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Re: The $1 computer.

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". ." <nospam275@gmail.com> writes:
> Excuse me again.  I was just noticing the cheap Beagle Board computer
> thread.  There are many of these things around.  I have just seen $49
> AMD embedded PC computer boards with GPU.   What about a $1 computer
> instead based on forth.

Unless you've got a chip fab, this would have to be a cheap conventional
microprocessor programmed in Forth with a traditional interpreter or
compiler.  At that price you couldn't afford any peripherals.  You're
looking at serial i/o (maybe bit-banged) and/or a few GPIO pins, and
you'd need external programming hardware.

If you can afford to move upscale a little, there are a number of dev
boards in the under $10 range, that would be fairly nice as Forth
targets.  The TI Launchpad ($4.30 until recently), Freescale Freedom
series, ST Discovery, etc, plus maybe some Arduino clones.  These boards
actually get pretty powerful.  The Discovery 32F4 has something like
192k of ram.  

The Beaglebone and the somewhat similar Raspberry Pi are at a different
level.  They're basically shrunken-down desktop workstations, amazing
for their low price and capabilities, but expecting similar heavyweight
software infrastructure.  Running Forth on one isn't much different from
running it on a PC.  The Beaglebone's realtime peripheral processors
that I posted about are a special narrow feature that might be of
special interest for Forth though.

> For many years I wanted to do a ring computer, very like the new
> planned Apple Iring ring computer.  Such a thing could use misc.
> What do you think?

There's a regular on this newsgroup who is interested in programming
large applications like web browsers in Forth.  This Apple-like thing
might also be of interest to him.  Maybe the two of you could get
together somehow.

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Thread

The $1 computer. ". ." <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-04-25 07:47 -0700
  Re: The $1 computer. Brad Eckert <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2013-04-25 09:20 -0700
    Re: The $1 computer. Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-04-26 00:46 -0700
    Re: The $1 computer. ". ." <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-04-26 01:27 -0700
      Re: The $1 computer. Roberto Waltman <usenet@rwaltman.com> - 2013-04-30 08:01 -0400
        Re: The $1 computer. Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-04-30 10:11 -0700
        Re: The $1 computer. Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-01 07:49 -0700
          Re: The $1 computer. rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-01 11:30 -0400
            Re: The $1 computer. Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-01 09:44 -0700
  Re: The $1 computer. Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-04-25 09:22 -0700
  Re: The $1 computer. rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-04-25 15:56 -0400
  Re: The $1 computer. Update 1 Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-01 10:17 -0700

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