• Yoicks ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

    From gareth evans@3:770/3 to All on Thu Oct 28 10:05:24 2021
    Multicore 64 bit processor and 1/2 GB RAM for £15 ! ! ! ! ! !!

    When I set out as an assembly software engineer on a PDP11
    with 32 KB Core Store and paper tape operations, it cost
    about £10K whereas my annual salary as a graduate beginner
    was about £1350 PA, way back in 1972 and I thought that I
    was the bees' knees back then!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From gareth evans@3:770/3 to gareth evans on Thu Oct 28 10:43:02 2021
    On 28/10/2021 10:05, gareth evans wrote:
    Multicore 64 bit processor and 1/2 GB RAM for £15 ! ! ! ! ! !!

    When I set out as an assembly software engineer on a PDP11
    with 32 KB Core Store and paper tape operations, it cost
    about £10K whereas my annual salary as a graduate beginner
    was about £1350 PA, way back in 1972 and I thought that I
    was the bees' knees back then!


    Oops, forgot the ...

    https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2?mc_cid=d871881b1e&mc_eid=22518990c8

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to gareth evans on Thu Oct 28 14:03:46 2021
    On 28/10/2021 10:05, gareth evans wrote:
    Multicore 64 bit processor and 1/2 GB RAM for £15 ! ! ! ! ! !!

    When I set out as an assembly software engineer on a PDP11
    with 32 KB Core Store and paper tape operations, it cost
    about £10K whereas my annual salary as a graduate beginner
    was about £1350 PA, way back in 1972 and I thought that I
    was the bees' knees back then!

    I sometimes imagine what would have happened if someone had tossed a
    fully linux loaded laptop with C compiler at Alan Turing and the boys in
    the last war.



    --
    Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
    gospel of envy.

    Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

    Winston Churchill

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to gareth evans on Thu Oct 28 14:16:57 2021
    On 28/10/2021 10:43, gareth evans wrote:
    On 28/10/2021 10:05, gareth evans wrote:
    Multicore 64 bit processor and 1/2 GB RAM for £15 ! ! ! ! ! !!

    When I set out as an assembly software engineer on a PDP11
    with 32 KB Core Store and paper tape operations, it cost
    about £10K whereas my annual salary as a graduate beginner
    was about £1350 PA, way back in 1972 and I thought that I
    was the bees' knees back then!


    Oops, forgot the ...

    https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2?mc_cid=d871881b1e&mc_eid=22518990c8


    well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a problem :-)


    --
    It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house
    for the voice of the kingdom.

    Jonathan Swift

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Folderol@3:770/3 to David Taylor on Thu Oct 28 14:38:18 2021
    On Thu, 28 Oct 2021 14:26:22 +0100
    David Taylor <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

    On 28/10/2021 14:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a
    problem:-)

    Yes, more memory would be nice, but I have an app which is a little slow on the
    Pi Zero, and where the multiple cores would likely speed it up noticeably. I'm
    looking forward to testing it.

    Attach some relays and input protection, and it's perfect as the core of an HMI.

    Eat your hearts out Crestron and AMX :)

    --
    Basic

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From David Taylor@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Thu Oct 28 14:26:22 2021
    On 28/10/2021 14:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a problem:-)

    Yes, more memory would be nice, but I have an app which is a little slow on the Pi Zero, and where the multiple cores would likely speed it up noticeably. I'm looking forward to testing it.

    --
    Cheers,
    David
    Web: http://www.satsignal.eu

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From gareth evans@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Thu Oct 28 15:54:56 2021
    On 28/10/2021 14:03, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 28/10/2021 10:05, gareth evans wrote:
    Multicore 64 bit processor and 1/2 GB RAM for £15 ! ! ! ! ! !!

    When I set out as an assembly software engineer on a PDP11
    with 32 KB Core Store and paper tape operations, it cost
    about £10K whereas my annual salary as a graduate beginner
    was about £1350 PA, way back in 1972 and I thought that I
    was the bees' knees back then!

    I sometimes imagine what would have happened if someone had tossed a
    fully linux loaded laptop with C compiler at Alan Turing and the boys in
    the last war.




    Prosecuted for assault?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From paul lee@1:105/420 to The Natural Philosopher on Thu Oct 28 12:32:51 2021
    well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in the same Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/10/25 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (1:105/420)
  • From Geeknix@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 09:09:10 2021
    On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower
    in the same Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web interface as the user interface.


    I use mine to get my GNU/Linux command line fix. I use Mutt, SLRN,
    Newsbeuter, Lynx (for web and Gopher), Weechat, and access BBSes.

    It also runs; web server, onion server, SFTP, and NZB downloader.

    My RPi3 just bust so I got the RPi4 now.

    --
    Don't be afraid of the deep...
    --[ bbs.bottomlessabyss.net|https|telnet=2023|ssh=2222 ]--
    --[ Remove the fruit and digits for valid email address ]--
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Geeknix on Fri Oct 29 10:13:33 2021
    On 29/10/2021 10:09, Geeknix wrote:
    On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower
    in the same Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web
    interface as the user interface.


    I use mine to get my GNU/Linux command line fix. I use Mutt, SLRN, Newsbeuter, Lynx (for web and Gopher), Weechat, and access BBSes.

    It also runs; web server, onion server, SFTP, and NZB downloader.

    My RPi3 just bust so I got the RPi4 now.

    Oh, so its a user interfaced device with screen and keyboard?

    I thought that a zero wouldn't really run a gui, but never thought of
    running a console non - x session


    --
    “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
    the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

    - Bertrand Russell
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to paul lee on Fri Oct 29 09:48:37 2021
    On 28/10/2021 01:32, paul lee wrote:
    TN> well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a
    TN> problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in the same
    Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web
    interface as the user interface.




    --
    “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

    ― Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de
    M. de Voltaire
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 10:11:40 2021
    "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me...
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web interface
    as the user interface.

    I have two Pis.

    Pi 3B+ runs Cumulus weather station software, receiving temperature,
    rainfall, humidity and wind readings from a weather station, logging them
    and updating a website of them. It also runs a Node app which monitors and graphs the power consumption over time for a couple of freezers in the
    garage (Beko, so rated to well below freezing, before anyone comments!)
    using smart plugs: this is a crude way of checking that the freezers are working properly and have not a) stopped working altogether, or b) started working continuously because of lack of coolant; ideally I'd use a remote-monitored thermometer inside the freezer, but I can't find any of
    those for sale.

    Pi 4 runs TVHeadend PVR software to record TV programmes via DVB-S and DVB-T tuners. I save the recordings to a spinning (ie not solid-state) HDD which I SAMBA-share and then edit out commercials/continuity using VideoReDo on
    Windows before saving the recordings to shared folder structure on Windows which can be viewed on the TV via Plex. I also have another folder on the Pi shared as general-purpose NAS for files that I want to be accessible 24/7 without needing to turn on a Windows PC.

    Both Pis run Raspberry PiOS (aka Raspbian). I am cautious about updating software the Pi 4 after I found that an update (probably to the kernel)
    caused a lot of glitches on recordings from the DVB-S tuner, so I regressed
    to an older kernel and have stopped updating this Pi. I take images of both Pis' SD cards every few months so I've got a rollback point. I've also made copious notes about installation and configuration in case I decide to reinstall from scratch - as I had to do with the 3B after it refused to boot after a tidy restart one day: I never did get to the bottom of what had gone wrong, and it was quicker to reinstall than to spend any more time investigating.


    One cautionary tale. The Pi4 originally used a USB HDD plugged into a
    powered USB hub to power the HDD so the Pi didn't have to supply power. This had worked fine on the Pi 3B, but the Pi 4 refused to boot whilst the hub
    was powered; it hung indefinitely until I turned off the hub or unplugged
    the hub's USB from the Pi, at which point booting proceeded as normal. Some people suggested that certain hubs try to feed power back up the USB cable
    to the Pi, but I disproved that by making up a special lead on which I had
    cut the +5V line - this did not fix the problem. So I now use a SATA drive
    in a powered caddy, which works fine.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to All on Fri Oct 29 10:17:14 2021
    On 29/10/2021 10:11, NY wrote:
    "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me...
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what
    they did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from  internet radio stations. Using a web
    interface as the user interface.

    I have two Pis.

    Pi 3B+ runs Cumulus weather station software, receiving temperature, rainfall, humidity and wind readings from a weather station, logging
    them and updating a website of them. It also runs a Node app which
    monitors and graphs the power consumption over time for a couple of
    freezers in the garage (Beko, so rated to well below freezing, before
    anyone comments!) using smart plugs: this is a crude way of checking
    that the freezers are working properly and have not a) stopped working altogether, or b) started working continuously because of lack of
    coolant; ideally I'd use a remote-monitored thermometer inside the
    freezer, but I can't find any of those for sale.

    That sounds massively interesting.
    Smart plugs?


    Pi 4 runs TVHeadend PVR software to record TV programmes via DVB-S and
    DVB-T tuners. I save the recordings to a spinning (ie not solid-state)
    HDD which I SAMBA-share and then edit out commercials/continuity using VideoReDo on Windows before saving the recordings to shared folder
    structure on Windows which can be viewed on the TV via Plex. I also have another folder on the Pi shared as general-purpose NAS for files that I
    want to be accessible 24/7 without needing to turn on a Windows PC.

    Both Pis run Raspberry PiOS (aka Raspbian). I am cautious about updating software the Pi 4 after I found that an update (probably to the kernel) caused a lot of glitches on recordings from the DVB-S tuner, so I
    regressed to an older kernel and have stopped updating this Pi. I take
    images of both Pis' SD cards every few months so I've got a rollback
    point. I've also made copious notes about installation and configuration
    in case I decide to reinstall from scratch - as I had to do with the 3B
    after it refused to boot after a tidy restart one day: I never did get
    to the bottom of what had gone wrong, and it was quicker to reinstall
    than to spend any more time investigating.


    One cautionary tale. The Pi4 originally used a USB HDD plugged into a
    powered USB hub to power the HDD so the Pi didn't have to supply power.
    This had worked fine on the Pi 3B, but the Pi 4 refused to boot whilst
    the hub was powered; it hung indefinitely until I turned off the hub or unplugged the hub's USB from the Pi, at which point booting proceeded as normal. Some people suggested that certain hubs try to feed power back
    up the USB cable to the Pi, but I disproved that by making up a special
    lead on which I had cut the +5V line - this did not fix the problem. So
    I now use a SATA drive in a powered caddy, which works fine.

    Ah. Your second Pi is what my x86 server does.


    --
    “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
    the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

    - Bertrand Russell
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Joe@3:770/3 to me@privacy.invalid on Fri Oct 29 11:06:44 2021
    On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 10:11:40 +0100
    "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:


    One cautionary tale. The Pi4 originally used a USB HDD plugged into a
    powered USB hub to power the HDD so the Pi didn't have to supply
    power. This had worked fine on the Pi 3B, but the Pi 4 refused to
    boot whilst the hub was powered; it hung indefinitely until I turned
    off the hub or unplugged the hub's USB from the Pi, at which point
    booting proceeded as normal. Some people suggested that certain hubs
    try to feed power back up the USB cable to the Pi, but I disproved
    that by making up a special lead on which I had cut the +5V line -
    this did not fix the problem. So I now use a SATA drive in a powered
    caddy, which works fine.


    I have an old-ish (about to retire) Gigabyte MB, whose BIOS swears that
    booting from USB is disabled, but if I ever leave a USB stick in it by accident, the next boot hangs while it tries to find a non-existent
    bootloader on the thing.

    There is a hub permanently connected, which doesn't seem to worry it,
    but it will hang on any other USB device, there's apparently no
    timeout. Possibly there's an updated BIOS that fixes this, but in
    general I don't touch the BIOS unless it has a serious problem.

    --
    Joe
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Paul Hardy@3:770/3 to All on Fri Oct 29 10:45:33 2021
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    1) I have a Pi 4 running OpenMediaVault acting as primary file backup
    server for the home PCs, laptops etc.

    2) I have another Pi 4 running SimH and pretending (perfectly) to be a VAX running VMS 5.5-2 for a software archaeology project and archiving historic source code for posterity.

    3) I have a Pi Zero W with a one-wire temperature sensor, monitoring a temperamental freezer and sending me an email if it gets too hot or cold.

    4) I have a Pi Zero W with voice hat, running Google Assistant, as a Hey
    Google smart speaker in the living room to ask about the weather etc.

    5) I have a Pi 3B with a Pisound hat running Patchbox for music experiments with a midi concertina (not many of them about).

    Plus a few earlier machines that have been passed on to a local kid who’s interested in electronics.

    Regards,

    --
    Paul at the paulhardy.net domain
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From David Taylor@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 11:39:17 2021
    On 29/10/2021 09:48, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    This was from a few years back.

    https://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/index.html

    I also have RPi cards running amateur radio hotspots, and an RPi 400 running a Windows x86 program under the Twister OS.

    --
    Cheers,
    David
    Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Paul Hardy on Fri Oct 29 11:38:39 2021
    On 29/10/2021 10:45, Paul Hardy wrote:
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    1) I have a Pi 4 running OpenMediaVault acting as primary file backup
    server for the home PCs, laptops etc.

    2) I have another Pi 4 running SimH and pretending (perfectly) to be a VAX running VMS 5.5-2 for a software archaeology project and archiving historic source code for posterity.

    3) I have a Pi Zero W with a one-wire temperature sensor, monitoring a temperamental freezer and sending me an email if it gets too hot or cold.

    4) I have a Pi Zero W with voice hat, running Google Assistant, as a Hey Google smart speaker in the living room to ask about the weather etc.

    5) I have a Pi 3B with a Pisound hat running Patchbox for music experiments with a midi concertina (not many of them about).

    Plus a few earlier machines that have been passed on to a local kid who’s interested in electronics.

    Regards,

    Where did you find the time!...

    --
    Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 11:21:11 2021
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what
    they did with Pis.

    Personally, it’s just a small Linux box which happens to be aarch64
    rather than x86. So an environment for exploring the architecture,
    getting tripped up by platform-specific compiler bugs, etc.

    My colleagues use Pis as part of our testing infrastructure, using them
    to simulate human interactions with the hardware components of our
    product in an automatable way.

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Folderol@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 14:10:33 2021
    On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 09:48:37 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 28/10/2021 01:32, paul lee wrote:
    TN> well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a
    TN> problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in the same
    Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web >interface as the user interface.

    Full fat music soft-synth on a Pi4
    Sold a few to friends.
    http://www.musically.me.uk/YoshimiPi/index.html

    The current builds also include an arpeggiator and sequencer :)

    --
    Basic
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From David Higton@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 14:09:25 2021
    In message <slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    My main desktop computer is a Pi 3B+, running RISC OS.

    I have an old Pi running my central heating and hot water system. Home
    brew software, running on RISC OS. Includes web interface and voice
    control. Occasionally used for controlling Sonoff devices too, again
    including voice control.

    I have a Pi 3B+ running OpenMediaVault, with two drives, acting as a
    NAS, mainly for backups and storing photos and videos.

    There's an older Pi (I forget which model) running OpenVPN to secure
    web access to the heating system when away from home.

    Other than the main desktop, they run headless.

    I've got a couple more that I occasionally run up when I want to try
    something else.

    David
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Geeknix@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 13:11:59 2021
    On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 29/10/2021 10:09, Geeknix wrote:
    On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower
    in the same Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web
    interface as the user interface.


    I use mine to get my GNU/Linux command line fix. I use Mutt, SLRN,
    Newsbeuter, Lynx (for web and Gopher), Weechat, and access BBSes.

    It also runs; web server, onion server, SFTP, and NZB downloader.

    My RPi3 just bust so I got the RPi4 now.

    Oh, so its a user interfaced device with screen and keyboard?

    I thought that a zero wouldn't really run a gui, but never thought of
    running a console non - x session



    I SSH to the Pi from any machine. As I only use it for command line
    stuff with no X-Forwarding.

    --
    Don't be afraid of the deep...
    --[ bbs.bottomlessabyss.net|https|telnet=2023|ssh=2222 ]--
    --[ Remove the fruit and digits for valid email address ]--
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Aldridge@3:770/3 to All on Fri Oct 29 22:47:56 2021
    In article <slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me>, tnp@invalid.invalid says...
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Backup server (syncthing + btrfs)
    Meteor detector (plugged into an SDR looking at Graves)
    Christmas flashing lights :)
    TV server & PVR (tvheadend)
    Weather station
    Wildlife camera (Motion)
    Seed propagator thermostat (DS18B20 + Energenie switch)
    A couple of spares for playing with

    --
    John
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Oct 29 23:35:40 2021
    On 29/10/2021 09:48, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 28/10/2021 01:32, paul lee wrote:
      TN> well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution
    looking for a
      TN> problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in
    the same
    Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from  internet radio stations. Using a web interface as the user interface.



    All pis used as servers

    SMB disk server, rsnapshot
    Docker host: gitea, gollum, syncthing, motioneye, ocrmypdf, deluge

    Pretty much anything I want on all the time.

    This week I going to do an energy logger with my brand new ATHOM/Tasmota
    plugs, to find out if/why my little fridge + freezer are using 2 kWh per
    day and if the yearly defrosting makes a difference.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 02:02:17 2021
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Oh, so its a user interfaced device with screen and keyboard?

    I thought that a zero wouldn't really run a gui

    Sure, it's got plenty of power for that. The limit that I found is
    that they cheat a little (maybe a lot) with the RPi OS packages and
    eg. Firefox won't run because the package for it isn't compatible
    with the CPU architecture of the Pi Zero (1) ("armel" in Debian
    package talk). I expect that's because the package is actually
    adapted from the current Debian package, and Debian don't support
    the Pi Zero (1).

    PS. Model A, Model B, 2, Zero, 3 Model B+, Zero 2. This naming
    scheme is getting to be almost as confusing as ARM CPU
    architectures are.

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 02:23:21 2021
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 28/10/2021 01:32, paul lee wrote:
    TN> well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a
    TN> problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in the same
    Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    I wanted to decode P25 digital radio transmissions with a Pi Zero
    but it didn't have the oomph. Or at least not with the software I
    could find some time ago, everything seems to be "forked from a
    fork of a fork" sort of stuff and there's little clear
    documentation of the changes (though the maths is over my head
    anyway to be honest). I always get a bit fed up with it all when
    I try to get back to that actually, but I might summon up the
    strength for another attempt once this Zero 2 is obtainable.

    Much more successful, though still wanting for the power (or more
    to the point, the multiple CPU cores) of a Pi Zero 2, is this
    project that I've been working with others on for interfacing with
    the Vectrex video games console:
    http://www.ombertech.com/cnk/pitrex/wiki/

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to David Higton on Sat Oct 30 07:16:57 2021
    On 29/10/2021 14:09, David Higton wrote:
    In message <slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    My main desktop computer is a Pi 3B+, running RISC OS.

    I thought about that, but I have a few things that aren't ported to ARM
    to run here, and a few more things that need CPU grunt.


    I have an old Pi running my central heating and hot water system. Home
    brew software, running on RISC OS. Includes web interface and voice
    control. Occasionally used for controlling Sonoff devices too, again including voice control.

    Thought about doing that, but realised if I need to sell the house, it
    would be a downside.

    I have a Pi 3B+ running OpenMediaVault, with two drives, acting as a
    NAS, mainly for backups and storing photos and videos.

    I could possibly replace my server with a Pi, yes.

    There's an older Pi (I forget which model) running OpenVPN to secure
    web access to the heating system when away from home.

    Other than the main desktop, they run headless.

    yes. Beacuse I am in transition and upgrading all machines here, I do
    have at the moment thee screens and keyboards .

    Once the need to switch on one of them hasn't occurred for a few months,
    I will wipe it and then also remove the screen from the server perhaps - although its a handy second machine when friends visit.




    I've got a couple more that I occasionally run up when I want to try something else.

    David



    --
    "What do you think about Gay Marriage?"
    "I don't."
    "Don't what?"
    "Think about Gay Marriage."
    --- 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 Aldridge on Sat Oct 30 07:17:51 2021
    On 29/10/2021 22:47, John Aldridge wrote:
    Wildlife camera (Motion)

    Id be interested in hearing more about that.



    --
    To ban Christmas, simply give turkeys the vote.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Computer Nerd Kev on Sat Oct 30 07:36:20 2021
    On 30/10/2021 03:23, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    Or at least not with the software I
    could find some time ago, everything seems to be "forked from a
    fork of a fork" sort of stuff and there's little clear
    documentation of the changes

    Yes. I increasingly find that the interweb is full of 'scripts that will
    solve your problem' and is increasingly bereft of 'this is the
    documentation that will enable anyone else to write a better scripts
    than I hacked up'

    I have a routine called 'scrape' that is built out of libcurl, that
    essentially takes a URL and returns a pointer to the memory block
    containing the contents of that URL page

    it took a long time to develop, because all I found on lib curl was
    "this is an example, that works, ( but doesn't do what you want) "

    Exactly the same words could be applied to something else I was trying
    to do - some arbitrary audio signal processing in a browser's
    JavaScript. Eventually I found the right combination of magic spells,
    but really I didn't want and shouldn't have needed to have to learn so
    much about the details of javascript's asynch thread implementations to
    do that .

    Richard K complains about 'cargo culting' - well if you don't explain
    how stuff works to the 'islanders', rather than providing more packaged solutions to problems they don't have, it remains the most cost
    effective way of developing things.

    Sometimes I wonder if the reason why the gurus don't explain in detail
    how things work, is because they secretly cargo culted or random
    monkeyed it themselves and *don't actually know how it works* either:-)

    --
    "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics."

    Josef Stalin
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 10:25:43 2021
    On 29-10-2021 10:48, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    400: workbench computer, also testing distros with different sd cards.
    4: headless wired server booting from ssd, home webserver, development
    files backup, ssh entrypoint from outside, using free mathematica via
    vnc (so, still on 32-bit RPiOS), automated download script for 15-minute temperature graphs of the country (NL) which it makes into a movie every
    night, testing programs/scripts on a "slow" computer, general linux testbed. ZeroW: with Iqaudio board hooked up to the stereo for music streams via
    mpd and my own web interface.
    2x ZeroW: with cameras as (local) webcams to look out the windows.
    3A+: with another Iqaudio board for headphones on my desk.
    3B+: with 1TB 2.5" hdd at another location for off site backup.

    And you?
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 10:32:07 2021
    "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:slge6r$jcl$1@dont-email.me...
    It also runs a Node app which monitors and graphs the power consumption
    over time for a couple of freezers in the garage (Beko, so rated to well
    below freezing, before anyone comments!) using smart plugs: this is a
    crude way of checking that the freezers are working properly and have not
    a) stopped working altogether, or b) started working continuously because
    of lack of coolant; ideally I'd use a remote-monitored thermometer inside
    the freezer, but I can't find any of those for sale.

    That sounds massively interesting.
    Smart plugs?

    The smart plugs are TPLink HS110(UK). The app is one I found on the web https://travis-ci.org/github/jamesbarnett91/tplink-energy-monitor and I made
    a few cosmetic tweaks.

    A word of warning: of the various HS110s that we have, only some of them
    show up in the app. It's probably a firmware thing. It's not a problem: we
    just choose the ones that work as ones that we want to monitor; the rest
    still work in the TPlink app and can be monitored and controlled in that app but can't be graphed.

    https://i.postimg.cc/KYF1CMRy/Screenshot-2021-10-30-at-10-18-25-New-Beko-Energy-Monitor.png

    The Realtime Trend graph shows the usage over the past few minutes as a sideway-scrolling graph. The Logged Usage graph shows a regular cycling of
    the motor/compressor in the freezer, with an occasional higher power usage which I presume is the frost-free melting any accumulated ice on the heat exchanger. The Last 12 Months graph shows that more power is used in the
    summer when the ambient temperature is higher and the freezer is having to
    work harder to keep the inside down to temperature - the freezer is in an unheated (and uninsulated) garage, so the ambient temperature will vary more than inside a heated house.


    Our old freezer failed, luckily not too long before we discovered it so we
    were able to cook and re-freeze most of the contents. But it made us realise that we needed to be able to monitor the temperature to look for problems. Monitoring power consumption was a low-tech solution using technology that
    we already had.

    Would you believe that after we'd started monitoring freezer consumption, another freezer (in the kitchen) failed shortly after we bought it - on that occasion the graph showed continuous power usage with no cycling to maintain the correct temperature. Again we were lucky to detect it fairly soon. That
    was due to a manufacturing fault: all the coolant had leaked out :-(
    Getting it replaced under warranty was a frustrating task because of incompetence in the manufacturer and maintenance companies, but it all
    worked out OK in the end.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to Geeknix on Sat Oct 30 10:48:24 2021
    "Geeknix" <usenet@apple.geeknix135.net> wrote in message news:slrnsnnsov.24v.usenet@raspberrypi.geeknix.net...
    I SSH to the Pi from any machine. As I only use it for command line
    stuff with no X-Forwarding.

    I run my two Pis headless. You need tweaks

    hdmi_force_hotplug=1 # allow Pi to boot with no monitor connected hdmi_mode=82 # force 1920x1080x60 even though monitor cant be auto-detected

    in /boot/config.txt for the Pi4 to allow it to boot headless.

    I mainly use RealVNC on Windows or Android to access the Pi's desktop,
    though I've also used SSH (PuTTY on Windows, JuiceSSH on Android) for command-line.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to Joe on Sat Oct 30 10:34:37 2021
    "Joe" <joe@jretrading.com> wrote in message news:20211029110644.741ecf65@jresid.jretrading.com...
    On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 10:11:40 +0100
    "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:


    One cautionary tale. The Pi4 originally used a USB HDD plugged into a
    powered USB hub to power the HDD so the Pi didn't have to supply
    power. This had worked fine on the Pi 3B, but the Pi 4 refused to
    boot whilst the hub was powered; it hung indefinitely until I turned
    off the hub or unplugged the hub's USB from the Pi, at which point
    booting proceeded as normal. Some people suggested that certain hubs
    try to feed power back up the USB cable to the Pi, but I disproved
    that by making up a special lead on which I had cut the +5V line -
    this did not fix the problem. So I now use a SATA drive in a powered
    caddy, which works fine.


    I have an old-ish (about to retire) Gigabyte MB, whose BIOS swears that booting from USB is disabled, but if I ever leave a USB stick in it by accident, the next boot hangs while it tries to find a non-existent bootloader on the thing.

    There is a hub permanently connected, which doesn't seem to worry it,
    but it will hang on any other USB device, there's apparently no
    timeout. Possibly there's an updated BIOS that fixes this, but in
    general I don't touch the BIOS unless it has a serious problem.

    The failure to boot is something which only affects the Pi4. The Pi3, with
    the same HDD and USB hub, booted fine. Looking on Pi forums, some people
    said that cutting the +5V line in the Pi-to-hub lead worked, to stop the hub phantom-powering the Pi as it was booting, but it didn't work for me.
    Luckily the powered HDD caddy solution worked fine.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 10:59:42 2021
    "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:slio2f$7nc$2@dont-email.me...
    On 29/10/2021 22:47, John Aldridge wrote:
    Wildlife camera (Motion)

    Id be interested in hearing more about that.

    Yes, what cameras and what software do you use?

    We've got an old Foscam FI9810W security camera with IR and pan/tilt (but no zoom). We did have two, but one recently started rebooting after being up
    for about 30 seconds - long enough to confirm that everything seems to be working OK but still it reboots.

    Up to now we've used the motion sensing and alert-to-email facilities built into the camera, but it would be nice to be able to record video when the motion sensing detects movement - ideally with buffering so as to capture
    the few seconds leading up to the motion triggering.

    I've used iSpy on Windows for this. It works OK, but you need a paid subscription to enable the sending of an alert email, and it only
    takes/emails one photo, whereas the camera's built-in monitoring
    takes/emails five in rapid succession.

    I was hoping to find some good free software for the Pi, preferably as an installable package rather than a complete OS build, so I can run it
    alongside other things like the weather-station or PVR software.

    We'll probably get a couple of higher-resolution cameras: the Foscam is
    640x480 and even that is heavily compressed.

    Since the Foscam can run from a (big) USB battery, I've thought about
    setting it up outside on the lawn somewhere to watch for nocturnal
    wildlife - limited only by the range of the wifi!
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Ian@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 09:22:21 2021
    On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    23 to date. Here goes...

    - Network timeserver (ntpd doesn't play nice in KVM guests)

    - 2 x "Management modules". These are serial port servers for UPS's,
    server consoles, cable modem power switch and incoming dial-up modem
    (so I can poke the cable modem :)

    - WLAN bridge. Provides backup internet by bridging mobile WiFi
    hotspot to wired LAN

    - Several security cameras, running very bespoke software

    - A dedicated compile server, for software development

    - Several in use for development of new things

    - Several unused, and one with a fried CSI port (but otherwise
    fine), following a small upset on the bench. The camera that
    was attached is toast, but useful as a template for drilling
    cases.


    Here's the full inventory...

    [ian@vm46 ~]$ cat /data/home/ian/notes/raspberry-pi.txt

    Name Model Location Use
    ---- ----- -------- ---

    pi01 Pi-B+ Box Spare
    pi02 Pi-A Box Spare
    pi03 Pi-2 Server shelf Timeserver
    pi04 Pi-2 Box picam dev
    pi05 Pi-2 Box CSI fried :(
    pi06 Pi-2 Box picam dev
    pi07 Pi-2 - Given to xxx for pp
    pi08 Pi-3 wr picam (cam03)
    pi09 Pi-B Box Spare
    pi10 Pi-B+ Server shelf Management Module
    pi11 Pi-2 Comms shelf Management Module
    pi12 Pi-3 Server shelf WLAN bridge
    pi13 Pi-3 wr picam (cam01)
    pi14 Pi-3 wton picam (small display dev)
    pi15 Pi-3B+ wton picam (large display)
    pi16 Pi-3B+ wr picam (cam02)
    pi17 Pi-4 4G Server shelf Dev/Compile host
    pi18 Pi-4 1G Box new
    pi19 Pi-3B+ wton ubus dev
    pi20 Pi-3B+ wton picam dev
    pi21 Pi-3B+ wton picam dev
    pi22 Pi-3B+ Box new
    pi23 Pi-3B+ Box new


    --
    Ian

    "Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Ian on Sat Oct 30 12:01:21 2021
    On 30/10/2021 10:22, Ian wrote:
    On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    23 to date. Here goes...

    You've beaten me, 17 plus a couple of spare Zeros and my original now
    retired 1B 256MB.

    Name Type Location Uses
    ------ ----- ----------- -------------------------------------------
    RPi-S 4B Study Development machine and SSH gateway
    RPi-RO 4B Study RISC OS machine
    RPi-RA Zero Study Robot arm controller and camera
    RPi-Z Zero2 Study Touch screen and prototyping board
    RPi-B1 4B Bedroom 1 TV/media and temperature sensor
    RPi-B2 4B Bedroom 2 TV/media and temperature sensor
    RPi-B3 Zero Bedroom 3 child monitor camera and temperature sensor
    RPi-B4 Zero Bedroom 4 child monitor camera and temperature sensor
    RPi-L 4B Living room TV/media and temperature sensor
    RPi-K 2B Kitchen TV/media and temperature sensor
    RPi-F 2B Family room Pan tilt camera and temperature sensor
    RPi-N 4B Cupboard NAS server
    RPi-A 3B+ Attic ADSB plane tracking and temperature sensor
    RPi-G 1B Garage Garage door sensor and temperature sensor
    RPi-D Zero Driveway External camera
    RPi-X 3B Shed Weather station and garden/pool camera
    RPi-P 3B Off site Backup server

    ---druck
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Sat Oct 30 15:42:53 2021
    On 30/10/2021 09:25, A. Dumas wrote:
    On 29-10-2021 10:48, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what
    they did with Pis.

    400: workbench computer, also testing distros with different sd cards.
    4: headless wired server booting from ssd, home webserver, development
    files backup, ssh entrypoint from outside, using free mathematica via
    vnc (so, still on 32-bit RPiOS), automated download script for 15-minute temperature graphs of the country (NL) which it makes into a movie every night, testing programs/scripts on a "slow" computer, general linux
    testbed.
    ZeroW: with Iqaudio board hooked up to the stereo for music streams via
    mpd and my own web interface.
    2x ZeroW: with cameras as (local) webcams to look out the windows.
    3A+: with another Iqaudio board for headphones on my desk.
    3B+: with 1TB 2.5" hdd at another location for off site backup.

    And you?
    Zero W with hifiberry DAC feeding a 200W hifi fed from house server
    and internet radio via own webpage for control


    --
    In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
    In practice, there is.
    -- Yogi Berra
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From alister@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 15:01:33 2021
    On Thu, 28 Oct 2021 14:16:57 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 28/10/2021 10:43, gareth evans wrote:
    On 28/10/2021 10:05, gareth evans wrote:
    Multicore 64 bit processor and 1/2 GB RAM for £15 ! ! ! ! ! !!

    When I set out as an assembly software engineer on a PDP11 with 32 KB
    Core Store and paper tape operations, it cost about £10K whereas my
    annual salary as a graduate beginner was about £1350 PA, way back in
    1972 and I thought that I was the bees' knees back then!


    Oops, forgot the ...

    https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2? mc_cid=d871881b1e&mc_eid=22518990c8


    well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution looking for a problem :-)

    Looks like it may replace the 3A+ as the popular solution for all but the
    most demanding robotics projects




    --
    Griffin's Thought:
    When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From alister@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 15:14:33 2021
    On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 09:48:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 28/10/2021 01:32, paul lee wrote:
    TN> well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution
    looking for a TN> problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in
    the same Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web int;erface as the user interface

    Pi400: used for personal web & twitter access whilst I am at work
    Pi4B: used as a Kodi Media playback
    Pi4B: with touch screen, mainly used with a Bitscope as a DSO
    Pi3B+: Another Kodi Playback device
    Pi3B+: Web application developement server
    Pi2B: WEb Server running Wordpress
    Pi3A+: Octo print server
    Pi3a+: Robot tank & test platform for Piwars
    PiZero: Bought by mistake, currently used as xmas decoration
    PiZeroW: Internet radio (pimoroni Pirate radio)
    PiZeroW: Hexapod robot (re-capitated Tobbie)
    PizeroW: Gyro Stabalised Mecanum Rover

    + Undefined(as yet) 3* Pi3a+ (1 on loan), 2 x PiZeroW, 1X Pi4(2gb)
    also have a number of dead units due to wiring mishaps (pi3a+, Pi2B & at
    least 2 PiZeroW

    My Name is Alister & I am a Pi-Aholic



    --
    Post office will not deliver without proper postage.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From alister@3:770/3 to alister on Sat Oct 30 15:16:49 2021
    On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 15:14:33 +0000, alister wrote:

    On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 09:48:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 28/10/2021 01:32, paul lee wrote:
    TN> well its a zero W with a tad more oomph...another solution
    looking for a TN> problem :-)

    Oh, I've got several planned already that will love more horsepower in
    the same Zero footprint.

    I can't wait to receive a few.


    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web
    int;erface as the user interface

    Pi400: used for personal web & twitter access whilst I am at work Pi4B:
    used as a Kodi Media playback Pi4B: with touch screen, mainly used with
    a Bitscope as a DSO Pi3B+: Another Kodi Playback device Pi3B+: Web application developement server Pi2B: WEb Server running Wordpress
    Pi3A+: Octo print server Pi3a+: Robot tank & test platform for Piwars
    PiZero: Bought by mistake, currently used as xmas decoration PiZeroW: Internet radio (pimoroni Pirate radio)
    PiZeroW: Hexapod robot (re-capitated Tobbie)
    PizeroW: Gyro Stabalised Mecanum Rover

    + Undefined(as yet) 3* Pi3a+ (1 on loan), 2 x PiZeroW, 1X Pi4(2gb)
    also have a number of dead units due to wiring mishaps (pi3a+, Pi2B & at least 2 PiZeroW

    My Name is Alister & I am a Pi-Aholic

    & I have just upgraded the mecanum robot to PiZero2W & have another one
    of those in the spares bin




    --
    We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
    - Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amsterdam
    Linux
    Symposium
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Dennis Lee Bieber@3:770/3 to All on Sat Oct 30 12:20:02 2021
    On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 10:48:24 +0100, "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> declaimed the following:

    in /boot/config.txt for the Pi4 to allow it to boot headless.

    Other than initial configuration of a new OS image (which I do perform with HDMI and Logitech "Unifying" keyboard/mouse, using my puny gaming TV,
    all of my R-Pis, including both 4s (2 and 4 GB) boot without
    monitors/keyboard. I don't recall ever modifying config.txt as to monitor type/etc.


    --
    Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/ --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From David Higton@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Oct 30 22:18:41 2021
    In message <slio0p$7nc$1@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 29/10/2021 14:09, David Higton wrote:

    I have an old Pi running my central heating and hot water system. Home brew software, running on RISC OS. Includes web interface and voice control.

    Thought about doing that, but realised if I need to sell the house, it
    would be a downside.

    Fortunately I kept all the TRV heads, and the old Hive controller, so
    I should be able to return the system to pretty much like it was when
    I bought the house.

    I should perhaps add that my system controls 12 wireless TRV heads,
    each of which is individually controllable and has its own schedule or
    profile of setpoint settings. I get the heat to move with us around
    the house during the day.

    David
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to All on Sat Oct 30 23:16:31 2021
    On 30/10/2021 10:59, NY wrote:

    I've used iSpy on Windows for this. It works OK, but you need a paid subscription to enable the sending of an alert email, and it only takes/emails one photo, whereas the camera's built-in monitoring
    takes/emails five in rapid succession.
    I was hoping to find some good free software for the Pi, preferably as
    an installable package rather than a complete OS build, so I can run it alongside other things like the weather-station or PVR software.


    motioneye. I run docker image ccrisan/motioneye:master-armhf.

    It's not as good as iSpy on motion detection over a garden with grass,
    hedge and plants. I suspect that is due to the rpi4 arm cpu being
    underpowered. However, maybe it is like KODI if you get a bespoke OS
    build it may work better.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From John Aldridge@3:770/3 to All on Sun Oct 31 00:53:34 2021
    In article <slio2f$7nc$2@dont-email.me>, tnp@invalid.invalid says...

    On 29/10/2021 22:47, John Aldridge wrote:
    Wildlife camera (Motion)

    Id be interested in hearing more about that.

    All pretty straightforward... one of these

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015VE4KP0

    attached to an RPi (a 3B+, though a 4 would probably be an improvement), running

    https://motion-project.github.io/index.html

    The camera mostly works pretty well, though it seems to hunt between
    exposure settings and having the IR filter in or out at some points
    during dusk and dawn.

    The built-in IR illuminators have a range of 3-4 metres.

    It's been outdoors for a few weeks now, including some heavy rain, and
    the waterproofing is holding OK up so far.

    --
    John

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to John Aldridge on Sun Oct 31 11:55:45 2021
    On 31/10/2021 00:53, John Aldridge wrote:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015VE4KP0
    The built-in IR illuminators have a range of 3-4 metres.

    That's quite good as it as the lens is not behind the same cover as the
    LEDs, so doesn't suffer from back scatter.

    I tried putting a Pi Zero and IR cut cameras with side LED illuminators
    in a clear fronted weatherproof box, but all you got was glare. I
    removed them and am now using a separate 12V IR illuminator, which you
    can get in a verity of sizes (both power and coverage angle) to suit
    your needs.

    ---druck
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Anssi Saari@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Mon Nov 1 12:58:31 2021
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what
    they did with Pis.

    I have only one Pi (3B+) currently working and it has only one job,
    running a Radius server for my home network. Eventually I'll likely
    move that to my new router, once I get it configured.

    Another Pi (3B) I have used to connect an old USB printer on my home
    network so it ran CUPS and Samba. It never worked well but with my
    printing needs it was good enough and I didn't want to fiddle with
    it. This worked until recently, now the Pi answers pings but won't print
    and I can't connect to CUPS or ssh. I guess I'll autopsy it at some
    point.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to All on Mon Nov 1 13:10:41 2021
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    I have only one Pi in use, an early 512Kb model B2 that I use fairly infrequently for development work.

    I also have a second Pi 2B, a Zero-W and a PICO sitting on the shelf
    waiting for me to get a round tuit to work on the project they were
    bought for: a programmable timer for use on electric powered free flight
    model aircraft. The Pi 2B will be fitted with a TFT touch sensitive
    screen and used as a portable controller for the timer.

    Currently I'm dithering over what I'll use to implement the timer: it
    could be a PICAXE M14, the Pi Zero or the PICO.

    The PICAXE is easily the smallest, lightest and most power-efficient
    choice, but it can only be programmed in a horrid unsigned integer BASIC, though it does have built-in support for controlling RC servos,

    The Zero and the PICO have big the advantage of being programmable in C.
    The PICO looks interesting, because should be possible to use one or two
    cores as dedicated servo controllers, another for communication with the
    Pi used as timer controller, and still have at least one other core to
    run the timer's main logic.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Mon Nov 1 13:47:15 2021
    On 01/11/2021 13:10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    I have only one Pi in use, an early 512Kb model B2 that I use fairly infrequently for development work.

    I also have a second Pi 2B, a Zero-W and a PICO sitting on the shelf
    waiting for me to get a round tuit to work on the project they were
    bought for: a programmable timer for use on electric powered free flight model aircraft. The Pi 2B will be fitted with a TFT touch sensitive
    screen and used as a portable controller for the timer.

    Currently I'm dithering over what I'll use to implement the timer: it
    could be a PICAXE M14, the Pi Zero or the PICO.

    The PICAXE is easily the smallest, lightest and most power-efficient
    choice, but it can only be programmed in a horrid unsigned integer BASIC,

    Or assembler, one presumes.

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it generated
    code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it wasn't very
    efficient

    IIRC Arduinos were moderately favoured for RC usage


    though it does have built-in support for controlling RC servos,

    The Zero and the PICO have big the advantage of being programmable in C.
    The PICO looks interesting, because should be possible to use one or two cores as dedicated servo controllers, another for communication with the
    Pi used as timer controller, and still have at least one other core to
    run the timer's main logic.




    --
    In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act.

    - George Orwell
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Mon Nov 1 14:47:05 2021
    On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 13:47:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 13:10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    The PICAXE is easily the smallest, lightest and most power-efficient
    choice, but it can only be programmed in a horrid unsigned integer
    BASIC,

    Or assembler, one presumes.

    I'm not sure about that, but I get the strong impression assembler isn't supported by the PICAXE organisation. As you may have gathered from the
    name, the thing is basically a tarted-up PIC mpu in a plastic DIP
    package. Its servo support is quite nice: just write a servo position
    code to the 'servo port' and the pin emits the standard RC servo wave
    form: a 1-2mS pulse every 20 mS, the pulse length encoding the servo
    position.

    I'm uncertain whether there's any custom hardware involved: documentation doesn't say. All I know is that the BASIC source is compiled, linked with
    a binary support package (customised to match whatever PICAXE chip you're using), the resulting binary blob is uploaded into the PICAXE device and started.

    Said compiler is meant to be run on X86 kit, but there's also a third
    party X86 emulator (a qemu derivative) that lets you run the PICAXE Basic compiler on an RPi.

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    There are reasonable C compilers for the 6809 - running under FLEX09 or
    OS-9 operating systems, but I thought they were rather slow, since
    compiler section was loaded from floppy and run in sequence. They're also
    quite old - at least the ones I tried used pre-ANSI C syntax.

    Graham Trott's PL/9 (a port of PL/M to 8809 FLEX systems), because it was
    very much faster than any C compiler I saw. It combined the editor,
    compiler, and debugger as a single integrated package that would easily
    compile surprisingly large PL/9 source modules on a 48K system.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Scott Alfter@3:770/3 to tnp@invalid.invalid on Mon Nov 1 17:09:18 2021
    In article <slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me>,
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system
    from music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web >interface as the user interface.

    I have several scattered around in different offices at work, hooked up to a light-up button and the network. If a client starts acting unruly or threatening, pressing the button will summon someone from security.

    It's a hardware replacement for software that did the same on people's computers by pressing a button three times. One important difference is
    that it works when the computer is locked.

    In hindsight, the task at hand is simple enough that it could probably be handled by an Arduino with an Ethernet shield. (PoE would be nice, too, to eliminate the power cable and wall wart.) On the other hand, it's simple enough that one page of Python code is all that the Raspberry Pi needs.

    _/_
    / 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
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Scott Alfter@3:770/3 to martin@mydomain.invalid on Mon Nov 1 19:07:12 2021
    In article <sloul9$esn$2@dont-email.me>,
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 13:47:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    There are reasonable C compilers for the 6809 - running under FLEX09 or
    OS-9 operating systems, but I thought they were rather slow, since
    compiler section was loaded from floppy and run in sequence. They're also >quite old - at least the ones I tried used pre-ANSI C syntax.

    cc65 is a reasonably useful cross-compiler for the 6502 that has been used
    for several decently-sized projects. It targets all of the 6502-based
    systems you've heard of (Apple, Commodore, Atari, Nintendo), and others that maybe you haven't. Last I checked it doesn't produce 65816 code, but ORCA/C
    is a native compiler option for the Apple IIGS that does (and I've heard
    that this was used to cross-compile for the SNES back in the day)...and it's somewhat out of scope for a discussion of 8-bit compilers. :)

    _/_
    / 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
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Scott Alfter@3:770/3 to tnp@invalid.invalid on Mon Nov 1 18:24:10 2021
    In article <slip55$dac$1@dont-email.me>,
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 30/10/2021 03:23, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    Or at least not with the software I
    could find some time ago, everything seems to be "forked from a
    fork of a fork" sort of stuff and there's little clear
    documentation of the changes

    Yes. I increasingly find that the interweb is full of 'scripts that will >solve your problem' and is increasingly bereft of 'this is the
    documentation that will enable anyone else to write a better scripts
    than I hacked up'

    At least the script is somewhat human-parsable, so that if you can figure
    out what it's doing, you stand a chance at modifying it to do what you
    really need it to do.

    Worse still are the YouTube videos that just click around in some point-and-drool frontend, often with some annoying EDM or (c)rap "music" playing in the background. Even if point-and-drool is all you know, a list
    of instructions (even if it's little more than "click here, then click
    there") would get the point across more succinctly. You could even throw in
    a few screenshots if you must.

    (I suspect there's no monetization opportunity in there, however.)

    _/_
    / 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
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From David Higton@3:770/3 to Scott Alfter on Mon Nov 1 21:43:17 2021
    In message <ehWfJ.13996$IB7.7492@fx02.iad>
    Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:

    In article <slip55$dac$1@dont-email.me>,
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Yes. I increasingly find that the interweb is full of 'scripts that will solve your problem' and is increasingly bereft of 'this is the documentation that will enable anyone else to write a better scripts
    than I hacked up'

    At least the script is somewhat human-parsable, so that if you can figure
    out what it's doing, you stand a chance at modifying it to do what you
    really need it to do.

    On the occasions I've looked at this sort of stuff, the major problem
    is that it relies on a library, and all the interesting stuff is in
    the library rather than the script.

    David
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From David Higton@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Mon Nov 1 21:38:57 2021
    In message <slor53$apb$1@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it generated
    code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it wasn't very >efficient

    Didn't the compiler support other types/sizes of variable, such as
    signed or unsigned char? Or the bits that are standard (I believe)
    in C?

    But, being a 6809 (my favourite of that generation), I guess the
    compiler was rather crude.

    David
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Nov 2 07:32:57 2021
    On 01/11/2021 14:47, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 13:47:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 13:10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    The PICAXE is easily the smallest, lightest and most power-efficient
    choice, but it can only be programmed in a horrid unsigned integer
    BASIC,

    Or assembler, one presumes.

    I'm not sure about that, but I get the strong impression assembler isn't supported by the PICAXE organisation. As you may have gathered from the
    name, the thing is basically a tarted-up PIC mpu in a plastic DIP
    package. Its servo support is quite nice: just write a servo position
    code to the 'servo port' and the pin emits the standard RC servo wave
    form: a 1-2mS pulse every 20 mS, the pulse length encoding the servo position.

    I'm uncertain whether there's any custom hardware involved: documentation doesn't say. All I know is that the BASIC source is compiled, linked with
    a binary support package (customised to match whatever PICAXE chip you're using), the resulting binary blob is uploaded into the PICAXE device and started.

    Said compiler is meant to be run on X86 kit, but there's also a third
    party X86 emulator (a qemu derivative) that lets you run the PICAXE Basic compiler on an RPi.

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    There are reasonable C compilers for the 6809 - running under FLEX09 or
    OS-9 operating systems, but I thought they were rather slow, since
    compiler section was loaded from floppy and run in sequence. They're also quite old - at least the ones I tried used pre-ANSI C syntax.

    Think what I used was Introl cross running on a PDP/11 with Unix...

    Graham Trott's PL/9 (a port of PL/M to 8809 FLEX systems), because it was very much faster than any C compiler I saw. It combined the editor,
    compiler, and debugger as a single integrated package that would easily compile surprisingly large PL/9 source modules on a 48K system.


    I have looked into this as a bit of curiosity. C exists for PIC CPUs,
    although possibly not the pickaxe..


    --
    New Socialism consists essentially in being seen to have your heart in
    the right place whilst your head is in the clouds and your hand is in
    someone else's pocket.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to David Higton on Tue Nov 2 08:18:16 2021
    On 01/11/2021 21:38, David Higton wrote:
    In message <slor53$apb$1@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it generated
    code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it wasn't very
    efficient

    Didn't the compiler support other types/sizes of variable, such as
    signed or unsigned char? Or the bits that are standard (I believe)
    in C?

    Ah, but you have forgotten implicit casts.
    bytes turned into ints to be compared ISTR.


    But, being a 6809 (my favourite of that generation), I guess the
    compiler was rather crude.

    It was. we used to inspect the assembler and gasp in horror, and rewrite
    the tricky bits in assembler.

    David



    --
    "It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing
    conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to David Higton on Tue Nov 2 08:16:14 2021
    On 01/11/2021 21:43, David Higton wrote:
    In message <ehWfJ.13996$IB7.7492@fx02.iad>
    Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:

    In article <slip55$dac$1@dont-email.me>,
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Yes. I increasingly find that the interweb is full of 'scripts that will >>> solve your problem' and is increasingly bereft of 'this is the
    documentation that will enable anyone else to write a better scripts
    than I hacked up'

    At least the script is somewhat human-parsable, so that if you can figure
    out what it's doing, you stand a chance at modifying it to do what you
    really need it to do.

    On the occasions I've looked at this sort of stuff, the major problem
    is that it relies on a library, and all the interesting stuff is in
    the library rather than the script.

    And the API calls are not documented well, if at all.

    David



    --
    “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
    intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
    futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
    we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
    power-directed system of thought.”
    Sir Roger Scruton
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Dennis Lee Bieber on Tue Nov 2 08:30:15 2021
    On 30/10/2021 17:20, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 10:48:24 +0100, "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> declaimed the following:

    in /boot/config.txt for the Pi4 to allow it to boot headless.

    Other than initial configuration of a new OS image (which I do perform with HDMI and Logitech "Unifying" keyboard/mouse, using my puny gaming TV, all of my R-Pis, including both 4s (2 and 4 GB) boot without monitors/keyboard. I don't recall ever modifying config.txt as to monitor type/etc.

    They should boot headless without the monitor setting, (although there
    may have been issues with early Pi 4B firmware), but if you connect a
    monitor after boot it will be in a low resolution mode, or show no
    display at all. So it is a good idea to put in the setting for the
    monitor you may have to connect when you are diagnosing any issues.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to Computer Nerd Kev on Tue Nov 2 08:33:41 2021
    On 30/10/2021 03:02, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    PS. Model A, Model B, 2, Zero, 3 Model B+, Zero 2. This naming
    scheme is getting to be almost as confusing as ARM CPU
    architectures are.

    Not really, there are 4 form factors A, B, Zero and Compute, and
    different numbered generations. Tweaks to a generation get a plus sign.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to David Higton on Tue Nov 2 08:56:26 2021
    On 29/10/2021 14:09, David Higton wrote:
    In message <slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    My main desktop computer is a Pi 3B+, running RISC OS.

    You would benefit enormously from a Pi 4B. While the Pi 3B+ can run a
    desktop at just about an acceptable speed, it soon hits a wall when the
    1GB of memory is used. A 4GB or even better a 8GB Pi 4B can run far more
    things without running out of memory, so you are really able to take
    advantage of the faster processor, the USB3 to attach an SSD, and the
    full gigabit Ethernet too.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Nov 2 10:11:13 2021
    "druck" <news@druck.org.uk> wrote in message
    news:slqsuo$poh$1@dont-email.me...
    On 30/10/2021 17:20, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
    On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 10:48:24 +0100, "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> declaimed
    the
    following:

    in /boot/config.txt for the Pi4 to allow it to boot headless.

    Other than initial configuration of a new OS image (which I do perform
    with HDMI and Logitech "Unifying" keyboard/mouse, using my puny gaming
    TV,
    all of my R-Pis, including both 4s (2 and 4 GB) boot without
    monitors/keyboard. I don't recall ever modifying config.txt as to monitor
    type/etc.

    They should boot headless without the monitor setting, (although there may have been issues with early Pi 4B firmware), but if you connect a monitor after boot it will be in a low resolution mode, or show no display at all.
    So it is a good idea to put in the setting for the monitor you may have to connect when you are diagnosing any issues.

    I found that the Pi3B+ booted fine without any mod to config.txt, but the
    Pi4 hung - because there was no monitor connected, I couldn't see any
    messages that might have explained what the problem was. It booted as soon
    as a monitor was connected to HDMI, so the message went away. :-( I found
    lots of comments about it on Pi forums, together with the config.txt tweak,
    so it was evidently a well-known problem.

    The other tweak, to set the resolution, was my own solution: it's only a problem if you want to access the Pi by VNC, where you want a higher
    resolution that the default 640x480.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Nov 2 10:51:13 2021
    On 02-11-2021 09:56, druck wrote:
    On 29/10/2021 14:09, David Higton wrote:
    My main desktop computer is a Pi 3B+, running RISC OS.

    You would benefit enormously from a Pi 4B. While the Pi 3B+ can run a
    desktop at just about an acceptable speed, it soon hits a wall when the
    1GB of memory is used. A 4GB or even better a 8GB Pi 4B can run far more things without running out of memory, so you are really able to take advantage of the faster processor, the USB3 to attach an SSD, and the
    full gigabit Ethernet too.

    Not sure RISC OS can use any memory over 1 GB, though; wasn't that a limitation? And compared to the full multi user Linux desktop it's a
    very simple system and thus fast; I don't know whether you would notice
    any speed difference between the Pi 3 and 4 (certainly with some tasks
    but not general use, I think).
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Nov 2 10:24:45 2021
    "druck" <news@druck.org.uk> wrote in message
    news:slqufq$8br$1@dont-email.me...
    On 29/10/2021 14:09, David Higton wrote:
    In message <slgch5$7id$2@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
    did with Pis.

    My main desktop computer is a Pi 3B+, running RISC OS.

    You would benefit enormously from a Pi 4B. While the Pi 3B+ can run a
    desktop at just about an acceptable speed, it soon hits a wall when the
    1GB of memory is used. A 4GB or even better a 8GB Pi 4B can run far more things without running out of memory, so you are really able to take advantage of the faster processor, the USB3 to attach an SSD, and the full gigabit Ethernet too.

    Try running Firefox on a 3B+ (1 GB). It takes about 20 seconds for the
    initial window to appear and about 55 seconds (35 from initial window) for
    the BBC News page to appear (this is the browser's home page).

    On the Pi4 (8 GB), the BBC News page is displayed within about 10 seconds,
    of which the first 8 is waiting for the window to appear.

    There is also a big difference in CPU usage (as shown by the widget on the taskbar). On the 3B+, starting FF increases usage from about 3% to about 70% and stays there; on the 4 it increases to about 60% but only for about 10 seconds after which it reverts to 5%.

    Libre Office is much less of an issue: about 10 seconds to open Writer on
    both 3B+ and 4, and negligible increase in CPU usage.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 12:09:17 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 07:32:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 14:47, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 13:47:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 13:10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    The PICAXE is easily the smallest, lightest and most power-efficient
    choice, but it can only be programmed in a horrid unsigned integer
    BASIC,

    Or assembler, one presumes.

    I'm not sure about that, but I get the strong impression assembler
    isn't supported by the PICAXE organisation. As you may have gathered
    from the name, the thing is basically a tarted-up PIC mpu in a plastic
    DIP package. Its servo support is quite nice: just write a servo
    position code to the 'servo port' and the pin emits the standard RC
    servo wave form: a 1-2mS pulse every 20 mS, the pulse length encoding
    the servo position.

    I'm uncertain whether there's any custom hardware involved:
    documentation doesn't say. All I know is that the BASIC source is
    compiled, linked with a binary support package (customised to match
    whatever PICAXE chip you're using), the resulting binary blob is
    uploaded into the PICAXE device and started.

    Said compiler is meant to be run on X86 kit, but there's also a third
    party X86 emulator (a qemu derivative) that lets you run the PICAXE
    Basic compiler on an RPi.

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    There are reasonable C compilers for the 6809 - running under FLEX09 or
    OS-9 operating systems, but I thought they were rather slow, since
    compiler section was loaded from floppy and run in sequence. They're
    also quite old - at least the ones I tried used pre-ANSI C syntax.

    Think what I used was Introl cross running on a PDP/11 with Unix...

    Graham Trott's PL/9 (a port of PL/M to 8809 FLEX systems), because it
    was very much faster than any C compiler I saw. It combined the editor,
    compiler, and debugger as a single integrated package that would easily
    compile surprisingly large PL/9 source modules on a 48K system.


    I have looked into this as a bit of curiosity. C exists for PIC CPUs, although possibly not the pickaxe..

    Thanks for looking anyway: as I said, I had a fairly careful search of
    their website but only the BASIC was mentioned - that I could see anyway.
    Its nice to know that I didn't miss anything.

    I presume the PIC C compilers you did find were cross-compilers?


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 12:24:29 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 08:18:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 21:38, David Higton wrote:
    In message <slor53$apb$1@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it
    generated code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it
    wasn't very efficient

    Didn't the compiler support other types/sizes of variable, such as
    signed or unsigned char? Or the bits that are standard (I believe)
    in C?

    Ah, but you have forgotten implicit casts.
    bytes turned into ints to be compared ISTR.


    But, being a 6809 (my favourite of that generation), I guess the
    compiler was rather crude.

    It was. we used to inspect the assembler and gasp in horror, and rewrite
    the tricky bits in assembler.

    That was the really nice feature of PL/9: it generated really nice code
    and had a compiler option was to display generated assembler as test,
    complete with opcode mnemonics, as well as your names for labels and
    variables.

    Its one limitation was that it didn't optimise code between PL/9
    statements, IOW a statement never left variables in registers or on the
    stack ready for the next statement to use.

    That said, I was never able to improve code generated by even a more
    complex statement and, indeed, there was only one time I managed to
    rewrite a function in assembler that was significantly smaller or faster
    than code generated by the PL/9 compiler. That said, doing this was
    sometimes useful, since the compiler would accept blocks of assembler
    embedded in in the PL/9 source. You didn't need to do that often, though,
    and even then it was usually to do something really off the wall like
    calling a subroutine in the ROMBUG or tweaking a UART's control registers.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 12:58:09 2021
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
    On 01/11/2021 21:38, David Higton wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS
    on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it generated >>> code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it wasn't very
    efficient

    Didn't the compiler support other types/sizes of variable, such as
    signed or unsigned char? Or the bits that are standard (I believe)
    in C?

    Ah, but you have forgotten implicit casts.
    bytes turned into ints to be compared ISTR.

    Yes, “integer promotions”. In most contexts, anything with a lower rank than int is implicitly converted to int (or sometimes, unsigned int)
    before doing anything else with it.

    However that doesn’t require 16 bit operations in the object code.
    char a,b,c;
    a=b+c;
    ...can generate an 8-bit add, provided the compiler is smart enough to
    spot that the top 8 bits will subsequently be discarded anyway. So
    you’re into ‘quality of implementation’ questions there.

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to All on Tue Nov 2 13:09:45 2021
    On 02/11/2021 10:24, NY wrote:
    Try running Firefox on a 3B+ (1 GB). It takes about 20 seconds for the initial window to appear and about 55 seconds (35 from initial window)
    for the BBC News page to appear (this is the browser's home page).

    On my new second hand HP pavilion quad i5 with SSD, time taken to load
    Firefox 0.3 seconds, time taken to load BBC website 1.5 seconds.

    Not bad for a 6 year old machine that outperforms anything the same
    money could have bought new.

    Ok there is fibre to the house now...

    The killer is RAM. Firefox has memory bugs, and so too does something in
    the x windows system. I have to shut down Firefox after a day or so and
    the windows manager every week or so


    On the Pi4 (8 GB), the BBC News page is displayed within about 10
    seconds, of which the first 8 is waiting for the window to appear.

    There is also a big difference in CPU usage (as shown by the widget on
    the taskbar). On the 3B+, starting FF increases usage from about 3% to
    about 70% and stays there; on the 4 it increases to about 60% but only
    for about 10 seconds after which it reverts to 5%.

    Interesting. That doesn't make sense, which is why it is interesting


    --
    In todays liberal progressive conflict-free education system, everyone
    gets full Marx.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Nov 2 13:31:01 2021
    On 02/11/2021 12:09, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 07:32:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 14:47, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 13:47:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 13:10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    The PICAXE is easily the smallest, lightest and most power-efficient >>>>> choice, but it can only be programmed in a horrid unsigned integer
    BASIC,

    Or assembler, one presumes.

    I'm not sure about that, but I get the strong impression assembler
    isn't supported by the PICAXE organisation. As you may have gathered
    from the name, the thing is basically a tarted-up PIC mpu in a plastic
    DIP package. Its servo support is quite nice: just write a servo
    position code to the 'servo port' and the pin emits the standard RC
    servo wave form: a 1-2mS pulse every 20 mS, the pulse length encoding
    the servo position.

    I'm uncertain whether there's any custom hardware involved:
    documentation doesn't say. All I know is that the BASIC source is
    compiled, linked with a binary support package (customised to match
    whatever PICAXE chip you're using), the resulting binary blob is
    uploaded into the PICAXE device and started.

    Said compiler is meant to be run on X86 kit, but there's also a third
    party X86 emulator (a qemu derivative) that lets you run the PICAXE
    Basic compiler on an RPi.

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS >>>> on an 6809.

    There are reasonable C compilers for the 6809 - running under FLEX09 or
    OS-9 operating systems, but I thought they were rather slow, since
    compiler section was loaded from floppy and run in sequence. They're
    also quite old - at least the ones I tried used pre-ANSI C syntax.

    Think what I used was Introl cross running on a PDP/11 with Unix...

    Graham Trott's PL/9 (a port of PL/M to 8809 FLEX systems), because it
    was very much faster than any C compiler I saw. It combined the editor,
    compiler, and debugger as a single integrated package that would easily
    compile surprisingly large PL/9 source modules on a 48K system.


    I have looked into this as a bit of curiosity. C exists for PIC CPUs,
    although possibly not the pickaxe..

    Thanks for looking anyway: as I said, I had a fairly careful search of
    their website but only the BASIC was mentioned - that I could see anyway.
    Its nice to know that I didn't miss anything.

    I presume the PIC C compilers you did find were cross-compilers?


    Yes. There seem to be two. If you have windows then there is a whole
    point and click MATLAB product, and otherwise on Linux at least sdcc

    "SDCC is a C compiler for the Intel MCS51 family, HC08, PIC,
    GameBoy Z80, DS80S390, Z80, Z180 and STM8 microcontrollers."

    To load the hex onto a PIC chip meeds a bit of extra hardware - a
    Pickit-2 or summat - a board with a zero insert reusable chip socket,
    and a further bit of code.
    e.g.

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/DollaTek-PICKIT2-Programmer-Programming-Universal/dp/B07L2TMYB7/

    And how to use all this is documented here

    https://hackaday.com/2010/11/03/how-to-program-pics-using-linux/


    I am not very up in this stuff but I think the pickAXE is a PIC with
    some form of bootloader and bios installed so it can compile and run its
    BASIC. So its a bit like an early home computer.

    I am glad you made me do this research because the PIC chips are cheap
    and they are available in proper DIP packages and they have a load of
    ADC channels - I want something to read a control board of up to 36 pots
    and turn it into USB stream if I can. Speed not an issue, nor precision
    - 8 bits enough. And a pair of PICs look pretty perfect.

    With a few pins left over to drive some LEDS with.

    If I get bored enough to revisit that project...



    --
    “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to
    fill the world with fools.”

    Herbert Spencer
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Dennis Lee Bieber@3:770/3 to All on Tue Nov 2 10:14:01 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:31:01 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> declaimed the following:


    I am not very up in this stuff but I think the pickAXE is a PIC with
    some form of bootloader and bios installed so it can compile and run its >BASIC. So its a bit like an early home computer.

    If it is anything like the old BASIC Stamps, the compiler phase is on the host computer -- generating an optimized byte-code. The PIC (or
    whatever chip Parallax used) has a byte-code interpreter, and a boot-time flasher for user "downloads".


    --
    Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/ --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Nov 2 13:35:03 2021
    On 02/11/2021 12:24, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 08:18:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 01/11/2021 21:38, David Higton wrote:
    In message <slor53$apb$1@dont-email.me>
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS >>>> on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it
    generated code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it
    wasn't very efficient

    Didn't the compiler support other types/sizes of variable, such as
    signed or unsigned char? Or the bits that are standard (I believe)
    in C?

    Ah, but you have forgotten implicit casts.
    bytes turned into ints to be compared ISTR.


    But, being a 6809 (my favourite of that generation), I guess the
    compiler was rather crude.

    It was. we used to inspect the assembler and gasp in horror, and rewrite
    the tricky bits in assembler.

    That was the really nice feature of PL/9: it generated really nice code
    and had a compiler option was to display generated assembler as test, complete with opcode mnemonics, as well as your names for labels and variables.

    Its one limitation was that it didn't optimise code between PL/9
    statements, IOW a statement never left variables in registers or on the
    stack ready for the next statement to use.

    That said, I was never able to improve code generated by even a more
    complex statement and, indeed, there was only one time I managed to
    rewrite a function in assembler that was significantly smaller or faster
    than code generated by the PL/9 compiler. That said, doing this was
    sometimes useful, since the compiler would accept blocks of assembler embedded in in the PL/9 source. You didn't need to do that often, though,
    and even then it was usually to do something really off the wall like
    calling a subroutine in the ROMBUG or tweaking a UART's control registers.


    Ah! the wonderful #asm directive. Or whatever.

    I wrote loads of C libraries in assembler for X86 processors.

    Its nice to mix. Dunno whether the current Gnu compilers have the
    ability to 'pass through assembler to the assembler....Never had to use assembler inside of Linux, ever.
    I think even interrupt driven device drivers don't need it



    --
    There is nothing a fleet of dispatchable nuclear power plants cannot do
    that cannot be done worse and more expensively and with higher carbon
    emissions and more adverse environmental impact by adding intermittent renewable energy.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Richard Kettlewell on Tue Nov 2 13:49:58 2021
    On 02/11/2021 12:58, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
    On 01/11/2021 21:38, David Higton wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Trying to port standard C to an 8 bit micro is a horrid task. BTDTGTTS >>>> on an 6809.

    Half the time it didnt accept my syntax, and the other time it generated >>>> code so big doing everything in 16 bit integers, that it wasn't very
    efficient

    Didn't the compiler support other types/sizes of variable, such as
    signed or unsigned char? Or the bits that are standard (I believe)
    in C?

    Ah, but you have forgotten implicit casts.
    bytes turned into ints to be compared ISTR.

    Yes, “integer promotions”. In most contexts, anything with a lower rank than int is implicitly converted to int (or sometimes, unsigned int)
    before doing anything else with it.

    However that doesn’t require 16 bit operations in the object code.
    char a,b,c;
    a=b+c;
    ...can generate an 8-bit add, provided the compiler is smart enough to
    spot that the top 8 bits will subsequently be discarded anyway. So
    you’re into ‘quality of implementation’ questions there.

    Back then, Richard, quality of implementation like Gnu C was a wet
    dream. One assumed the compilers were buggy, and poorly built and
    examining the assembler was routine if code didn't work, but it was
    still faster than all assembler especially for routine stuff like string handling and so on.

    The job was a digital storage oscilloscope. Gould Advance, around about
    1984 I think. As I said at the time 'if you had not thought of this as
    an oscilloscope with a bit of CPU in it, but had thought of it as 100Msamples/second A to D board/shift register for an IBM PC. And a
    special control panel, it would have been quicker and cheaper to design'...
    The 6809 was totally the wrong chip. We ended up with 256k of bank
    switched ROM, which was all horrendous. as each library routine had to
    remember which bank was switched in, switch in the needed one, and then
    switch back on exit..

    IIRC there was 32k of main ROM, 16k of RAM and 16K left for paged ROM.
    And a digital signal processor chip that I had to write an interface to,
    to do signal filtering and act as a floating point coprocessor for the
    6809. slow, but faster than the 6809...

    --
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
    too dark to read.

    Groucho Marx
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 14:49:09 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:35:03 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    ....Never had to use
    assembler inside of Linux, ever.

    Same here.

    Probably the last assembler I wrote was to set up the device descriptors
    for an OS/9 68000 system. That hardware is long gone but I'm still
    running a lot of the code I wrote on it with the Sculptor 4GL package.

    That's now running on one of my Linux boxes, still thinking that its
    running under OS/9 68000, which is in turn running in an MC68020
    emulator.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 14:36:44 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:31:01 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    I am not very up in this stuff but I think the pickAXE is a PIC with
    some form of bootloader and bios installed so it can compile and run its BASIC. So its a bit like an early home computer.

    I didn't think that the way PICAXE program compilation & installation
    works was obvious from the documentation, but actually doing it made
    things a lot clearer.

    It turns out that the compilation system is designed to run on an X86
    system. Its output is a binary blob which is immediately loaded into the
    PICAXE chip over an RS-232 serial line, where its written to EEPROM and immediately booted up, which implies that part of the loader is hardwired
    in the PICAXE chip. After that, the installed program simplt boots on
    power-up. The binary support blob thats added to the compiled code is
    specific to the PICAXE model being targetted - unsurprising since there
    are a variety of systems packaged as 0.1" DIP or surface mount and with 8
    to 40 pins. They all seem to treat pin references as name symbols rather
    than hardware addresses, and similarly, different pins have different capabilities, e.g. input, output, UART, servo driver, many being
    selectable multifunction, the function wanted is selected by using the
    relevant name for the pin.

    The only common feature seems to be that all chips have a UART thats used
    for loading the program into it and can be used to send trace and/or
    debug info back to the compiler/loader package.

    As I said before, its not obvious whether complex stuff like the servo
    driver is implemented in hardware or is part of the binary support
    blob.

    IOW, I suspect that PICAXE packages have extra silicon in them compared
    with bog standard PIC devices.

    I am glad you made me do this research because the PIC chips are cheap
    and they are available in proper DIP packages and they have a load of
    ADC channels - I want something to read a control board of up to 36 pots
    and turn it into USB stream if I can. Speed not an issue, nor precision
    - 8 bits enough. And a pair of PICs look pretty perfect.

    With a few pins left over to drive some LEDS with.

    :-)

    The PICAXE devices are still very affordable: the 14M2, which can drive
    two servos and the ESC, while the 8M2 only has a single PWM output, is
    still only GBP 2.70.

    Apologies if I've repeated myself too much.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 15:07:26 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:49:58 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    The job was a digital storage oscilloscope. Gould Advance, around about
    1984 I think. As I said at the time 'if you had not thought of this as
    an oscilloscope with a bit of CPU in it, but had thought of it as 100Msamples/second A to D board/shift register for an IBM PC. And a
    special control panel, it would have been quicker and cheaper to
    design'...
    The 6809 was totally the wrong chip. We ended up with 256k of bank
    switched ROM, which was all horrendous. as each library routine had to remember which bank was switched in, switch in the needed one, and then switch back on exit..

    A pity you didn't know about Microware's OS/9 OS - written at Motorola's request to show off the 6809, OS/9 Level 2 handled all that bank
    switching and remembering which bank held what code.

    It was well written, so much so that OS/9 Level 1 (no bank switching) was
    very easily ported to the MC680x0 mpus. I used OS/9 for years. It was
    quite the most bugfree OS I've ever had the pleasure to use: I never
    found a single bug in it.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Nov 2 14:58:44 2021
    On 02/11/2021 14:36, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:31:01 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    I am not very up in this stuff but I think the pickAXE is a PIC with
    some form of bootloader and bios installed so it can compile and run its
    BASIC. So its a bit like an early home computer.

    I didn't think that the way PICAXE program compilation & installation
    works was obvious from the documentation, but actually doing it made
    things a lot clearer.

    It turns out that the compilation system is designed to run on an X86
    system. Its output is a binary blob which is immediately loaded into the PICAXE chip over an RS-232 serial line, where its written to EEPROM and immediately booted up, which implies that part of the loader is hardwired
    in the PICAXE chip. After that, the installed program simplt boots on power-up. The binary support blob thats added to the compiled code is specific to the PICAXE model being targetted - unsurprising since there
    are a variety of systems packaged as 0.1" DIP or surface mount and with 8
    to 40 pins. They all seem to treat pin references as name symbols rather
    than hardware addresses, and similarly, different pins have different capabilities, e.g. input, output, UART, servo driver, many being
    selectable multifunction, the function wanted is selected by using the relevant name for the pin.

    The only common feature seems to be that all chips have a UART thats used
    for loading the program into it and can be used to send trace and/or
    debug info back to the compiler/loader package.

    As I said before, its not obvious whether complex stuff like the servo
    driver is implemented in hardware or is part of the binary support
    blob.

    IOW, I suspect that PICAXE packages have extra silicon in them compared
    with bog standard PIC devices.

    I am glad you made me do this research because the PIC chips are cheap
    and they are available in proper DIP packages and they have a load of
    ADC channels - I want something to read a control board of up to 36 pots
    and turn it into USB stream if I can. Speed not an issue, nor precision
    - 8 bits enough. And a pair of PICs look pretty perfect.

    With a few pins left over to drive some LEDS with.

    :-)

    The PICAXE devices are still very affordable: the 14M2, which can drive
    two servos and the ESC, while the 8M2 only has a single PWM output, is
    still only GBP 2.70.

    Apologies if I've repeated myself too much.



    Hmm. I think you are not quite right. I think that the picaxe has a bit
    of boot code loaded into part of its EEPROM, and programs loaded over
    the top do not erase it. Sorta like 'Noobs' a bit.

    But I'd guess that you could erase the lot if you stuck it in a PIC
    programmer.
    Price for the chip is pretty comparable with a bare PIC chip. two and a
    half smackers give or take.

    --
    The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
    its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

    Anon.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 15:08:56 2021
    On 02/11/2021 14:58, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 02/11/2021 14:36, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:31:01 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    I am not very up in this stuff but I think the pickAXE is a PIC with
    some form of bootloader and bios installed so it can compile and run its >>> BASIC. So its a bit like an early home computer.

    I didn't think that the way PICAXE program compilation & installation
    works was obvious from the documentation, but actually doing it made
    things a lot clearer.

    It turns out that the compilation system is designed to run on an X86
    system. Its output is a binary blob which is immediately loaded into the
    PICAXE chip over an RS-232 serial line, where its written to EEPROM and
    immediately booted up, which implies that part of the loader is hardwired
    in the PICAXE chip. After that, the installed program simplt boots on
    power-up. The binary support blob thats added to the compiled code is
    specific to the PICAXE model being targetted - unsurprising since there
    are a variety of systems packaged as 0.1" DIP or surface mount and with 8
    to 40 pins. They all seem to treat pin references as name symbols rather
    than hardware addresses, and similarly, different pins have different
    capabilities, e.g. input, output, UART, servo driver, many being
    selectable multifunction, the function wanted is selected by using the
    relevant name for the pin.

    The only common feature seems to be that all chips have a UART thats used
    for loading the program into it and can be used to send trace and/or
    debug info back to the compiler/loader package.

    As I said before, its not obvious whether complex stuff like the servo
    driver is implemented in hardware or is part of the binary support
    blob.

    IOW, I suspect that PICAXE packages have extra silicon in them compared
    with bog standard PIC devices.

    I am glad you made me do this research because the PIC chips are cheap
    and they are available in proper DIP packages and they have a load of
    ADC channels - I want something to read a control board of up to 36 pots >>> and turn it into USB stream if I can. Speed not an issue, nor precision
       - 8 bits enough.  And a pair of PICs look pretty perfect.

       With a few pins left over to drive some LEDS with.

    :-)

    The PICAXE devices are still very affordable: the 14M2, which can drive
    two servos and the ESC, while the 8M2 only has a single PWM output, is
    still only GBP 2.70.

    Apologies if I've repeated myself too much.



    Hmm. I think you are not quite right. I think that the picaxe has a bit
    of boot code loaded into part of its EEPROM, and programs loaded over
    the top do not erase it. Sorta like 'Noobs' a bit.

    But I'd guess that you could erase the lot if you stuck it in a PIC programmer.
    Price for the chip is pretty comparable with a bare PIC chip. two and a
    half smackers give or take.

    Further to all this from 'picaxe.com'

    "A PICAXE chip is a standard Microchip PIC microcontroller that has been pre-programmed with the PICAXE bootstrap firmware code. The bootstrap
    code enables the PICAXE microcontroller to be re-programmed 'in
    position' directly via a simple 'three wire' download cable connection.
    This eliminates the need for an (expensive) conventional PIC programmer,
    making the whole download programming system a low-cost USB cable. The
    same software and download cable is used for all PICAXE chip sizes and
    project boards.

    If you purchase 'blank' PIC chips they will not work in the PICAXE
    system, as they do not contain the PICAXE firmware. Therefore always buy pre-programmed 'PICAXE chips'."

    So there you have it. Its just a pre-programmed PIC chip.

    But if you can handle the £20 or less cost of the PICKIT2 programming
    unit, you can create your own ...

    To me its like the n00bs thing. sounded great, proved to be a pain in
    the butt, reprogrammed with Raspian from a linux machine via SD card
    reader and never looked back...

    --
    It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house
    for the voice of the kingdom.

    Jonathan Swift

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  • From David Higton@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Tue Nov 2 15:06:27 2021
    In message <slr1mh$su3$1@dont-email.me>
    "A. Dumas" <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    Not sure RISC OS can use any memory over 1 GB, though; wasn't that a limitation?

    That must be a figment of your imagination.

    The old 26-bit versions could use up to 64 MiB; 32-bit versions can use
    up to 4 GiB. I/O has to be subtracted from that, of course.

    Work is currently going on to add long page table descriptors to RISC
    OS 5 so that memory over 4 GiB can be used.

    David

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 15:44:05 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 15:08:56 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    "A PICAXE chip is a standard Microchip PIC microcontroller that has been pre-programmed with the PICAXE bootstrap firmware code. The bootstrap
    code enables the PICAXE microcontroller to be re-programmed 'in
    position' directly via a simple 'three wire' download cable connection.
    This eliminates the need for an (expensive) conventional PIC programmer, making the whole download programming system a low-cost USB cable. The
    same software and download cable is used for all PICAXE chip sizes and project boards.

    Missed seeing that paragraph (or forgot I'd seen it).

    If you purchase 'blank' PIC chips they will not work in the PICAXE
    system, as they do not contain the PICAXE firmware. Therefore always buy pre-programmed 'PICAXE chips'."

    Yes, thats clear, but isn't clear whether that is just the loader in
    firmware. I rather think thats all it is, because:

    - when I downloaded the PICAXE compiler, I got a whiole set of binaries,
    each named to match one of the chipIDs:

    /home/local/picaxe/bin/picaxe14m2

    Alongside that are:

    /home/local/picaxe/bin/qemu-i386 - the X86 emulator /home/local/picaxe/bin/wrapper - looks like a qemu control file

    /home/local/picaxe/bin there's a file

    To me its like the n00bs thing. sounded great, proved to be a pain in
    the butt, reprogrammed with Raspian from a linux machine via SD card
    reader and never looked back...

    Agreed - when I tackle the 'timer', I'm inclined to see what I can do
    with a PICO first and switch to the PICAXE only if that doesn't work out.

    I wonder if anybody has got a JVM up and running on a PICO yet. That
    would be really great.



    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Nov 2 15:41:30 2021
    On 02/11/2021 15:07, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:49:58 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    The job was a digital storage oscilloscope. Gould Advance, around about
    1984 I think. As I said at the time 'if you had not thought of this as
    an oscilloscope with a bit of CPU in it, but had thought of it as
    100Msamples/second A to D board/shift register for an IBM PC. And a
    special control panel, it would have been quicker and cheaper to
    design'...
    The 6809 was totally the wrong chip. We ended up with 256k of bank
    switched ROM, which was all horrendous. as each library routine had to
    remember which bank was switched in, switch in the needed one, and then
    switch back on exit..

    A pity you didn't know about Microware's OS/9 OS - written at Motorola's request to show off the 6809, OS/9 Level 2 handled all that bank
    switching and remembering which bank held what code.

    It was well written, so much so that OS/9 Level 1 (no bank switching) was very easily ported to the MC680x0 mpus. I used OS/9 for years. It was
    quite the most bugfree OS I've ever had the pleasure to use: I never
    found a single bug in it.


    Shh don't go back in time and tell them - I would be out of a job!

    --
    "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
    always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

    Margaret Thatcher

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Nov 2 15:52:05 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 15:41:30 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 02/11/2021 15:07, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:49:58 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    The job was a digital storage oscilloscope. Gould Advance, around
    about 1984 I think. As I said at the time 'if you had not thought of
    this as an oscilloscope with a bit of CPU in it, but had thought of it
    as 100Msamples/second A to D board/shift register for an IBM PC. And
    a special control panel, it would have been quicker and cheaper to
    design'...
    The 6809 was totally the wrong chip. We ended up with 256k of bank
    switched ROM, which was all horrendous. as each library routine had to
    remember which bank was switched in, switch in the needed one, and
    then switch back on exit..

    A pity you didn't know about Microware's OS/9 OS - written at
    Motorola's request to show off the 6809, OS/9 Level 2 handled all that
    bank switching and remembering which bank held what code.

    It was well written, so much so that OS/9 Level 1 (no bank switching)
    was very easily ported to the MC680x0 mpus. I used OS/9 for years. It
    was quite the most bugfree OS I've ever had the pleasure to use: I
    never found a single bug in it.


    Shh don't go back in time and tell them - I would be out of a job!

    I won't tell them if you won't!

    BTW, OS/9 Level 1 was available commercially almost a year before the IBM
    PC was launched with the <<cough>> wonderful <<cough>> PC-DOS as its only
    OS.


    --
    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Nov 2 16:12:55 2021
    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 15:52:05 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    BTW, OS/9 Level 1 was available commercially almost a year before the IBM
    PC was launched with the <<cough>> wonderful <<cough>> PC-DOS as its only
    OS.

    The PC standardised the small computer industry at a point somewhat behind where everyone else had already gone well past. It was a long time before anything that ran on it matched OS/9 or MP/M let alone unix of some flavour on a 68000.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
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  • From druck@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Tue Nov 2 18:10:44 2021
    On 02/11/2021 09:51, A. Dumas wrote:
    On 02-11-2021 09:56, druck wrote:
    On 29/10/2021 14:09, David Higton wrote:
    My main desktop computer is a Pi 3B+, running RISC OS.

    You would benefit enormously from a Pi 4B. While the Pi 3B+ can run a
    desktop at just about an acceptable speed, it soon hits a wall when
    the 1GB of memory is used. A 4GB or even better a 8GB Pi 4B can run
    far more things without running out of memory, so you are really able
    to take advantage of the faster processor, the USB3 to attach an SSD,
    and the full gigabit Ethernet too.

    Not sure RISC OS can use any memory over 1 GB, though; wasn't that a limitation? And compared to the full multi user Linux desktop it's a
    very simple system and thus fast; I don't know whether you would notice
    any speed difference between the Pi 3 and 4 (certainly with some tasks
    but not general use, I think).

    Sorry I can't believe I knocked out that reply without seeing the RISC
    OS bit, the comments were aimed at running Linux, but some still apply.

    Yes RISC OS can use over 1GB, about 3.5GB on my 4GB Pi4B. RISC OS wont
    take any advantage of USB3, but an SSD is still vastly preferable to a
    SD card. The increased performance of the Pi 4B over the 3B is very
    obvious in use. RISC OS can make good use of the gigabit Ethernet, up to
    50MB/s to and from my NAS which is a Pi 4B running Linux (using LanManFS
    and LanMan90, Sunfish NFS is a bit slower). The networking performance
    also makes VNC sever very usable, so most of the time I remote control
    it from other machines rather than switching monitors and keyboards.

    ---druck
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  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to me@privacy.invalid on Tue Nov 2 19:09:15 2021
    On 2021-11-02, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:

    Try running Firefox on a 3B+ (1 GB). It takes about 20 seconds for the initial window to appear and about 55 seconds (35 from initial window)
    for the BBC News page to appear (this is the browser's home page).

    And that, ladies and germs, is why the first thing I do with a
    new web browser is to configure it to start up on a blank page.
    I want to be able to go anywhere when I start up, and usually do.
    In my case, having a home page would be like having your car
    automatically go to the Walmart across town when you really
    want to go to a specialty store three blocks away in the
    opposite direction.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
    / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

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  • From Scott Alfter@3:770/3 to news@druck.org.uk on Tue Nov 2 18:55:23 2021
    In article <slqt55$qv7$1@dont-email.me>, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:
    On 30/10/2021 03:02, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    PS. Model A, Model B, 2, Zero, 3 Model B+, Zero 2. This naming
    scheme is getting to be almost as confusing as ARM CPU
    architectures are.

    Not really, there are 4 form factors A, B, Zero and Compute, and
    ^^^^^^^

    ...and there are two different flavors of compute modules: one that goes in
    an SODIMM slot and another (introduced with the CM4) that has a couple of 100-pin connectors on the bottom for mating with the carrier board. That brings the count to 5.

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

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Nov 2 18:21:09 2021
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:
    Sorry I can't believe I knocked out that reply without seeing the RISC
    OS bit, the comments were aimed at running Linux, but some still apply.

    Yes RISC OS can use over 1GB, about 3.5GB on my 4GB Pi4B. RISC OS wont
    take any advantage of USB3, but an SSD is still vastly preferable to a
    SD card. The increased performance of the Pi 4B over the 3B is very
    obvious in use. RISC OS can make good use of the gigabit Ethernet, up to 50MB/s to and from my NAS which is a Pi 4B running Linux (using LanManFS
    and LanMan90, Sunfish NFS is a bit slower). The networking performance
    also makes VNC sever very usable, so most of the time I remote control
    it from other machines rather than switching monitors and keyboards.

    Alrighty; never mind my riscos-ignorant reply, then. (I admit: I hate it.)

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  • From Charlie Gibbs@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Tue Nov 2 19:09:14 2021
    On 2021-11-02, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 15:52:05 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    BTW, OS/9 Level 1 was available commercially almost a year before the IBM
    PC was launched with the <<cough>> wonderful <<cough>> PC-DOS as its only
    OS.

    The PC standardised the small computer industry at a point somewhat behind where everyone else had already gone well past. It was a long time before anything that ran on it matched OS/9 or MP/M let alone unix of some flavour on a 68000.

    Not to mention setting keyboard design back ten years.

    --
    /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
    \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
    X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
    / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

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  • From NY@3:770/3 to Charlie Gibbs on Tue Nov 2 20:24:28 2021
    "Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote in message news:v1ggJ.26543$Kw9.3616@fx45.iad...
    On 2021-11-02, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:

    Try running Firefox on a 3B+ (1 GB). It takes about 20 seconds for the
    initial window to appear and about 55 seconds (35 from initial window)
    for the BBC News page to appear (this is the browser's home page).

    And that, ladies and germs, is why the first thing I do with a
    new web browser is to configure it to start up on a blank page.
    I want to be able to go anywhere when I start up, and usually do.
    In my case, having a home page would be like having your car
    automatically go to the Walmart across town when you really
    want to go to a specialty store three blocks away in the
    opposite direction.

    You'd still get the delay for every new web page - it would just be in two parts: a standard delay to display the empty-page window, and then a second delay whenever a new page (probably a new web server) is requested.

    I tend to set my browsers to load a standard new page because I usually want
    to see what's been happening in the world whenever I open the browser or a
    new tab of the browser. But I can see that it's a matter of personal preference. Some people prefer to bring up Google or some other search
    engine by default. Some want a clean sheet.


    The important message is that the 3B+ runs FF painfully slowly and with a
    heavy CPU load, whereas the 4 runs it fairly quickly - still slower to load
    the browser and a page than my old Windows 7 PC, but not painfully so.
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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Nov 2 21:27:27 2021
    druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:
    On 30/10/2021 03:02, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    PS. Model A, Model B, 2, Zero, 3 Model B+, Zero 2. This naming
    scheme is getting to be almost as confusing as ARM CPU
    architectures are.

    Not really, there are 4 form factors A, B, Zero and Compute,
    and different numbered generations.

    Maybe they could've had something if they sticked to letters for
    the form factors and numbers for the versions, but Zero confuses
    the two and then Compute goes off in its own direction. Adding 'W'
    at the end to indicate wireless support makes sense at least, but
    then they're not consistent with that either because they don't do
    it with the A+B boards.

    Tweaks to a generation get a plus sign.

    Which people on the internet forget to mention, and that's caused
    me trouble before.

    Pi 400 is on a better track - call the next revision the 401, for
    example. Shame the Pi 4 couldn't have been called the 410, then the
    keyboard model the 420 (leaving 400 for the Model A). Or better,
    410W and 420W because they shouldn't selectively drop the 'W'
    either.

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
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  • From Anssi Saari@3:770/3 to Scott Alfter on Wed Nov 3 11:04:10 2021
    Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> writes:

    cc65 is a reasonably useful cross-compiler for the 6502 that has been used for several decently-sized projects. It targets all of the 6502-based systems you've heard of (Apple, Commodore, Atari, Nintendo), and others that maybe you haven't.

    Also, IAR and Keil both produced C compilers for Intel's 8051. IAR also
    for the Z80. Since these are (or were) commercial products one assumes
    they produced decent code. I was actually involved in a project with a
    Z80 target and IAR's compiler back when. As I recall, there were some
    issues like it deciding to link in "a few" extra things so that the
    binary was maybe 3x the size of the ROM it was meant to fit in. But
    otherwise the project didn't have issues with software development as
    far as I remember.
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