Tim Rowledge wrote:
> On 29-11-2013, at 1:18 PM, Doug Jones wrote:
> 
> > http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micro-python-python-for-microcontrollers
> 
> >> The microcontroller is clocked at 168MHz and has 1MiB flash and 192KiB RAM,
> >>  which is plenty for writing complex Python scripts.
> Umm, not really. That's a bit tight, rather slow, and likely to disappoint. At least, for
> anything we currently think of as Squeak. Now, a simple (it would have to be very
> simple to save space) vm running a tiny Spoon based image *might* be possible
> and even useful. The smallest machine I've ever run a "normal" Smalltalk system
> on was the Active Book, which had a whole 1Mb or Ram, though that did have to
> serve the OS, provide the screen buffer, and host a Fax storage filing system. And
> it *was* only a 8MHz ARM2 cpu.

It would probably be possible to squeeze Little Smalltalk into such a
tiny computer. While it wouldn't do much, it would be comparable to this
Python interpreter. It would also work just fine on a text terminal
while non graphical Squeak is rather painful to use (I played around
with two implementations). A framebuffer for 640x480 pixels with 256
colors takes up 300KB, so having a VNC client on the PC side wouldn't
help.

I am always interested in finding out how small things can be. The
original 1972 Dynabook paper proposed a machine with just 8K words of 16
bits, but that was supposed to be a cache for a tape based virtual
memory system and if the display were persistent and readable (like the
plasma terminals from Plato) you could do without a frame buffer. The
Alto was a 128KB machine, on the other hand, and this ARM
microcontroller is was more powerful than it was.

-- Jecel

http://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/Kay72a.pdf