Raspberry Pi: An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte
raspberrypi.org
raspberrypi.org
Link to your blog for sure, but the home page should explain quickly what the project is and why I should care.
I went to their page looking for an about link. I'm not sure if I found it or not, but either way, I left not knowing what it was actually about.
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When will the device be available to purchase?
We anticipate the device will be available to the general public later in 2011 – we were hoping to hit the end of November, but right now December’s looking more likely.
Why?
No pre-orders to indicate real demand (Rasperry forums are more optimistic than an Amway convention).
No clue on what financing they have in place to handle the manufacturing.
I have a hard time believing they will do a run of 10000(need to find someone to front $200k+) boards, when the real demand is probably 100k+(at those $25/$35 price points).
What will happen they will have 1000 boards for sale early January and they will be gone in an instant (remember no pre-orders, means people will overwhelm their servers in a huge rush). Then we will wait another 2-3 months for a slightly bigger batch. Repeat until 2013.
Again, I hope I am wrong and hopefully someone at Broadcom who has experience with supply-chain is backing them.
Sure, tiny $25 board is cool. If it can be obtained. No point in discussing it further before they either ship it or release DIY manuals.
My knowledge of SoC technology in general is fleeting.
It could almost be a business venture, given the fact that an off the shelf media product is upwards of $100 here in aus, if you could create a decent linux media center experience for the device, and a nice case, you could flog it for waves hand about $80 per unit and be ahead (provided the mark-up took into consideration all your costs).
Would fly in the face of the educational/not-for-profit Raspberry Inc though.
I'll find somewhere to write about it though.
The initial 10k batch may be another matter. They are looking at putting a per buyer limit since demand will be so great.
At least, I hope so :-)
I find it hard to believe that you won't be able to write assembly on the platform.
I learned (Z80 then 8086) assembly as a kid, and now my mental model of how a processor works is obsolete.
Either way, you have the foundation, should you wish, to be able to bring it up to date without too much hassle.
I think you'd be surprised how simple an ARM actually is under the skin. Admittedly, it's not Z80-simple, but it's far, far removed from the x86/AMD64 monstrosities.
I understand your scepticism, but look at the people behind the project. It's going to happen and it's going to be awesome. The launch this December is mainly targeted at the hacker and 'maker' community, with aims to target the educational market next year.