On 29-11-2013, at 1:18 PM, Doug Jones djsdl@frombob.to wrote:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micro-python-python-for-microc...
The microcontroller is clocked at 168MHz and has 1MiB flash and 192KiB RAM, which is plenty for writing complex Python scripts.
Umm, not really. That’s a bit tight, rather slow, and likely to disappoint. At least, for anything we currently think of as Squeak. Now, a simple (it would have to be very simple to save space) vm running a tiny Spoon based image *might* be possible and even useful. The smallest machine I’ve ever run a ‘normal’ Smalltalk system on was the Active Book, which had a whole 1Mb or Ram, though that did have to serve the OS, provide the screen buffer, and host a Fax storage filing system. And it *was* only a 8MHz ARM2 cpu.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.
Tim Rowledge wrote:
On 29-11-2013, at 1:18 PM, Doug Jones wrote:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micro-python-python-for-microc...
The microcontroller is clocked at 168MHz and has 1MiB flash and 192KiB RAM, which is plenty for writing complex Python scripts.
Umm, not really. That's a bit tight, rather slow, and likely to disappoint. At least, for anything we currently think of as Squeak. Now, a simple (it would have to be very simple to save space) vm running a tiny Spoon based image *might* be possible and even useful. The smallest machine I've ever run a "normal" Smalltalk system on was the Active Book, which had a whole 1Mb or Ram, though that did have to serve the OS, provide the screen buffer, and host a Fax storage filing system. And it *was* only a 8MHz ARM2 cpu.
It would probably be possible to squeeze Little Smalltalk into such a tiny computer. While it wouldn't do much, it would be comparable to this Python interpreter. It would also work just fine on a text terminal while non graphical Squeak is rather painful to use (I played around with two implementations). A framebuffer for 640x480 pixels with 256 colors takes up 300KB, so having a VNC client on the PC side wouldn't help.
I am always interested in finding out how small things can be. The original 1972 Dynabook paper proposed a machine with just 8K words of 16 bits, but that was supposed to be a cache for a tape based virtual memory system and if the display were persistent and readable (like the plasma terminals from Plato) you could do without a frame buffer. The Alto was a 128KB machine, on the other hand, and this ARM microcontroller is was more powerful than it was.
-- Jecel
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Doug Jones -
Jecel Assumpcao Jr. -
tim Rowledge