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Y Combinator is hosting its first-ever hackathon — with a twist

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5 pointsLime4 comments

If I may hijack this thread:

The only computer systems I can find that offer easy-to-access input and output pins are low-power single-board computers like the Arduino. Are there any options for people who need desktop-equivalent computer power to run their creations? The only options I really see are to run I/O through an Arduino, or to jab wires into an ISA slot on a desktop motherboard.

> ISA slot

Good luck finding one of those. It's been well over a decade since systems switched to PCI.

> desktop-equivalent

If a Raspberry Pi [1] doesn't have enough horsepower for you, the Kickstarter-funded Parallella project [2], currently shipping prototypes, will offer a dual-core ARM main processor and a 16- or 64-core Epiphany Multicore Accelerator.

If you still want a desktop, I don't know a thing about hardware, but I've heard that parallel/serial ports are easy to use for people who do. So maybe you should look into building your hardware for the parallel/serial port (and using a USB adapter since most modern systems don't have them onboard)?

Of course, AFAIK serial ports max out at 115200 bits/second, so if you need a faster I/O rate for your application, look into USB, Ethernet, or PCI.

[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

[2] http://www.parallella.org/board/

> It's been well over a decade since systems switched to PCI.

I keep getting the two reversed in my head. >_<

I somehow completely missed that the Raspberry and the Parallella featured GPIO pins (and I sank a lot of money into the Parallella Kickstarter!). Thanks for pointing that out to me.

"Single board computers" encompasses a pretty wide range of hardware, a lot of which has a lot more power than an Arduino. The next immediate step up would be a 32-bit microcontroller board like Arduino Due. Above that would be the most basic of Linux-capable boards, such as say the Rascal Micro. Then there are boards based on smartphone SOCs like Beagleboard and Raspberry Pi. Beyond that there are definitely x86 single board computers although the market starts to get more specialized. All of these generally provide access to GPIOs (as well as embedded-friendly serial IO like I2C, SPI, TTL-level UART).

Or if you really need something like a modern desktop except with really high bandwidth access to GPIOs, consider something like a PXI chassis. Or find a PCIe card that provides GPIOs - I've never had to shop for such a thing but I bet there are suppliers targeting industrial markets.

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