Why I didn't buy a Pi

[phoenixkonsole]

Yep i agree but it is a discontinued product. Cubieboard is fine (on par with efika) and brings sata with it.

[takemehomegrandma]

Yep i agree but it is a discontinued product. Cubieboard is fine (on par with efika) and brings sata with it.

Interesting piece, the number of options for low cost ARM systems of these kind seems to be increasing all the time! Interesting times ahead!

[Kronos]

Of course your RC30 would wipe the pants off the Vincent the same way my gaming laptop would roll over my A500. I'm disapointed in you Iggy for making that kind of comparison - you should know better  

So when you wrote:
"But the British made the Vincent Black Shadow - the best motorbike of all time! "

You really meant:
"But the British made the Vincent Black Shadow - the best motorbike of it's time! "

[Iggy]

of coarse an Ultra 20 can run XBMC, its only a PC in a Sun frock!

Alright!
Somebody with some knowledge. Yes, its a Sun case that is almost identical to its Sparc driven brethren with an off the shelf Tyan server motherboard inside.
Never shipped with Windows, mine is running XP and Ubuntu (because Solaris does not have good browser support - I want Firefox or Chrome).
If you update to a Tyan bios, you even get overclocking options the Sun bios doesn't have (and Opterons overclock really well).

Except for an an above par build quality (right down to having every cable and lead routed and strapped in place) its pure PC.

The Sparc hardware I have is older and pre-dates the really good stuff (which in my opinion starts with the UltraSparc T1).

[Iggy]

So when you wrote:
"But the British made the Vincent Black Shadow - the best motorbike of all time! "

You really meant:
"But the British made the Vincent Black Shadow - the best motorbike of it's time! "

Father!
Yes, and an RC30 is very easy to ride hard, and spanks its 1990 competition.
But today's rides would out distance it when pushed.

[takemehomegrandma]

ARM with SATA still is not that common.
And the few boards I  have seen only control two devices.

Not a very big problem IMHO, as long as there is a big enough SSD on board and optionally a memory card slot. I have removed the HDD's on my PC, instead I have a big and fast SSD and all the bulk data (music, movies, photos, work stuff, etc) on a mirror-raid NAS that can be reached from all my computers. Works like a charm!

If we had ARM systems with an expansion bus, then adding additional controllers would be easy.

Let's see what comes out of this new "Hierofalcon" ARM CPU from AMD (to be sold under the AMD Opteron brand):

• Up to eight 64-bit Cortex-A57 cores (28nm)
• Up to 2GHz
• Dual channel DDR3/4 memory
• a cryptographic co-processor
• 10Gbit/sec Ethernet network connections
• PCI-Express 3

[Linde]

How do you think the Atari ST managed without all the custom chips?
The cpu dude...duh!

On the other hand, something obviously gave the Amiga edge over the ST. Saying that it's all about the CPU, when talking about Amiga, seems like an under-appreciation of the work they did on the custom chips. To me, it's what gives the Amiga most of its character, and it's definitely why I still use it.

[Linde]

Yes, and an Amiga is very easy to ride hard, and spanks its 1990 competition.
But today's computers would out distance it when pushed.

[takemehomegrandma]

I can find computers in skips more powerful than the Raspberry Pi... But if all you want in a computer is CPU power, then I don't know watch attracted you to the Amiga :-?

For some of us the usefulness equation is more complex:

(software support + performance + smallness+ quietness + modern connectivity) / (power consumption + price + limit of available replacement units)

GPU's can (if you want) boost general performance considerably in all applications where parallel computing makes sense through CUDA / OpenCL.

A lot is happening on the ARM/GPU front currently. Here is "Logan" (Quad ARM Cortex-A15 + low power companion core) with the "Kepler" GPU:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx0t-WJFXzo

[youtube]Vx0t-WJFXzo[/youtube]

Nobody can say that this isn't impressive!

It would be cool if someone made a non-handheld system based on this. All ARM, all highly integrated, cool, silent, low watt etc.

[Iggy]

"Amiga is very easy to ride hard, and spanks its 1990 competition.
But today's computers would out distance it when pushed."

Very clever.
And true.

And no one should assume that I am anti-ARM.

I am really looking forward to the quad core A9 device I ordered.

Its under powered ARM devices I am not in favor of.

I have to check out the Soc Grandma mentioned (and yeah, the new Opterons will be very cool).

[Iggy]

On the other hand, something obviously gave the Amiga edge over the ST. Saying that it's all about the CPU, when talking about Amiga, seems like an under-appreciation of the work they did on the custom chips. To me, it's what gives the Amiga most of its character, and it's definitely why I still use it.

Not really.
I still own an Amiga, I sold the ST (although I would like to have a Mega STE).
I think Jay Miner was a genius (Dave Haynie on the other hand, definitely not so much).

As to its character, the 68K is at its core.

[Kesa]

Why not like Dave Haynie? I thought he did a lot for the Amiga. He made the A3000. He must have done something i'm not aware of.

[Iggy]

Why not like Dave Haynie? I thought he did a lot for the Amiga. He made the A3000. He must have done something i'm not aware of.

Dave had a lot of influence on the 2000 as well.

But he has been a little too free with his opinions and misconceptions, and he's no Jay Miner.

Then there is that dreadful C128 that people keep mentioning. A 2 MHz Z-80?
You do realize that that is outperformed by a 1 MHz 6502 (which in itself is not that hot a cpu) don't you?

[takemehomegrandma]

Dave had a lot of influence on the 2000 as well.

But he has been a little too free with his opinions and misconceptions, and he's no Jay Miner.

Then there is that dreadful C128 that people keep mentioning. A 2 MHz Z-80?
You do realize that that is outperformed by a 1 MHz 6502 (which in itself is not that hot a cpu) don't you?

The C128 was actually quite cool IMHO, and it was very complex. It was "three computers in one", and it was a dual CPU system that had both a Z-80 @ 4MHz (its 2MHz effective speed was because it had to pause and let the VIC-II chip get access to the system bus) *and* a 8502 (an improved 6502 that ran in either 1MHz or 2MHz depending on the current mode the computer operated in). The 128D had even a 6502 present (in its disk drive, which actually was a computer by itself just like the external 1541/1581).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_128

http://hackaday.com/2013/12/09/guest-post-the-real-story-of-hacking-together-the-commodore-c128/

[Iggy]

The C128 was actually quite cool IMHO, and it was very complex. It was "three computers in one", and it was a dual CPU system that had both a Z-80 @ 4MHz (its 2MHz effective speed was because it had to pause and let the VIC-II chip get access to the system bus) *and* a 8502 (an improved 6502 that ran in either 1MHz or 2MHz depending on the current mode the computer operated in). The 128D had even a 6502 present (in its disk drive, which actually was a computer by itself just like the external 1541/1581).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_128

http://hackaday.com/2013/12/09/guest-post-the-real-story-of-hacking-together-the-commodore-c128/

At what point did either of us ever become humble?
And I just do not like this things design.
Instead of three crappy cpus, why not use one decent one?

[Kronos]

Instead of three crappy cpus, why not use one decent one?

Because that was NOT the point of the C128 project ?

You know C= did have some plans for a "16Bit" computer, that was canned when the purchased Amiga, the 128 was meant to the last&best of all 8Bits.

As such it needed compability with the C64 and it's massive SW pool, the Z80 was added to add "pro" level CPM-SW. The 3rd CPU was in the diskdrive, cos thats how all C= 8Bit floppies flew.

Was the whole concept smart ? Or maybe just a few years late ?
Doubt that was a decision Dave and the engeneering team could make, but for what was demaned/allowed by managment they sure came along with a hell of a puter.