Monday 3 August 2015

Dreaming and the Raspberry Pi


I took delivery of my new Rasperry Pi today.

My new Raspberry Pi2
The raspberry Pi is a very basic computer on a credit card sized circuit board. It was created by an organisation aimed at providing cheap and basic computer fundamentals training to all but particularly school kids. Its inception was spurred by tertiary institutions realising that coding skills/behaviours are lacking something compared  to those in people that grew up during the evolution of computers think 80s. The thinking being that the removal from this basic machine understanding has a cost.

I bumped into this and another such device the Audrino, through my exposure to the university research projects where these devices are popular in prototyping all manner of things. It rekindle so many fond memories of pouring over the latest copies of Electronics Australia or Electronics Today International when I should have been in class. I dreamt of owning such machines as the Mini Scamp, Dream6800, RCA COSMAC VIP, DSE Super 80, SinclareZX80, Micro Bee etc but couldn't afford them so just studied their circuit boards and schematics. (sorry got a bit carried away with my memories there)

The original Dream. can you remember this picture from the EA artical? I can


I thought going back to some of these basics might inspire me so I ordered the Raspberry Pi 2 and am now enjoying learning a bit of Linux and Python. I feel compelled to get back to breadboaring and controlling stuff if only to relive those early child hood feelings of exploration and excitement. Might have to drag out my copy of  "Sole of a new machine" also.

OS installed and ready for action

1 comment:

  1. Hi Marcus, thought I'd left you a comment yesterday but it apparently not. Reading your blog immediately evoked the memory of the musty smell of opening a copy of Electronics Australia and the thought of all the interesting gizmos you could build.

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