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<gordonDrogon>
AVRs have I2C hardware - TWI (Two Wire Interface) was due to patents/copyright/etc. although that's all expired now. (AIUI)
<gordonDrogon>
the BASIC version was done on a Pi which also has I2C hardware but the person didn't know how to access it from BASIC (which was a BASIC interpreter I wrote for Linux which supported a 'wiring' like interdate with digitalRead(), pinMode(), etc.
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<muurkha>
I'm sick of having to plug in my cellphone all the time, especially since I had a three-week power outage a few years ago
<muurkha>
also modern cellphones fucking suck in a comprehensive array of ways, among which is that you can't touch-type on them
<gordonDrogon>
I loved my old Nokia communicators - but they keypads are small. I use the glide type thing on android now.
<muurkha>
yeah, but how many words per minute do you get on the glide type thing?
<gordonDrogon>
not many, but I rarely send more than a txt message or 2.
<muurkha>
qwerty touch-typing easily reaches 60, 90 in bursts, 160 for experts
<muurkha>
I've read and written thousands of pages of Usenet posts on a 286/12, I know I don't need teraflops for a personal computing environment
<gordonDrogon>
I read email on it, but only very rarely send email. I like my desktop for stuff like that.
<muurkha>
me too. what i don't like is that my desktop stops working when the power goes out
<muurkha>
and I can't take it with me on the bus or to a café or the park
<gordonDrogon>
my bcpl system comes in at kiloflops...
<muurkha>
see, that's why I thought you might find the concept interesting
<gordonDrogon>
I am fortunate to live in an area with good power though.
<muurkha>
even you probably don't have good power in the park
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<gordonDrogon>
well, no, but my lifestyle/workstyle sort of doesn't need it.
<muurkha>
we've been using Moore's Law to get more and more processing power to waste on CSS layout algorithms, but what I'm interested in is more personal power
<muurkha>
more autonomy, more freedom
<muurkha>
so last year I learned about two innovations that ought to make a submilliwatt autonomous personal computer possible
<gordonDrogon>
a 15,000 mAh battery box will keep my phone going for a good few days - unless I use gps navigation.
<muurkha>
yeah, but how long is that battery going to last? it wears out after a few hundred recharges
<gordonDrogon>
sub-milliwatt would be impressive - but the display?
<muurkha>
also it's heavy
<gordonDrogon>
phone is a google nextus 6 - I think it's 5 years old - and yes, the battery is fading now.
<muurkha>
right, so one of the innovations is SHARP's "Memory LCD", which claims 50 microwatts for a 400×240 display
<muurkha>
or 170 microwatts if you are updating it
<muurkha>
wait, let me make sure I'm not lying
<gordonDrogon>
so a bit like ePaper displays?
<muurkha>
no, that's right
<muurkha>
no, I had high hopes for ePaper displays
<muurkha>
since of course they use 0 microwatts static
<gordonDrogon>
they;re still a bit slow.
<muurkha>
but they use a ridiculous amount of power to update
<gordonDrogon>
400x240 is a good 40-column display.
<muurkha>
yeah, it should work well for that. it'd work as 80-column but you'd need a magnifying glass
<gordonDrogon>
and a rubbish 6-pixel wide font...
<muurkha>
5-pixel-wide, same as an H-19 or VT-100 or CGA
<muurkha>
or am I misremembering? anyway xterm -fn 5x8 is fine
<gordonDrogon>
maybe, but I'm 40+ and need reading glasses!
<muurkha>
me too, except I'm nearsighted instead of farsighted :(
<gordonDrogon>
heh.. just tried xterm -fn 5x8... yea, it's right on the edge of my sigh with glasses unless I use magnifiers...
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<gordonDrogon>
however - on the workflow side - Appleworks is about what you need with an email client and a good text based web browser might get you some web functionality...
<muurkha>
the problem is that it's 53 mm x 35 mm
<muurkha>
but yeah, Appleworks is a good reference point
<gordonDrogon>
great big fresnel lens - shades of "Brazil" ...
<muurkha>
heh, I was just mentioning that Brazil scene to my girlfriend today
<muurkha>
also I've been looking at videos of the first Macintosh versions, which had about 0.2 megapixels and 1 MIPS
<gordonDrogon>
I could write a sort of word-processor and simple database for my BCPL system and a text-based email would not be too hard (I've done it before)
<muurkha>
the other relevant innovation is that Ambiq has finally brought to market subthreshold-logic CPUs
<muurkha>
"low power" CPUs in the past have been, like, 200 pJ per 32-bit instruction
<muurkha>
there have been research subthreshold processors that were more like 3 pJ/insn
<muurkha>
Ambiq's chips are about 30 pJ/insn but they're apparently actual products you can buy that work reliably
<jimwilson>
OpenFive is a company that turns IP Cores into SoCs, so it helped create a market for SiFive IP Cores
<muurkha>
in my cardboard mockup they look ridiculous juxtaposed with a full-size QWERTY keyboard
<gordonDrogon>
jimwilson, intersting, thanks. it's a whole world I know very little of right now.
<solrize>
where is the autonomous power supposed to come from? with a roll-up solar panel you can keep a normal phone powered
<gordonDrogon>
back to shades of the Palm Pilot and so on ...
<muurkha>
solrize: built-in solar panels that can gather enough power to operate even from indoor light
<muurkha>
like a solar calculator
<jimwilson>
solrize, I don't know anything, so I can't say anything, but I find the sale curious, and one possible explanation is that someone wants the IP Core business but not the chip business
<muurkha>
the cardboard mockup is about the size of a large smartphone or a pocket Moleskine when folded in half
<jimwilson>
or maybe the VCs didn't want the chip business anymore, or maybe it wasn't profitable to keep running it
<muurkha>
each half is 8 mm thick; hopefully I can make that work in real life with a bent steel sheet-metal shell
<gordonDrogon>
so I now want a 'playdate' with RISC-V CPU.... and keyboard...
<muurkha>
the space available for solar panels in the mockup would yield about 300 mW in full sunlight with 10% efficient solar cells used in solar calculators
<muurkha>
yeah, that's pretty close to what I'm planning to build. except that so far Ambiq only has ARM CPUs unfortunately
<muurkha>
I want to pot the whole inside in silicone to make it waterproof
<gordonDrogon>
back to my original quest for a RISC-V system with about 512KB of RAM...
<muurkha>
the only way I can think of to make it comfortably touch-typable and also fit in my pocket is to make it fold in half kind of like a Motorola clamshell two-way pager or Nintendo DS, but with the hinge on the short edge instead of the long edge
<gordonDrogon>
wonder how much power the esp32-c3 uses without wi-fi enabled...
<muurkha>
and made of steel, not plastic
<muurkha>
that's an excellent question and one I'll be able to answer next month
<muurkha>
the Ambiq CPU claims 68 μA plus 10 μA per MHz in the datasheet
<gordonDrogon>
it was an early contended for me - has about 400KB of usable RAM and plenty of flash.
<muurkha>
nice!
<muurkha>
sometimes Ambiq claim 6 μA per MHz but it turns out that's running for (;;) ;
<gordonDrogon>
I suspect this Tang board is somewhat power hungry, but I've no way to measure it.
<muurkha>
can you try to power it off a capacitor and measure the capacitor's discharge rate?
<gordonDrogon>
I'd haev to butcher a USB cable and if I'm doing that I might as well stick a multimeter in the way.
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<gordonDrogon>
bit given that the FPGA has 2 x !MB blocks of RAM plus an Arm CPU as well as 9K LUTs I suspect it's somewhat power heavy.
<gordonDrogon>
might treat myself to one of those in-line USB power monitor thingy.
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<muurkha>
yeah, those USB power monitors are pretty cheap, aren't they?
<gordonDrogon>
just looked on ebay - £6.50 + postage, so yea.
<muurkha>
and they may not be able to tell yu the difference between 0.1mW and 1mW they can surely tell you the difference between 1, 10, 100, and 1000 mW
<muurkha>
*you
<gordonDrogon>
I think 1mA resolution is pushing it for the cheap ones
<muurkha>
isn't it more the routing that uses power on FPGAs than the SRAM and LUTs?
<gordonDrogon>
I've really no idea.
<gordonDrogon>
ebay 194319320391 is £20 but 0.1mA resolution.
<solrize>
you'd basically be building a fancy calculator
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<solrize>
i'd get an inkplate or something like that, if you don't need fast display update
<gordonDrogon>
yes, there is a limit to usability.
<solrize>
why are small hdmi displays so expensive?
<gordonDrogon>
however I did once write some software on the Epson HX20 - 4 lines of 20 characters IIRC ...
<gordonDrogon>
hdmi royaltys?
<solrize>
yeah you can, i mean i had a programmable calculator back in the day with 1 line
<solrize>
but meh
<gordonDrogon>
well, by todays standards and "wants", meh, indeed.
<solrize>
hmm i didn't know about hdmi royalties
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<muurkha>
solrize: you could say "a fancy calculator" but it's a calculator with as many pixels as the original Macintosh and as much computational power as a Pentium
<muurkha>
so I think you can do things on it that you can't do on a "calculator"
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<muurkha>
writing an operating system on a couple of 15-line-tall screens is a reasonable thing to do. writing an operating system on a one-line screen is not
<muurkha>
and did you check out the footage of videogames on a single one of those screens I linked earlier?
<muurkha>
gordonDrogon: was the Epson HX20 similar to the TRS-80 Model 100? It sounds similar
<muurkha>
(to be fair, when running at Pentium speeds it would use over a milliwatt, like maybe 1.4 milliwatts if we believe the datasheets)
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<dh`>
yeah, the epson came out first iirc
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<solrize>
muurkha, question is what could you use it for. it's more about the size of the screen than the # of pixels. i had an early laptop with cgi resolution and did lots of reading and homework on it, but it was a reasonable size and the laptop had a good keyboard
<dh`>
there's a minimum number of pixels too; it's hard to do real work with less than 80 columns and 8 pixels per character is about the minimum for a legible font
<solrize>
i remember a 3x5 font heh
<dh`>
oh, you can do that, but using it regularly is pushing things
<sorear>
200 lines?
<dh`>
640x200 like the original amigas is definitely enough though
<muurkha>
solrize: yeah, did you look at the games?
<muurkha>
which is kind of a new problem for me, I'm not used to it
<muurkha>
it's 400x240 pixels but 53 x 35 mm
<dh`>
yeah that's... almost small enough to be a watch
<dh`>
maybe if you mounted one in front of each eyeball...
<muurkha>
so in theory it has enough pixels for 80 columns and 30 lines
<muurkha>
but in a 3.3-point font
<muurkha>
you can see that a lot of the games on the Playdate have text on the screen, usually at a size that would permit about 10 lines of 6 words each
<muurkha>
I'm planning to use two of the displays side by side, but still...
<muurkha>
thus gordonDrogon's comment about Brazil
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