The rPi credit-card-sized ARMbased computer which is already widely distributed, has no facilites to drive VGA.
It has however a GPIO port [?IEE488]. A driver for RS232 would be easy to drive the GPIO port. I think plip is even simpler, and there's linux info for it.
Would it be viable to:- connect the rPi's port to a PC's RS232-port, rPi redirect StdOut to ttyS0, PC redirect ttyS0 to StdOut ?
This would allow one Terminal of the LinuxPC to show the rPi's output -- hopefully.
I've got a crossover-cable RS232 to RS232. Could I test the concept on a PC which has 2 RS232 ports, with one port simulating the rPi?
Take note that comp.sys.raspberry-pi has been approved, the creation message has probably gone out by now.
The Pi doesn't drive a VGA because it's intended to be used with current tv sets, which definitely have hdmi. It's a modern day equivalent of the Commodore 64, hook up to the tv set and play with it to learn programming.
That said, the HDMI port has the signals for DVI, you just need an adapter that takes the subset of signals and puts it on a DVI connector. And most of the LCD monitors I'm finding here waiting for the garbage trucks have DVI (no sign of hdmi yet) connectors. So not having VGA doesnt' seem too limiting.
If it's doing conversion to serial in software, then that may slow things down. THey need specific timing, which then locks out other multitasking, unless things have changed from the days of Microware OS-9. That may or may not be an issue.
You set up a console that is using the RS232 port rather than the built in console. This is easy since long before Linux came along, Unix often operated this way. Inittab is where this is done.
/etc/inittab ... # These are the standard console login getties in multiuser mode: c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux ... # Local serial lines: #s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100
Especially when hardware is envolved, the common method: Doa, DoB, DoC...and it should fly; is inferior to the method of: confirm the 1st stage [power LED]; confirm 2nd stage ... confirm Nth stage PS. what are the steps to send 8 'postponed' emails from alpine, FAST, once you've paid-to-go-online?
The Raspberry Pi has some GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) lines. IEEE-488 is the officially standardised version of the ancient GPIB, the General Purpose Interface Bus, which is an entirely different thing, one you're very unlikely to need.
'GPIO' is general purpose I/O. It's not a specific interface, there is no standard, it's whatever the manufacturer feels like. That's why it's general purpose! Here's the Pi version:
And now that the newsgroup for the Pi is created, the guy who wanted it should seed the new newsgroup with a good FAQ, just like in the old days. If he wants people to tune in, then he needs to start feeding posts to it, of useful information, so people will actually go there and start hanging out.
I'm not sure the need for a FAQ is as great as in the days when all this electronic communication were still new-fangled. Since then the www has growed, and folks know how to search for stuff.
(from comp.sys.raspberry-pi) It depends on how evangelical you are feeling. If the group is only for the cognoscenti then you don't need much. If on the other hand, you are trying to encourage people like me (I only know about the Pi from what I've read in TheRegister) to become hands-on then there needs to be a lot more basic stuff.
I subscribed to the new group, not because I know about the Pi but because I want to know about it. Don't think of me as a beginner, I'm a pre-beginner, really.
While I'm all for Usenet, etc. this group is coming over a year after the Pi went on-sale and as such, there is a years worth of information in the forums on rasperrypi.org, as well as an FAQ and many wiki pages - not to mention many many websites that have sprung up giving out information, software, selling hardware and so on for the Pi.
(And #raspberry pi exists on Freenode, and has been there for over a year too)
Unless you've a real aversion to the interwebs then start on the forums, you'll find far more there than anywhere else right now.
That's the issue. People jump to the web forums, when really it's a slim replication of Usenet. But since the traffic is there, a new space won't necessarily have traffic.
If this newsgroup can't be seeded with useful information to begin with, then it won't lure people and it will just be a blank newsgroup.
SOme of us do. I remember the whining over fifteen years ago about usenet, but then those people never came. Instead they bought into the web as a passive experience, until forums became common, at which point they talked about "web 2.0". They claim the forums are so much better, yet crossposting, spam, all the "lol's", that stuff comes from decades of networking on Usenet. It makes us invisible.
I don't want to see your photo, I don't want informationa about you, I want to see what you have to say. I dont' care about seeing photos of endless replications of the same project. Yes, photos can be useful at times, but that's why the web and URLs were created, I can just as easily point to a photo "on the web" from here by putting the URL in as by using a new fangled web forum. And too often, because it can be done and there is no self-limiting and it doesn't cost the poster a thing, people post endless photos. Just more stuff to wade through.
I have sampled some forums in recent months, because I actually got DSL instead of the dialup I'd had since 1996. DSL makes that junk, that high overhead, possible, yet of course it comes at the cost of people spending a lot more for internet access. Even using a text only browser, there's a fairly high overhead for web forums.
The problem isn't that web forums exist, because many of the people using them would never have come to Usenet. But, since the traffic is over there, too many of us have left usenet, going where the traffic is, and that's why Usenet is dying. If numbers had remained the same, we'd be a minority but still healthy, but instead not only are we dwarfed by the number of people using the web forums, but too many have left usenet to go where the traffic is.
Every time I've seen a newsgroup fade away because the traffic has gone elsewhere, a very deliberate move in some cases, I refuse to follow. I just no longer participate in that topic. Yes, it's extremely sad that the healthiest newsgroup I still read is about tv. At some point I'll leave Usenet too, because there's no longer enough content, but it won't be to go somewhere else, I'll just stop.
I whinged too, but I mostly moved on. There are still a small number of usenet groups I read, but everything else - it's rinky dinky webby forums, blogs, etc. Either move with it, or be left out. And you don't need to make effort to visit them either - there are RSS, etc. feeds than can bring it all to you.
I watched a very active SCUBA mailing list actually mostly move to usenet in the late 1990's then within a year or so, vanish almost completely when the web forums took over. You can't stop it... You can ignore it, but when what? All the good Pi information right now is on the raspberrypi.org forums. The people on usenet? Well, that'll mostly be the RISC-OS crowd, won't it?
Someone will gateway the forum to usenet at some point no-doubt, but look at the whinging and bleating that goes on on uk.d-i-y regarding the diy-banter forum...
These days I do want accountability - and that for me includes a photo and background information. Without accountability, you're just an anonymous handle on the intertubes. At a conference thing a few weeks ago someone came and said hello to me - introduced as his real name (as that was what was on his badge), but I didn't give him much time - turned out he was someone I really did want to talk to, but all I knew was his online "handle". The price for being pseudo-anonymous online?
And that's progress, as they say...
Gordon
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Gordons Projects in Devon, UK
Projects, Internet Technology, Sysadmin and Training
https://projects.drogon.net/ twitter: @drogon
We only lurk here and will butt in only when people mean to write 'RISC OS' and fail to. ;-p
The few die-hard active RISC OS on-other-hardware users that exist spend a lot of their RISC OS time contributing to the ROOL web forums as well as contributing to the comp.sys.acorn hierarchy in Usenet. We have even commandeered alt.archimedes.bugs so we can talk about off-topic nonsense such as Pee Seas, Macs, car analogies, Doctor Who and Hitler. We are quite a friendly bunch. In the first instance RISC OS Raspberry Pi issues could be discussed right here but are probably better researched at
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as no doubt some RISC OS issues will not be Raspberry Pi specific and this NG tastes very Linuxy already, wht wth ll th cmmnd ln bbrvtns being quoted. ;-)
Personally, I hate web forums but understand that today's young people are too inexperienced to realise that many are crap and that moderated sterility is what their parents expect them to be served even though many fora are neither moderated, well organised, nor sterile. YMMV.
alt.archimedes.bugs Off Topic Chat comp.sys.acorn.announce Find out about shows, user group meetings, software updates comp.sys.acorn.apps Discuss apps, learn where software mailing lists exist comp.sys.acorn.misc Other software discussions comp.sys.acorn.networking Discuss software networking issues.
Incidentally, the general consensus seems to be NOT to drop the Acorn name for Usenet and replace it with RISCOS or RISC-OS as we die-hards couldn't possibly ever see that written without a space or with a hyphen, obviously.
--
from Tim Hill who welcomes incoming email to tim at timil dot com.
* Share in a better energy supplier: http://tjrh.eu/coopnrg
* Share in cheaper ethical telecoms: http://tjrh.eu/phone
* Have a genuine & spam-proof address for Usenet http://www.invalid.org.uk/
This is as good a place as any. Your questions can't be any sillier than about half the posts so far.
You don't have to make a life or death decision. For the price of a second SD card you can have linux and RISC OS systems. (or for a bit more money another pi)
If you haven't used RISC OS before you may be pleasantly surprised by its responsiveness.
John
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John Rickman - http://rickman.orpheusweb.co.uk/lynx
I've not used RISC OS but I remember seeng a demo at a computer fair when it was brand new (1987?). I was most impressed that it could do opaque window moves at a time when MacOs etc did the wire-frame thing.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr plan.b .at. dsl .dot. pipex .dot. com
The future was never like this!
Risc OS was a leader in its time. Unfortunately it was allowed to remain more-or-less where it started, while other OS evolved, which left it to be a rather quaint, but mostly ignored, niche product. It could have been so much more.
It's still well on its way to being so much more, with daily updates to development versions. The last stable point version was released in 2012 January. There is a plausible rumour that the next will be released a few days from now.
I vaguely remember looking into RISC OS years ago, and being impressed. My criteria is not machine responsiveness, but VISUAL-based: you don't need to remember; you just recognise. ETHoberon is the best that I know. Plan9's acme copied it and wily is the linux version, which I'm going to try to install when I get my rPi back. For non-X, the most important VISUAL utility is mc. And since Debian doesn't 'use' it we've got contradictory world-views. Even more important than mc is gpm. What could be more useful that a utility that can carry text between any 2 locations?! What's wrong with Debian ? With ETHoberon and wily, you don't need to bob-yo-head-up-n-down between the kybrd and screen. == Would RISC OS meet my requirements?
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