[Coco] The BIGGEST PROBLEM with (So-Called) NEW CoCo Hardware...

[Allen Huffman]

> On Mar 6, 2017, at 9:10 AM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:
> 
> Just another factoid FWIW: I just booted my Pi with a pretty much stock Raspbian Jessie Lite install and it took 17 seconds from power applied to command line prompt.  With a little trimming of unnecessary junk I'm sure you could reduce that time down a little.

Using a Pi 2, I was able to follow some blog examples and get a similar bootup, then Java and the DriveWire server took a bit more.

My Linux skills are more from the application side, but research shows several other ports that are much faster on startup. I have yet to go through them to see which ones would support the minimal things DW requires: Java, serial port, ethernet/wifi.

Dave, if you think you could figure out how to tune Pi Linux faster, I'd enjoy seeing info on that. I will be hooking my Pis back up soon to return to experimenting.

By the way, all, with a $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W (wifi, bluetooth), and the Linux stack, it could handle talking to wifi printers, USB keyboards, bluetooth mice, etc. etc. requiring only an interface to the CoCo's memory map via a few bytes and then an application on the Pi to do the translating.

This is very doable, *assuming* you are okay waiting 10+ seconds after power up before you can do anything with the device.

But, "instant on" access like the CoCoSDC probably won't mix with a full OS like Linux.

		-- Allen