Why so few garage processors? (was Re: Squeak History / TinyMachines)

Gary Fisher gafisher at sprynet.com
Wed Mar 19 19:01:19 UTC 2003


>> "We would need a ready made board a CD with (free) software and HOWTOs."

Oh, no!  That would take out so much of the fun!

Ned's post brings to mind the great scenes from "Dealers Of Lightning" where
Thacker et al are lashing up systems -- from the first desktops and laptops
to an improved "clone" of a PDP-10 -- in their offices, from stock parts.
Compared to that, wiring a motherboard and some drives into a stock cabinet
is almost an embarassment.  <g>

Just *imagine* a machine optimized from the bottom up for Squeak!  Not just
a faster standard machine to get around the limitations of some other
architecture a little less annoyingly, but designed and built from the
get-go without those limitations!

NOW we're talking fun!  (-:

Gary Fisher


----- Original Message -----
From: "Hannes Hirzel" <hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch>
> >
> > I know Jecel is doing interesting work; why don't we see more
> > Smalltalk machines coming out of peoples' garages?
>
> Probably because of lack of system integration know-how.
>
> You have to be a hardware and a software type to come up with this.
> There are not many of these people nowadays.
>
> What you write is actually exciting!
>
> We would need a ready made board a CD with (free) software and HOWTOs.
> So people could concentrate on the SW side.
>
> Actually this would make up a good project for a student.
> Perhaps  (heavy) help from some members of
> this list would be needed.
> I think this would be an incredible CS learning experience.
>
> -- Hannes
>



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