[Coco] CocoPi3 "PacoOtaktay Winter 2017-2018 Edition" now available

[Dave Philipsen]

Gene, I definitely agree with you on the i/o bottleneck of the Pi.  However, there is one area where it really shines. I have not found another computer that will smoothly and seamlessly play 1080 HD video at the same price point. 

I am using the Pi as a video player in a project I’m working on but it acts as a slave to a much slower processor.  The client asked me why I didn’t just use the Pi for the whole kit and kaboodle. And that was my answer, you just can’t do anything practical with it as far as i/o is concerned. I have several different projects using the Pi as a hi-def video player and it has been very, very reliable and will play anything I can throw at it.


Dave

>> On Nov 23, 2017, at 1:36 AM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at shentel.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On Thursday 23 November 2017 00:57:25 Ron Klein wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Frank,
>> 
>> As a quick follow-up to this, it looks like there is a Raspbian distro
>> for the x86 platform.  That might make porting over what I've done for
>> the RPi3 a bit easier.  I'll try to look at this as I get time.
>> 
>> Thanks!
> 
> All this talk about the r-pi, the rpi3 TBE, makes me point out a couple 
> things that are not so great about the r-pi3.
> 
> 1. All i/o except the spi, has to find its way thru a very small, busier 
> than that famous cat on the equaly famous tin roof usb-2 internal hub. 
> It is running a medium sized metal lathe for me fairly well, because all 
> the i/o to run the lathe is spi. Bertho Stultans put the finishing 
> touches on the spi driver, so it writes 32 bit packets at 41 megabaud, 
> and reads the 32 bit responses at 25 megabaud.  So it runs the machine 
> fairly well. But you have to get keyboard and mouse stuff thru that 
> usb-2 pinhole, while its reading and writing to the video and its sd 
> card storage media, with the net result being keyboard and mouse events 
> thrown away in wholesale quantity's. With several reboots, you can get 
> all the ducks in a row and it will run for several days, but every 
> reboot is a crap shoot to see if the keyboard and mouse work.
> 
> Theres a much better card out there now, quite new where the pi's are 
> getting looooong in the tooth, from Pine, called the rock64.  I am 
> running the raspbian version of debian 8, "jessie" on the pi. The rock64 
> running ayufan's version of debian 9, "stretch", does not have this 
> internal architecture pinhole, and is quite easily 10x faster than the 
> pi, 20x or more for disk accesses. Essentially the same updates, 
> security related stuff, took the pi nearly an hour to do this evening, 
> whereas the rock64 was finished with a nearly identical update list in 
> just 3 minutes. And both are sucking those updates over the same 10 
> Megabaud circuit.
> 
> The rock64 is available with up to 4GB of ram for $44.
> 
> Be aware that until one of our linuxcnc guys digs into that spi driver, 
> which is currently built to run only on the pi, will need to be tickled 
> to run on a different set of header definition files before it will run 
> on newer SoC hardware. And while each of these arm platforms has what is 
> called pi compatible gpio, it takes a matching driver to do it.
> 
> But first you have to get the broadcom headers and excise the am I 
> running on a pi checks in that are in that code now so it will run on 
> something else. The existing linux spi driver is so speed limited its 
> effectively broken.
> 
> What I am trying to say, is that there is lots better hardware out there 
> than the pi's. In another 5 years, the pi's light will have burned out. 
> Its popular because it was first, but IMNSHO, it set a very poor 
> standard doing it. Put your porting efforts into more capable hardware.
>>> On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 11:20 PM, Ron Klein <ron at kdomain.org> wrote:
>>> Hi Frank,
>>> 
>>> One of the big benefits of working with the RPi3 is a standard
>>> hardware platform to develop for.  I don't have to be concerned
>>> about different video chipsets, video hardware acceleration
>>> capability, etc..  That being said, the menu system and scripts I
>>> developed would work with many Linux distributions.  In addition,
>>> all the development tools/utilities should work without issue. 
>>> Perhaps I can take a look at Lubuntu as a low overhead/resource
>>> distribution for the PC as a base for "CocoPC3."
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 9:19 PM, Francis Swygert <farna at att.net>
> wrote:
>>>> The latest release of CocoPi3 is now available. Dubbed the
>>>> "PacoOtaktay Winter 2017-2018 Edition", it provides many updates
>>>> and new features. Some of these include:
>>>> 
>>>> Built on the latest Raspbian "stretch." ....
>>>> =============================================
>>>> Any chance of making a distribution on a more normal Linux that
>>>> will run on a standard computer, not a Raspberry Pi? Would be nice
>>>> to have a Live CD to boot up... I have an older laptop (P3 HP
>>>> Omnibook 3000.. 512MB RAM) that would be a good candidate. Nice not
>>>> to have X-windows and all that other high overhead stuff on one
>>>> that is just used as a CoCo emulator. Frank Swygert
>>>> Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
>>>> 803-604-6548
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Coco mailing list
>>>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>>>> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> 
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> -- 
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
> 
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco