Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Rubin Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Xmas Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2015 22:10:16 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 32 Message-ID: <87mvswfmlz.fsf@nightsong.com> References: <6203f280-179c-4b00-9d5f-07039f2b1c1b@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="7fb8b9b5119ed656382b2cea88166c4f"; logging-data="12041"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+CalNmc8K6JK8BSeO2gqV+" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Mi+a3Ko1DeJExhtX96WvlGH1Ck4= sha1:9/NuslBJvtKzwAnwbW6mFaBbS3U= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:44370 Chris Curl writes: > I am returning the Raspberry Pi as I got this instead. It is 1/2 the > price of the rPi. > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014Q5EQOK The BBB is a real nice board but that offer is a bit suspicious: 1) $29 is a very low price for a 4gb Beaglebone Black (BBB). They are $50+ from regular distributors. The older 2gb version (note this is the amount of on-board flash; they all have 512MB ram) was $40+. 2) it claims the board is qualified for industrial temp range, but I don't think Circuitco ever supported that. There was some talk of an alternate version but I don't know if it happened. So I wonder if you're getting some weird clone. Have you already received it and tried it out? Did it come in Circuitco packaging? Also: the RPI2 is $35 from the official distributor (Element14.com) though you have to add shipping and an SD card. The BBB is in many ways a better and more serious board than the RPi's, but it's older than the current Pi's and is way behind the Pi2 in cpu performance because of the Pi2's quad core cpu. The Pi2 also has 2x as much ram. I don't know how much you care about this. There is a new, faster Beagleboard in the works, but it will be much fancier and more expensive than the BBB. The BBB's main ARM processor doesn't seem that interesting as a Forth host, since it's just another Linux board. However, the chip has a pair of realtime coprocessors (PRU's) that would be cool to program in Forth. Right now the tool situation for them is pretty weak, from what I understand.