to reboot

    MS-DOS was a lot faster, on a 2 MHz 8088.

    Even quicker with a 8MHz NEC V30 (8086 equivalent)

    One of these chips is sitting on my bookshelf. Maybe I'll put it on a breadboard and do some wirewrapping with some support chips and have a
    play. :-D
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

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  • From Gordon Henderson@3:770/3 to news@druck.org.uk on Thu Aug 15 13:43:00 2024
    In article <v9j2na$j4rf$1@dont-email.me>, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:
    On 14/08/2024 20:07, john larkin wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:40:25 +0100, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk>
    Not sure about that - in the late 80's our Vax8530 took about 30 mins
    for a reboot.

    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a minute >>> to reboot

    MS-DOS was a lot faster, on a 2 MHz 8088.
    The BBC Micro (2MHz 6502) was even faster booting from it's OS ROM.
    The longest part was doing the startup beep.

    Boot times are always a somewhat interesting subjest - Yes, the Beeb
    and Apple II spend more time doing the Beep at startup than anything
    else. the Beeb had an advantage over the Apple II in that the filing
    system was in ROM where on the Apple II it had to boot from a small PROM
    on the disk controller card then load up DOS which took extra seconds...

    Booting a Pi can appear to take a long time, but most of that is the
    stuff post-kernel being loaded. I have my own little bare-metal OS for
    the Pi and it loads and can be running in well under a second - unless
    I want USB and that, for some reason takes another second to initialise
    (it's not my code, I stole it from elsewhere - there's only so much you
    can do on your own on something as complex as a Pi these days)

    I like the idea of the Pico 2 and my even look at it - I wrote my little
    OS initially on the 65816 then migrated it to RISC-V and this is a very
    nice RISC-V platform for it - decent RAM, nice peripherals and a 2nd
    CPU too.

    I have also ported it to ARM (on the Pi v1) but it's ARM32 assembler
    and I'm not sure I fancy re-writing it (again) in Thumb32 instructions...

    -Gordon

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  • From Scott Alfter@3:770/3 to gordon+usenet@drogon.net on Thu Aug 15 14:42:29 2024
    In article <v9l0l4$vl0t$1@dont-email.me>,
    Gordon Henderson <gordon+usenet@drogon.net> wrote:
    In article <v9j2na$j4rf$1@dont-email.me>, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote: >>On 14/08/2024 20:07, john larkin wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:40:25 +0100, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk>
    Not sure about that - in the late 80's our Vax8530 took about 30 mins
    for a reboot.

    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a minute >>>> to reboot

    MS-DOS was a lot faster, on a 2 MHz 8088.
    The BBC Micro (2MHz 6502) was even faster booting from it's OS ROM.
    The longest part was doing the startup beep.

    Boot times are always a somewhat interesting subjest - Yes, the Beeb
    and Apple II spend more time doing the Beep at startup than anything
    else. the Beeb had an advantage over the Apple II in that the filing
    system was in ROM where on the Apple II it had to boot from a small PROM
    on the disk controller card then load up DOS which took extra seconds...

    If you didn't care about not being in DOS, you could switch it on, hit Ctrl-Reset, and get dropped into a BASIC prompt right away. If a disk controller wasn't installed at all (it was about a year from the
    introduction of the Apple II to the introduction of the Disk II floppy
    drive), it'd boot straight to BASIC.

    After I added a hard drive to my IIe, the longest delay in starting the computer was waiting for the drive to spin up. :)

    --
    _/_
    / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
    (IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
    \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Kerr-Mudd, John@3:770/3 to Scott Alfter on Thu Aug 15 16:36:50 2024
    On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:42:29 GMT
    scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) wrote:

    In article <v9l0l4$vl0t$1@dont-email.me>,
    Gordon Henderson <gordon+usenet@drogon.net> wrote:
    In article <v9j2na$j4rf$1@dont-email.me>, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote: >>On 14/08/2024 20:07, john larkin wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:40:25 +0100, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> >>>> Not sure about that - in the late 80's our Vax8530 took about 30 mins >>>> for a reboot.

    My X86 VMS instance in a VM on modest hardware, takes less than a minute >>>> to reboot

    MS-DOS was a lot faster, on a 2 MHz 8088.
    The BBC Micro (2MHz 6502) was even faster booting from it's OS ROM.
    The longest part was doing the startup beep.

    Boot times are always a somewhat interesting subjest - Yes, the Beeb
    and Apple II spend more time doing the Beep at startup than anything
    else. the Beeb had an advantage over the Apple II in that the filing
    system was in ROM where on the Apple II it had to boot from a small PROM
    on the disk controller card then load up DOS which took extra seconds...

    If you didn't care about not being in DOS, you could switch it on, hit Ctrl-Reset, and get dropped into a BASIC prompt right away. If a disk controller wasn't installed at all (it was about a year from the
    introduction of the Apple II to the introduction of the Disk II floppy drive), it'd boot straight to BASIC.

    After I added a hard drive to my IIe, the longest delay in starting the computer was waiting for the drive to spin up. :)

    I have/had a EEEpc that'd boot to a cutdown linux & open a browser
    (FF2.0) in about 10s from pressing "on" button. Of course very little on
    the internets these days will work with a basic html browser; loads of webshites seem to have to download a heap of javascript and large
    pictures before toggling to telling you your browser is no longer
    supported.

    --
    Bah, and indeed Humbug.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Fri Aug 16 05:52:30 2024
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 09:07:18 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 22:32:38 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:

    Most interestingly enough, you can actually boot up with one RISCV core
    and one ARM core, two RISCV cores or both ARM cores. Mixed processor
    cores that'll be fun to see what we can do with that.

    In real life, done is better than fun.

    Remember, the Raspberry Pi’s whole raison d’être is about experimenting and having fun.

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  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Sat Aug 17 07:15:28 2024
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:24:13 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

    Richard Kettlewell wrote:

    It’s a slightly odd device, isn’t it?

    If you wanted to explore RISC-V then there’s more flexible options.

    Maybe the RISC-V cores are to "send a message" to ARM?

    It didn’t even have to be deliberate: just a natural, inevitable
    consequence of current economic and technological trends.

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  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sat Aug 17 07:17:17 2024
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:57:51 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    TOWARDS THE
    PAPERLESS
    OFFICE

    People loved to laugh at that over many, many years. I’m not sure how much paper we’re producing nowadays compared to, say, 30 years ago, but as a proportion of the total amount of data we are typically dealing with in
    our everyday lives, I think paper now accounts for maybe something on the
    order of 1%.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sat Aug 17 07:13:38 2024
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:20:50 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST)

    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    It's easy to write a core

    I wish I could take that statement back to say 1975.

    What happened to the idea of “silicon compilers”? As I recall, they would automate the process of turning a high-level schematic into a low-level transistor network.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Charlie Gibbs on Sat Aug 17 07:18:28 2024
    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:52:27 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

    I soon gave up on punching sequence numbers in source decks.
    Our programs were subject to frequent modifications that required moving large blocks of code around, which meant that the sequence numbers
    became meaningless.

    This is why you didn’t have the sequence go up in steps of 1, but use
    larger steps, like say 100. That made it easier to insert new cards with in-between numbers.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Theo on Sat Aug 17 07:14:19 2024
    On 13 Aug 2024 18:04:07 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

    Arm are an investor in RPi, so not sure why they would give them a hard
    time over licensing.

    Because lawyers.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Sat Aug 17 09:15:11 2024
    On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:17:17 -0000 (UTC)
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:57:51 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    TOWARDS THE
    PAPERLESS
    OFFICE

    People loved to laugh at that over many, many years. I’m not sure how
    much paper we’re producing nowadays compared to, say, 30 years ago, but

    Oh we've pretty much achieved it by now, more than forty years on
    from that sign.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Sat Aug 17 09:12:18 2024
    On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:13:38 -0000 (UTC)
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    What happened to the idea of “silicon compilers”? As I recall, they would automate the process of turning a high-level schematic into a low-level transistor network.

    VHDL, ULAs and FPGAs happened to it.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Sat Aug 17 16:45:28 2024
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:20:50 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST)

    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    It's easy to write a core

    I wish I could take that statement back to say 1975.

    What happened to the idea of “silicon compilers”? As I recall, they would automate the process of turning a high-level schematic into a low-level transistor network.

    That's how all chip design works today. Except we write code, not
    schematics. Code - VHDL/(System)Verilog, higher level hardware description langauges like Bluespec and Chisel - scale better than schematics.

    The compiler takes that and produces a netlist of 'gates' (often more complicated things than regular logic gates, eg lookup tables, adders,
    memory elements and such) and the place and route tool decides how to pack
    them onto the chip (either laying down transistor shapes for an ASIC or
    fititng to existing structures as on FPGAs) and wire them up.

    Theo

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun Aug 18 10:08:21 2024
    On 17/08/2024 09:15, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:17:17 -0000 (UTC)
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:57:51 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    TOWARDS THE
    PAPERLESS
    OFFICE

    People loved to laugh at that over many, many years. I’m not sure how
    much paper we’re producing nowadays compared to, say, 30 years ago, but

    Oh we've pretty much achieved it by now, more than forty years on
    from that sign.

    Its been hard, but by dint of scanning almost every bit of paper I get,
    I am nearly there.

    --
    “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established
    authorities are wrong.”

    ― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

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  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Sun Aug 18 23:11:23 2024
    On 2024-08-17, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:52:27 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

    I soon gave up on punching sequence numbers in source decks.
    Our programs were subject to frequent modifications that required moving
    large blocks of code around, which meant that the sequence numbers
    became meaningless.

    This is why you didn’t have the sequence go up in steps of 1, but use larger steps, like say 100. That made it easier to insert new cards with in-between numbers.

    That definitely helps. But certain operations, e.g. re-factoring code,
    involve moving large blocks of code around. That's when things break
    down. Oh well, there's still the diagonal strip along the top of the
    deck - although that too gets messed up when moving large blocks of code.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
    / \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sun Aug 18 23:37:38 2024
    On 2024-08-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 17/08/2024 09:15, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 07:17:17 -0000 (UTC)
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:57:51 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    TOWARDS THE
    PAPERLESS
    OFFICE

    People loved to laugh at that over many, many years. I’m not sure how
    much paper we’re producing nowadays compared to, say, 30 years ago, but >>
    Oh we've pretty much achieved it by now, more than forty years on
    from that sign.

    Its been hard, but by dint of scanning almost every bit of paper I get,
    I am nearly there.

    Still, the real problem is not the paper, but the stuff written on it.
    And without paper slowing things down, bureaucratic bloat is free to
    grow faster than ever.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
    / \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Chris Jones@3:770/3 to John Larkin on Mon Aug 19 22:04:19 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 13/08/2024 12:43 pm, John Larkin wrote:
    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 18:41:59 +0200, Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk>
    wrote:

    On 8/11/24 23:07, John Larkin wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:04:36 -0700, John Larkin
    <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk>
    wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or >>>>> RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> >>>>> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize
    the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!


    read the part on how the build in buck converter needs a custom inductor
    with polarity marking to work, and tell there is something seriously
    wrong with it

    The polarized inducor is strange. I'd expect that a small shielded
    inductor would work fine. It is interesting to have a switching
    regulator on a CPU chip... near a 12-bit ADC!

    I don't think they know much about how to do ADCs yet.

    Have a look at the performance of the RP2040 ADC - it is awful!

    http://pico-adc.markomo.me/

    I hope the new one is better.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From john larkin @3:770/3 to lugnut808@spam.yahoo.com on Mon Aug 19 07:38:23 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Mon, 19 Aug 2024 22:04:19 +1000, Chris Jones
    <lugnut808@spam.yahoo.com> wrote:

    On 13/08/2024 12:43 pm, John Larkin wrote:
    On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 18:41:59 +0200, Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk>
    wrote:

    On 8/11/24 23:07, John Larkin wrote:
    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:04:36 -0700, John Larkin
    <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

    On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:45:42 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> >>>>> wrote:

    Surprised nobody has mentioned the Pico2 boards (based on RP2350A or >>>>>> RP2350B chips, instead of RP2040).

    2x ARM cores plus 2x RISC-V cores (perm any 2 from 4)
    150 MHz with FPU instead of 133MHz without
    lower power consumption
    more I/O pins (B model only?)

    I really ought to buy a couple for tinkering ...

    official boards not available yet, but 3rd party boards are, e.g.

    <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603> >>>>>> <https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651> >>>>>
    As of now, Digikey shows no stock on the Pico2 and doesn't recognize >>>>> the RP2350 chip as a product. Ditto Mouser.

    The fast floats look great. I wonder how fast they are.

    The RP2350 data sheet is 1347 pages!


    read the part on how the build in buck converter needs a custom inductor >>> with polarity marking to work, and tell there is something seriously
    wrong with it

    The polarized inducor is strange. I'd expect that a small shielded
    inductor would work fine. It is interesting to have a switching
    regulator on a CPU chip... near a 12-bit ADC!

    I don't think they know much about how to do ADCs yet.

    Have a look at the performance of the RP2040 ADC - it is awful!

    http://pico-adc.markomo.me/

    I hope the new one is better.



    It's tough to put a good 12-bit ADC on a 70 cent dual-core CPU chip.
    The silicon process, the thermals, the ground loop and noise
    environment, are all wrong.

    The 2040 ADC has chunks of missing codes. It's probably usable as a
    7-bit, 1% ADC. Some lowpass filtering, with some dithering, would
    improve it but if you want precision, buy a separate ADC.

    We use the ADCs in FPGAs and some other ARM processors, for crude
    things like checking power supplies. Not for sellable instrumentation.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From wmartin@3:770/3 to All on Mon Aug 19 20:18:02 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    Hi All,
    Anyone doing stuff with both cores on the Pico? I just grabbed the Pico extension for Visual Code to poke it & see what it does, had an
    interesting first adventure. It does not seem to know anything about
    setting up a muticore project, so I had it generate a simple project
    that it did understand, just "example" level stuff, replaced the
    generated .c file with my own little test case...#include
    "pico/multicore.h" is not findable. So, looking at the generated
    compiler commands file, I added in a -I/home/.../include explicitly to
    see what happens. No change, still not found. hmm. Is there some magic
    caching going on here? Next, I added a -D for the multicore library,
    still no change. Noticed that I had forgotten to add the pico_multicore
    lib to the CMakeLists.txt file and behold it builds now, no missing .h
    files. So my "solution" isn't really good for anything more than a
    casual kicking the tires thing, and I'd really appreciate it if sommeone
    could guide me a little on how to do this "right". Do I just have to
    wait for the VSCode extension to get smarter, or is there a better way
    to get those .h & .lib paths known to the compiler?
    Thanks,
    Bill

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Michael J. Mahon@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Wed Aug 21 18:35:51 2024
    Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:
    On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 11:17 +0000, Joe wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:21:26 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit
    <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:


    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.


    You sound like a young'n.

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...

    That’s why you draw a diagonal line across the top of the deck/tray with a magic marker! And why you use different color markers as significant
    revisions are made. ;-)

    --
    -michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://michaeljmahon.com

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Gerhard Hoffmann@3:770/3 to All on Thu Aug 22 02:01:25 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    Am 13.08.24 um 17:55 schrieb John Larkin:

    I like the Pi for more reasons than the cost. The chips have long-term availability guarentees, the documentation is excellent, and there are zillions of kids out there who are familiar with the Pi culture.

    I could not find a CPU chip manual in an hour for my new 8GB RP5
    that allowed me to use SPI, so I shelved it and went with the old
    BBB and its PRU. So far about documentation excellence.

    Gerhard

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to dk4xp@arcor.de on Thu Aug 22 06:37:19 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On a sunny day (Thu, 22 Aug 2024 02:01:25 +0200) it happened Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> wrote in <va5v4l$1g4lk$2@solani.org>:

    Am 13.08.24 um 17:55 schrieb John Larkin:

    I like the Pi for more reasons than the cost. The chips have long-term
    availability guarentees, the documentation is excellent, and there are
    zillions of kids out there who are familiar with the Pi culture.

    I could not find a CPU chip manual in an hour for my new 8GB RP5
    that allowed me to use SPI, so I shelved it and went with the old
    BBB and its PRU. So far about documentation excellence.

    Gerhard

    I decided to stop with newer Raspberry Pis after this 8 GB Pi4 I am using to post this.

    A 35 dollar HD TV satellite box is a faster better media player,
    Pis take ever more power..

    Is not Pi5 a downgraded Pi4?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Thu Aug 22 22:08:03 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 22/08/2024 07:37, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    I decided to stop with newer Raspberry Pis after this 8 GB Pi4 I am using to post this.

    A 35 dollar HD TV satellite box is a faster better media player,

    Try a media optimised OS such as Kodi, rather than a general purpose
    distro if you want to use a Pi as a media player.

    Pis take ever more power..

    Don't confuse the availability of a larger power supply with the Pi 5
    taking more power - it's not much different to the Pi 4. However, as you *could* attach 4 USB devices and a PCIe device, the PSU is rated to cope
    with the maximum current all of those devices could use simultanously.
    If you won't be doing that, you can use the Pi 4 PSU.

    Is not Pi5 a downgraded Pi4?

    No, it's a new SOC which is about 3x faster than a Pi 4, and can use
    NVME SSDs and other PCIe devices.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to news@druck.org.uk on Fri Aug 23 06:19:06 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On a sunny day (Thu, 22 Aug 2024 22:08:03 +0100) it happened druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote in <va89bj$iak9$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 22/08/2024 07:37, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    I decided to stop with newer Raspberry Pis after this 8 GB Pi4 I am using to post this.

    A 35 dollar HD TV satellite box is a faster better media player,

    Try a media optimised OS such as Kodi, rather than a general purpose
    distro if you want to use a Pi as a media player.

    Its ultra HD these days on satellite :-)
    Just got a new Samsung TV...

    In the old days I had to buy a decoder key from Raspberry to even look at mpeg!


    Pis take ever more power..

    Don't confuse the availability of a larger power supply with the Pi 5
    taking more power - it's not much different to the Pi 4. However, as you >*could* attach 4 USB devices and a PCIe device, the PSU is rated to cope
    with the maximum current all of those devices could use simultanously.
    If you won't be doing that, you can use the Pi 4 PSU.

    Is not Pi5 a downgraded Pi4?

    No, it's a new SOC which is about 3x faster than a Pi 4, and can use
    NVME SSDs and other PCIe devices.

    OK, thank you for thr info
    I have 2 Pi4 now each with a sitecom USB hub and a 4 TB Toshiba harddisk
    plus some cameras (infrared too) plus several RTL_SDR stick plus some audio USB sticks etc..
    all on 24/7 on a UPS...
    Plus various older Pis ...

    Time for a change ;-)

    Best performance is from an older Pi4 4 GB in a metal housing with a build in fan..
    been extremly reliable so far, but no WiFi that way.
    Records security cams 24/7, radiation. weather, air traffic, shipping traffic.. more stuff... plays audio too.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Fri Aug 23 07:09:03 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 06:19:06 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    In the old days I had to buy a decoder key from Raspberry to even look
    at mpeg!

    Presumably that was only to activate the decoder hardware. Otherwise
    FFmpeg, VLC etc could play it just fine, just with a bit more CPU usage.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to D'Oliveiro on Fri Aug 23 09:22:20 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On a sunny day (Fri, 23 Aug 2024 07:09:03 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in <va9cif$qu2h$3@dont-email.me>:

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 06:19:06 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    In the old days I had to buy a decoder key from Raspberry to even look
    at mpeg!

    Presumably that was only to activate the decoder hardware. Otherwise
    FFmpeg, VLC etc could play it just fine, just with a bit more CPU usage.

    I would not play smooth.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to druck on Fri Aug 23 10:36:20 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 22/08/2024 22:08, druck wrote:
    On 22/08/2024 07:37, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    Pis take ever more power..

    Don't confuse the availability of a larger power supply with the Pi 5
    taking more power - it's not much different to the Pi 4. However, as you *could* attach 4 USB devices and a PCIe device, the PSU is rated to cope
    with the maximum current all of those devices could use simultanously.
    If you won't be doing that, you can use the Pi 4 PSU.


    No, that is true, and my Pi 4 can just handle two USB SSD drives. JUST.
    Not three though.

    BUT even doing sod all it still draws enough to get its temperature up
    into the 50's°C. As do the drives into the 40s°C

    Which the Pi zero also does

    I think that as a desktop machine Pi 4s and 5s power consumption is
    approaching that of a good intel chipset *for equivalent performance*.

    (these temps may be of interest)

    PI 4B (headless) equipped with 2 SSD
    =======================
    CPU temp=52.1'C
    Disk 1= 40°C
    Disk 2 =44°C

    PI zero 1 (headless)
    ===========
    CPU temp=43.9'C

    PI zero 2 (headless)
    ===========
    CPU temp=39.5'C

    --
    "Women actually are capable of being far more than the feminists will
    let them."

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Aug 23 11:07:50 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:36:20 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    I think that as a desktop machine Pi 4s and 5s power consumption is approaching that of a good intel chipset *for equivalent performance*.

    The rise of ARM caused Intel and AMD to pay a *lot* more attention
    to power consumption which has indeed resulted in the gap closing
    especially at desktop levels of performance.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Fri Aug 23 12:19:59 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    In comp.sys.raspberry-pi Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 06:19:06 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    In the old days I had to buy a decoder key from Raspberry to even look
    at mpeg!

    Presumably that was only to activate the decoder hardware. Otherwise
    FFmpeg, VLC etc could play it just fine, just with a bit more CPU usage.

    It was to pay the patent licence fees for using the hardware decoder. FOSS software decode got around them by not having anyone the patent holders
    could meaningfully sue.

    Since that was 12 years ago, perhaps the patents have now expired?

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to D'Oliveiro on Fri Aug 23 10:33:21 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On a sunny day (Fri, 23 Aug 2024 07:09:03 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in <va9cif$qu2h$3@dont-email.me>:

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 06:19:06 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    In the old days I had to buy a decoder key from Raspberry to even look
    at mpeg!

    Presumably that was only to activate the decoder hardware. Otherwise
    FFmpeg, VLC etc could play it just fine, just with a bit more CPU usage.

    I would not play smooth.

    PS:
    Maybe good to look around a bit:
    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/what-i-learned-when-i-replaced-my-cheap-pi-5-pc-with-a-no-name-amazon-mini-desktop/

    My core I5 Samsung laptop, now > 10 years old, is soooo much faster
    browsing with Ubuntu and firefox.

    ARM is not a solution to everything.

    Sure GPIO is cool,
    but I have PCI cards with parport for I/O in my normal PCs..
    So maybe for I/O applications just use a <10 dollar Pico2?
    (at least it also has a RISC core?)
    Have not ordered one yet... Not in the online shop here yet last monday.

    Or if no extreme speed is needed I use Microchip PICs:
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/pic/index.html
    You do not need a filesystem if you have only one 'subject' that needs
    storing data, just write sector by sector.
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/index.html

    Too much bloat these days and Linux with all the rathead shit is becoming a nuisance.

    We went to the moon in the sixties of last century and came back
    with computing power less than a Raspberry.
    Now astronuts get stuck on the ISS with billions of dollars and sup[p]er computers to do the work.

    Back to basics guys!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Fri Aug 23 13:42:00 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On 23/08/2024 11:07, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:36:20 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    I think that as a desktop machine Pi 4s and 5s power consumption is
    approaching that of a good intel chipset *for equivalent performance*.

    The rise of ARM caused Intel and AMD to pay a *lot* more attention
    to power consumption which has indeed resulted in the gap closing
    especially at desktop levels of performance.

    Well MIPs per mW is where its at these days as parallelism can sorta
    increase MIPS to whatever level you want.

    Funnily enuff, the race to more MIPS is likely to drive adoption of
    nuclear power more than any other factor...

    I don't see data centres 'throttling back' servers after sunset, or on
    calm days...

    --
    "Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
    higher education positively fortifies it."

    - Stephen Vizinczey

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Aug 24 07:26:54 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:33:21 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    Too much bloat these days and Linux with all the rathead shit is
    becoming a nuisance.

    Linux can be as small as you want. Look at Damn Small Linux, for example.
    You can actually build a kernel to run on certain CPUs with no memory- management hardware.

    We went to the moon in the sixties of last century and came back with computing power less than a Raspberry.

    There was actually a whole lot of computing power on the ground, in the
    form of those IBM mainframes, backing up the guys in space. Everything
    they did had to be managed in coordination with ground control, all the
    steps worked out in advance.

    Now astronuts get stuck on the ISS with billions of dollars and
    sup[p]er computers to do the work.

    Bit more Government management of the process back then, bit more trust to private corporations like Boeing, with its stellar reputation for
    relentlessly pursuing reliability over profits, these days.

    Coincidence? You be the judge.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Aug 24 08:56:12 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:33:21 GMT
    Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:

    We went to the moon in the sixties of last century and came back
    with computing power less than a Raspberry.

    Hohmann worked out the details of travel around the solar system
    using the computing power in his head and the storage afforded by a pencil
    and paper. The computing requirements for space travel are not that large.

    Now astronuts get stuck on the ISS with billions of dollars and sup[p]er computers to do the work.

    High quality engineering is a major requirement of space travel.
    NASA in the sixties had an effectively infinite budget and a culture of
    careful engineering going back to Edward Murphy of Murphy's law.

    Boeing are busy acquiring a reputation of careless engineering.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Single Stage to Orbit@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sat Aug 24 12:02:11 2024
    On Sat, 2024-08-24 at 08:56 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Boeing are busy acquiring a reputation of careless engineering.

    Primarily due to acquiring beancounters from the ruins of McDonnell
    Douglas who promptly inserted themselves into the culture of Boeing and
    stated taking shortcuts to make more profit without understanding the importance of having an engineering safety culture. It's cost them
    billions now.
    --
    Tactical Nuclear Kittens

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to D'Oliveiro on Sat Aug 24 12:32:59 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On a sunny day (Sat, 24 Aug 2024 07:26:54 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in <vac1vu$1ab6s$5@dont-email.me>:

    On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:33:21 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

    Too much bloat these days and Linux with all the rathead shit is
    becoming a nuisance.

    Linux can be as small as you want. Look at Damn Small Linux, for example.
    You can actually build a kernel to run on certain CPUs with no memory- >management hardware.

    I find
    https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
    interesting

    My Raspis and PCs all use fvwm as window manager and xfm as file manager
    and have 9 virtual screens with terminals.

    xfm -appmgr -geometry 1910x1054+0+0 &

    # xterms
    /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+1920+0 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+3840+0 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+0+1080 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -rv -geometry 270x75+1920+1080 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+3840+1080 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+0+2160 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+1920+2160 & /usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+3840+2160 &

    I use zsh as shell, much less typing required




    We went to the moon in the sixties of last century and came back with
    computing power less than a Raspberry.

    There was actually a whole lot of computing power on the ground, in the
    form of those IBM mainframes, backing up the guys in space. Everything
    they did had to be managed in coordination with ground control, all the
    steps worked out in advance.

    Indeed, but a 'whole lot' in those days was not even a small PC today.


    Now astronuts get stuck on the ISS with billions of dollars and
    sup[p]er computers to do the work.

    Bit more Government management of the process back then, bit more trust to >private corporations like Boeing, with its stellar reputation for >relentlessly pursuing reliability over profits, these days.

    Coincidence? You be the judge.

    Motivation, indeed now the motivation is profit only it seems.
    Back then it was to beat Russia to the moon...
    And US had Von Braun, who knew about rockets.
    Without him nothing would have flown, the US first rocket tests were a failure.

    I have heard Elon wants to go to Mars, I am waiting.
    That super heavy thing is interesting, he has some very good engineers.
    But chances are by the time they arrive at Mars they need Chinese Visa and money, pay landing rights.
    China just did a sample return mission from the backside of the moon.
    They invented the gunpowder too, long ago.

    As to going back to 'simple'
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/index.html
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/drop.html
    that was 2016-2017
    now they use it to drop explosives etc...

    All just done with a simple Microchip PIC
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/hsign.html

    It seems to me we only need ever more complex Linux just for the browser
    the plot is to make the OS ever more complex to force people to buy ever more powerful hardware
    The media content you see has not much more 'depth' but advertising increases.
    Microsoft used to buy shares in hardware companies before releasing the next bigger bloat
    the bloat would force the people to buy ever more powerful hardware, they use automatic updates to force the buying, how evil can you get.

    Evils like rathead would try to make their Linux versions non-portable non-compatible to lock in customers to their systems.
    Unfortunately some of their silly crap made it into the kernel.

    When Linus dies (is he still alive) and greed only rules where will it go.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Aug 24 14:37:43 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    the race to more MIPS is likely to drive adoption of
    nuclear power

    In the USA, Big Data is either buying-up the full output of nuclear
    plants, or buying the nuclear plants themselves.

    I don't see data centres 'throttling back' servers after sunset, or on
    calm days...

    Throttling in tune with renewable generation, maybe not, but "herding"
    multiple virtual servers onto a reduced number of physical hosts in tune
    with demand and shutting down some of the physical hosts is done.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Aug 24 14:08:01 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 12:32:59 GMT
    Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:

    But chances are by the time they arrive at Mars they need Chinese Visa
    and money, pay landing rights.

    <splort!> I always thought that that was one of the things Jos
    Whedon got right in Firefly - two languages in space Chines and English
    with people speaking a pidgin of both.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    For forms of government let fools contest
    Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Mon Aug 26 00:03:49 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 14:08:01 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 12:32:59 GMT Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
    wrote:

    But chances are by the time they arrive at Mars they need Chinese Visa
    and money, pay landing rights.

    <splort!> I always thought that that was one of the things Jos
    Whedon got right in Firefly - two languages in space Chines and English
    with people speaking a pidgin of both.

    But there are multiple Chinese languages. I know they are commonly called “dialects”, but it is also pointed out that, say, Mandarin and Cantonese are more different from each other than, say, English and Norwegian.

    There is the saying “a language is a dialect with an army”. I suppose
    there is a corollary to that: China ceased being a bunch of independent
    states around 220 BC.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun Aug 25 23:59:30 2024
    XPost: sci.electronics.design

    On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 08:56:12 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    Hohmann worked out the details of travel around the solar system
    using the computing power in his head and the storage afforded by a
    pencil and paper. The computing requirements for space travel are not
    that large.

    He was only able to come up with “minimum energy” transfer orbits that
    went fairly directly from body A to body B. Since then, we have worked out
    more complicated low-energy “slingshot” orbits that involve bouncing
    around the Solar System to match velocities with difficult-to-reach target bodies like comets. That required real computing power: there’s no way anybody could have worked that out with pencil and paper, even with a
    slide rule.

    And what about “halo” orbits, like at Earth-Moon L2, where the Chinese put their relay station for maintaining contact with their far-side rover, and where the James Webb telescope is located? You think you could work out
    the right numbers for those without a modern digital electronic computer? They’re not even properly stable, for a start.

    Boeing are busy acquiring a reputation of careless engineering.

    True, that. But are they too big to be allowed to fail?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Lars Poulsen@3:770/3 to Single Stage to Orbit on Thu Sep 12 19:30:00 2024
    On 8/14/2024 5:27 AM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
    On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 11:17 +0000, Joe wrote:
    On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:21:26 +0100, Single Stage to Orbit
    <alex.buell@munted.eu> wrote:


    I grew up with microcomputers that had 32K of RAM and tape players.
    In some ways I agree, in other ways I disgree.


    You sound like a young'n.

    I suppose you'll now tell us about the joys of using punched cards.
    I don't envy you the joys of sorting a pile of punched cards that's
    been dropped on the floor ...

    Diagonal colored sharpie stripes across the top of the deck, and
    periodic repunching with fresh sequence numbers on cols 73-80.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)