Uncategorized

RISC OS Pi released

by  •  • 0 Comments

Risc OS Open have announced the official release of Risc OS Pi. It’s available to download now (follow the link) and is actually hosted on the Foundation website, although they’ve yet to provide a link to it from their downloads page.

Risc OS used to be all the rage in the 80s/90s and is one of those “nothing wrong with it” operating systems that a) never made it to mainstream and b) you should try just if you like it.

Go get!

RISC OS Open: News: RISC OS Pi released (RISC OS for the Raspberry Pi).

Accessories, Cases, My Projects, Raspberry Jams, Raspberry Pi Foundation

3rd Milton Keynes Raspberry Jam

by  •  • 0 Comments

Fewer people this time at the Milton Keynes Raspberry Jam, which we decided was mostly due to this being most school’s half term (one week holiday, for those not in the UK). However, it was a very busy couple of hours. Lots of projects were shown, including my PiPodCorder.

Other projects which we saw were:

  • Ken Thompson’s work on a museum front-of-house display using hist TBOPlayer.
  • Daniel Bull’s work-in-progress on his Super 8 videocamera.
  • Daniel Bull’s actual working home heating regulator.
  • A work-in-progress on a project to develop a robot hand to operate front-panel computers at the National Museum of Computing.
  • Peter Onion’s work on the Elliott 603 emulator (buzzing and whistling away in the background, it was, reading virtual paper-tape).
  • A quite wonderful project. The first internet-enabled Enigma coding machine. Just fantastic.

Peter also treated us to a mini-masterclass in soldering – how to do it, how not to do it and how not to destroy anything in the process. I’ll post a video here or over at Raspi.tv of the mini-course.

Suffice to say, those of us who watched the class got a lot out of it and I fully expect all of us to have soldered something new by the end of the week!

The next Jam will be in November, then Peter’s planning to skip December and hold one in early January and one in late January to make up for it.

Met a few new people at the Jam, including a family from Stevenage who are going to use the Pi during half term for both hardware and software projects.

Also in attendance was David Taylor from Cyntech who have recently started to develop a series of products for the Raspberry Pi including a very fashionable new case. The case is a much snugger fit than the ModMyPi cases and includes a slit on the side for the GPIO cable. We were also given hints at a few of their upcoming products which show that these guys are really thinking about the Pi community and how to support us.

 

Raspberry Pi Foundation

Open source GPU userland (and opinion piece)

by  •  • 0 Comments

[Phoronix] Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap

Very out of my depth on this one, but here is the announcement from the Foundation. At first glance, it appears to be a huge step forward, but others have taken this as an opportunity to heap abuse and criticism on the Foundation. This article over at Phoronix: Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap sums it up and links to a couple of other articles. Apparently, the abuse has been quite shocking on Twitter.

I say we should be grateful the Foundation has released anything at all. I wouldn’t know what to do with it, but it sounds like a step forward even if it’s not the whole shebang as developers have been asking for.

[Phoronix] Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap

Once again, I think the only criticism that can be aimed at the Foundation is a lack of editorial control, especially with their headlines. There’s rather too much small print and information-on-the-side about this for my liking – apparently, Eben and Liz have been quite clear about what has actuallybeen released but the

[Phoronix] Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap

information is spread out far and wide. As always, responses to criticisms have been met with the usual sarcasm (“We don’t want you developing an ulcer” quips Liz) and snide remarks, and as always the complainers are expected to take these remarks and ignore them, lest they get banned, blocked or otherwise covered in hot lead.

[Phoronix] Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap

Lack of public relations skills aside, however, the Foundation has done a good thing here. If you can’t feel grateful, at least give them credit for moving things forward when they didn’t have to.