Education Rules KO
monsonite
Posts: 8
in Propeller 1
Hi All,
I'm new to the Propeller and to the Forum - and it probably didn't help that I posted this in the wrong thread. Forgive me for starting a new discussion.
I am a 50+ hardware engineer living south of London, UK, with an interest in building open hardware for education - amongst many other things.
My motivation is to recreate a compact device (platform) with the capability of a late 1980's style home microcomputer, of the 512kByte to 1Mbyte class (think Commodore Amiga, Atari 1040ST, Acorn Archimedes).
With a Forth inspired GUI / IDE and constructed on a small hobbyist board - that can be built into educational projects. Self hosting is desirable, but with an umbilical option to link to a PC or handheld device - where the application demands it.
The specification should not be tied to any one type of microcontroller - because new and better things always come along - such as Prop 2 - but an initial implementation would be on 1 or 2 Propellers with 512K SRAM and possibly some serial FRAM for rapid, non-volatile update of program code.
I have no desire for this device to run Linux, that is an extra layer of complexity that is just not needed.
It should however have optional internet connectivity (Wiznet or ESP8266) for remote communications, file sharing and the like. Application code downloadable from obex - but with drag and drop into memory.
There should be a strong educational content in the building and programming of this device.
It should be capable of providing a learning experience in practical microelectronics, digital logic, computer arithmetic and algorithms, coding, interfacing and machine control. Everything that young, 21st century citizens need.
If necessary a DIY (self-build) version for stripboard construction using DIL packages should at least be practical. A starter kit cost of US$20 or less, with expandable add-ons or plug-ins.
I have some ideas already - I wonder whether others share such aspirations. I have had a trawl through the forum - an I realise that there is a huge wealth of information here already - if only I can find it
We now have all the added benefits of touchscreen LCDs, micro SD cards for Gigabytes of storage, non-volatile FRAM, high resolution, large screen, affordable touchscreen monitors, PS/2 keyboards and mice and very low cost RAM and cpu technology - stuff we really couldn't even dream of 30 years ago.
Ken
I'm new to the Propeller and to the Forum - and it probably didn't help that I posted this in the wrong thread. Forgive me for starting a new discussion.
I am a 50+ hardware engineer living south of London, UK, with an interest in building open hardware for education - amongst many other things.
My motivation is to recreate a compact device (platform) with the capability of a late 1980's style home microcomputer, of the 512kByte to 1Mbyte class (think Commodore Amiga, Atari 1040ST, Acorn Archimedes).
With a Forth inspired GUI / IDE and constructed on a small hobbyist board - that can be built into educational projects. Self hosting is desirable, but with an umbilical option to link to a PC or handheld device - where the application demands it.
The specification should not be tied to any one type of microcontroller - because new and better things always come along - such as Prop 2 - but an initial implementation would be on 1 or 2 Propellers with 512K SRAM and possibly some serial FRAM for rapid, non-volatile update of program code.
I have no desire for this device to run Linux, that is an extra layer of complexity that is just not needed.
It should however have optional internet connectivity (Wiznet or ESP8266) for remote communications, file sharing and the like. Application code downloadable from obex - but with drag and drop into memory.
There should be a strong educational content in the building and programming of this device.
It should be capable of providing a learning experience in practical microelectronics, digital logic, computer arithmetic and algorithms, coding, interfacing and machine control. Everything that young, 21st century citizens need.
If necessary a DIY (self-build) version for stripboard construction using DIL packages should at least be practical. A starter kit cost of US$20 or less, with expandable add-ons or plug-ins.
I have some ideas already - I wonder whether others share such aspirations. I have had a trawl through the forum - an I realise that there is a huge wealth of information here already - if only I can find it
We now have all the added benefits of touchscreen LCDs, micro SD cards for Gigabytes of storage, non-volatile FRAM, high resolution, large screen, affordable touchscreen monitors, PS/2 keyboards and mice and very low cost RAM and cpu technology - stuff we really couldn't even dream of 30 years ago.
Ken
Comments
You have a admirable and ambitious plan there.
I do detect a little by way of conflicting requirements though, namely:
1) The specification should not be tied to any one type of microcontroller - because new and better things always come along
Which is of course vary desirable.
2) I have no desire for this device to run Linux, that is an extra layer of complexity that is just not needed.
Which I also understand. But Linux is a layer of complexity exactly designed to achieve device independence as in 1)
What I am proposing is a device that is more than an Arduino, but less than a Pi. I have personally spoken with both Eben Upton and Massimo Banzi - and I have no desire to tread on either their spaces.
So we are talking about a device running less than say 200MHz, with the means to address about a megabyte or so of RAM.
The Pepino by Saanlima Eectronics is a good starting point - but needs a $25 FPGA and is somewhat tied to the behemoth Xilinx toolchain.
http://www.saanlima.com/pepino/index.php?title=Welcome_to_Pepino
Whilst Project IceStorm has reverse engineered the Altera bitfile format (of certain iCE devices) it will be a while yet before FPGAs are truly affordable and accessible to the education community - currently $50 to $100 for a dev board, though the Lattice iCEStick is about $25
http://www.latticesemi.com/icestick
Project iCEStorm has lowered the barrier somewhat - and $5 buys a iCE40HX1K part from Digikey
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/lattice-semiconductor-corporation/ICE40HX1K-VQ100/220-1567-ND/3083577
With which my colleague James Bowman has successfully got a version of his J1 Forth CPU and SwapForth to run on.
http://www.excamera.com/sphinx/article-j1a-swapforth.html
So to make a $20 product - we need a micro that is in the $5 region - which means a Propeller 1 - in 1000+ quantity.
The flexibility of the product will come from plug in modules, which can grow to suit the user's experience - and at some stage, one of those modules may be a Raspberry Pi or a $9 CHIP. Let those guys convert spare cell phone and set top box chips into throw-away computers!
BTW - Thanks for your contributions to Cadstar - it consumed my working days back in the early 1990s
Ken