<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>I just bought a Teensy 3.1 from <a href="http://pjrc.com">pjrc.com</a>. Its got an ARM overclocked at 96 MHz, with 256 KB of FLASH, and 64 KB of RAM, plus a huge pile of hardware features built in. It was $20, and looks like one of those old basic stamps. Right now I'm programming it with the Arduino IDE, but its another platform that would be cool to run something like Little Smalltalk or Spoon on.<br>
<br></div>I also have a Spark Core sitting on my desk. It is slightly lower-spec in terms of processing power than the Teensy 3.1, but it has a built-in wifi core.<br><br></div>Here's a pic of the two devices side by side:<br>
<br></div><a href="http://www.huv.com/Spark-Teensy.jpg">http://www.huv.com/Spark-Teensy.jpg</a><br><br></div><div>Awesome stuff!<br></div><div><br></div>- Jon<br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 2:51 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jecel@merlintec.com" target="_blank">jecel@merlintec.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">Doug Jones wrote:<br>
<br>
> True, but comparing with the Raspberry Pi isn't really fair ;-)<br>
<br>
</div>It is unfair from the seller's viewpoint, but totally fair from the<br>
buyer's viewpoint. Note that I develop such boards and so am very<br>
familiar with the issues you mentioned. If I try to buy the Zynq 7020<br>
chip present in the $99 Parallela board, for example, Xilinx wants me to<br>
pay $150. And the fact that I am using FPGAs to implement my Smalltalk<br>
processors while these ARM SoCs are full ASICs make it hard to compete.<br>
But as a buyer you shouldn't have to care about any of that.<br>
<br>
Since you are interested in open source, you might find these boards<br>
interesting:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware" target="_blank">https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware</a><br>
<br>
About the 128KB Macintosh, I had one for a couple of months. MacWrite<br>
was limited to at most 7 pages while Word swapped like crazy. I opened<br>
it up and expanded it to 512KB and it went from being an interesting toy<br>
to a usable tool.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> The first Mac was inspired by that legendary visit to Xerox PARC. They<br>
> saw a GUI there. And Alan Kay showed them Smalltalk.<br>
<br>
</div>Not quite, though this is the most popular version of the story. Jef<br>
Raskin worked on the idea of a graphical computer that would be<br>
user-friendly for his PhD project which he called "QuickDraw". After he<br>
became a professor, he spent some time at Xerox PARC as a visiting<br>
researcher and became very familiar with all the projects being<br>
developed there. After that he joined Apple to write their manuals and<br>
was later tasked with creating "Annie", a very low cost game machine. He<br>
renamed it Macintosh and proposed to combine his QuickDraw ideas with a<br>
"computer as an appliance" design to avoid the complications he had<br>
faced trying to document the very flexible Apple II.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.digibarn.com/friends/jef-raskin/writings/millions.html" target="_blank">http://www.digibarn.com/friends/jef-raskin/writings/millions.html</a><br>
<br>
Steve Jobs didn't like the project and kept trying to kill it. Jef felt<br>
that if Steve could see the stuff at PARC he would leave him alone. Mike<br>
Markkula agreed and sent Steve (and, later, the Lisa team) to see a demo<br>
of the Alto by Adele Goldberg and Dan Ingalls.<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
-- Jecel<br>
<br>
<br>
</font></span></blockquote></div><br></div>