| ▲ | uticus 5 days ago |
| > an expandable and hackable computer in the spirit of the 80's home computers cool! > Dual Core CPU hm that will make for some interesting first steps in learning |
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| ▲ | lysace 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The Parallax P8X32A Propeller (2006) did multi-core processing in a very beginner friendly way. It can be done - if you take a holistic approach to hardware + runtime + development environment. The Propeller probably failed because of the custom language, the custom assembly syntax, the custom ISA, the custom IDE font (!) etc. It was a very neat system though. |
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| ▲ | duskwuff 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The Propeller was a commercial failure because it was a one-off part, from a small company, with very little software ecosystem surrounding it, a poor performance to price ratio, and no migration path if you needed more capabilities than it could provide. | | |
| ▲ | lysace 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Meh. Similar pricing and availability compared to its primary competitor at the time: Arduino. It was just too unusual in too many ways. In one way it’s a bit like the Amiga vs the 8088/8086 PC. | | |
| ▲ | duskwuff 5 days ago | parent [-] | | "Arduino" is a brand of development boards. The direct equivalent would be the Atmel* ATmega168, and that was widely available through distributors, less expensive, had extensive manufacturer and community support, and was part of a broad product line. What makes microcontrollers commercially successful is... commercial use. Hobbyist applications are fun, but they don't pay the bills. *: Microchip hadn't bought them yet | | |
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| ▲ | spott 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The propeller 2 is going to be used as the south bridge for the Ashet. | | |
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| ▲ | ZiiS 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Tbh having a seperate io core can simplify scheduling. |
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| ▲ | sounds 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Agree. Most computers that are a joy to learn have a handful of controllers that operate in parallel. That is, multiple cores The Apple II had a really cool disk drive because of how it did what it did with so little hardware. By relying on the single CPU for everything it was elegant, advanced, interesting... but perhaps not so easy to program. https://www.bigmessowires.com/2021/11/12/the-amazing-disk-ii... |
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| ▲ | userbinator 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I believe you can ignore the 2nd core, and it will just stay dormant. |
