QEMU 4.0 adds micro:bit emulation support | Hacker News Reader

QEMU 4.0 adds micro:bit emulation support

qemu.org

146 pointsingve18 comments

Fantastic to see how far micro:bit has come, I was working with the engineer in R&D at the beeb at the time who came up with the idea. Fondly remember testing on the 5th floor lab, checking thermal properties of the prototypes so they didn't burn little fingers :) Hopefully it's 'sparked' a good interest in computers and electronics in curious minds (old and young)

Our five year old daughter has one and absolutely loves it. Given her age, she is mostly at the 'show my drawings when a button is pressed'-stage. But she is having a lot of fun and is proud of the tiny programs that she made.

Thanks to you and your colleague(s) for this fun little computer!

I'd presume these things run at mA of power? Why would there be concerns to it getting hot?

Because kids do things like connecting VCC and ground, or drawing too much power from microcontroller pins, etc.

(I guess)

Voltage regulators usually have a short circuit protection circuit though.

They don't have polarity protection.

That's a good point. However, many regulators get hot with high loads. Also, the short circuit projection of some regulators is to burn out. Given all these problems and the relative carelessness of kids, I can see why they would dig through spec sheets and would measure temperature under various conditions.

I was directly involved in this project.

For the record, the micro:bit was originally based upon the CodeBug (http://www.codebug.org.uk/) by Andrew Robinson, who definitely deserves a mention in this story.

I, too, share your hope that it has "Sparked" curious minds (old and young). ;-)

I use them both at my school (7-12) and at the Coder Dojo I mentor at (mostly kids years 4-7-ish) and they are an absolute hit.

I've been having a blast looking at different concepts and projects which I can use when teaching Digital Technologies (the Australian learning area for CompSci types of ideas).

Personally as a teacher they've also done a world of good for me in learning about the basics of electronics and getting a better understanding of embedded programming (had some fun optimising MicroPython code to do what I want).

Some of the projects I've built with them (some for myself and some for teaching): - https://headtilt.me/dowsing-for-radio/ - https://headtilt.me/microbit-haunted-house/ - https://headtilt.me/designing-a-microbit-robot/

And a bit about some of the common components I use with them: https://headtilt.me/year-8-microbit-robotics/

Somewhat off-topic:

I wish I could wave a magic wand and get enough trained teachers and funding across the world such that kids can learn electronics and programming from a young age.

Imagine what the computing world would be like if IT familiarity was common?

Back in the day I remember flabbergasting my teachers with the BBC micro plotting program in... I think it was 2nd year Junior school in the UK (so age about 8 I think). I put a loop and extra instruction around the example 5 pointed star drawing code such that it made a Spirograph-like pattern/mess on the screen. Draw x units long, turn 72 degrees, repeat 5 times, at the end turn a few degrees more and keep going. I didn't become a master programmer, I didn't write an open source kernel or any award winning apps, but my comfort and familiarity with computers allowed me to jump in and become a sysadmin. I wish every child could have that opportunity.

(Anecdotal) I'm currently a high school student who participated in an IT class and a lightweight coding club. Something that at least is an issue here is that there simply isn't much of an interest in programming to begin with. The IT class was canceled after I finished it, due to the majority of people in that class being auto-assigned, rather than voluntarily joined. Coding club consisted of only my friends and ~2-3 other people who were only mildly interested.

Even in the 8th grade, there were opportunities to learn this sort of stuff, and nobody cared. Again, anecdotal, but still a factor.

Software engineers making six figures (who are probably the bulk of the readers here) might not exist.

Vaguely related, my recommended CPU to learn assembler with is still the 68000, whereas my recommended platform is still the Amiga.

32-bit ARM is a pretty good assembly language. It's more orthogonal than the 68000, which has separate address and data registers, and there are cheap single board computers that use it. Unfortunately, the Cortex-M series uses Thumb which is not a good match to learn assembly, so you still need a bootloader, a kernel etc.

I cut my teeth on the 68000 (even made my own motherboard) but I must say that writing assembly on the ARM architecture is pretty agreeable.

The main idiosyncrasy with ARM assembly that bothers me is how immediate values can only be values that you could obtain with an 8-bit number + 4 bit rotation. So for anything else I have to use a literal pool somewhere nearby my code.

Still, I think 32-bit ARM is the best architecture to introduce to first time assembly students.

If anyone out there wants to learn it, get a $10 Orange Pi and Pyeatt's "Modern Assembly Language Programming with the ARM Processor" textbook. Hell, you could just get Qemu with a Debian armhf image if you don't want to buy the board and search for free ARM assembly tutorials.

64 bit ARM isn't terrible in my experience and in some ways is better - for example it does away with the conditional versions of every instruction.

My recommended CPU for learning assembler is the 6502 (no surprise there), given its small, simple instruction set and very little in the way of "distraction". I do admit the Apple II series is probably a better learning platform than the VIC-20 or Commodore 64, given the built-in monitor and the published ROM source code.

I created my little memory-wipe routine with POKE, and boy was I proud when it worked! Cool username, btw

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