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

Jack Johnson fragment at nas.com
Wed Mar 19 19:39:44 UTC 2003


Hannes Hirzel wrote:
> Just to see what happens. Sharing the x-perience of achievieng
> something what people normally consider to be hard.
> 
> If it isn't fun and easy to do we shoudn't do it. 

I'd settle for fun and hard.

When I saw the uCsimm project, I immediately thought about a parallel 
project to utilize the uCsimm, where you'd have an open experimentation 
platform based on the uCsimm pinout.  Any other SIMM-based project that 
used the new "standard" could reuse the board for 
keyboard/power/serial/ethernet/etc. making the barriers to 
experimentation that much lower.

Which is also where I started thinking about the Pocket Mac Classic.  An 
open-platform PDA where you could change it's nature by replacing a 
SIMM, but reuse the chicklet keys and low-res screen, etc.  So, if you'd 
rather have a Pocket C-64, Pocket Apple II or Pocket Sinclair, voila. 
And the companies who can afford to do more, there's always the 
XScale/WinCE SIMM, PalmOS SIMM, etc.

(Way off topic, sorry)

-Jack



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