[Wylug-discuss] Raspberry Pi to run BBC Micro 2

[Paul Brook]

> On Friday 17 Feb 2012, Paul Brook wrote:
> > > I'm assuming that the Beeb will be wise enough to prevent their IDE
> > > defaulting to Java.
> > 
> > The usual reason for that is because you're using Eclipse.  The hardware
> > they're targeting (raspberry Pi) only has 256Mb ram, which isn't enough
> > to even think about running Eclipse.
> 
> I'm pretty sure the plan is to have it running on the raspberry Pi.

Really? I've had some experience with Eclipse and running it on the raspberry 
Pi hardware sounds suicital.

> The nostalgic effect will be superb - it will leave the user with the same
> amount of free memory as they had on a BBC  Model B ;)

Well, except that you're not trying to run 30-year old software designed to 
run in that space :-)  The original BBC machines were competetive with other 
systems available at the time.

This is my main concerns with this project.  While I appreciate the need to 
build things to a cost, the end result is pretty under-powered linux bx, 
expecially the "A" version which only has 128Mb ram.  This simply isn't enough 
for a contemporary general purpose machine.  It's not even enough for a 
restricted use machine like a phone or tablet[1].  Anyone who's used a 
similarly specced low-end Android phone can probably tell you how unpleasant 
that can be.

It seems to be uncomfortably in the middle of really cheap-and-simple 
electronics hacking projects like the Arduino (which you can give out like 
sweets when bought in volume) but require a real computer to do the 
programming, and machines capable of running a full end-user OS like the 
beagle and panda.

Paul

[1] Technically Android 2.3 is supposed to work in 128mb.  Android 4 requires 
340Mb.