New Raspberry Pi Model B+

[tjb1]

Eh...what?

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-d525mw.html

please ahve a look at the recent HP and Lenovo PCs (desktops, towers.. whatever)... not to mention that the popular all-in-one PCs got no LPT port from the very beginning.

Because it is not available on the PCs you purchase from Walmart, Staples, or whatever local electronics store does not mean they don't exist as new technology.  They are still made and they still have their use.

[rob77]

well... let's take a look at ISA bus - boards were still manufactured with a single ISA slot long after it was dead, just to provide compatibility for existing old gear, but the the vast majority of the boards were manufactured without ISA... same happening to the PCI slots nowadays.... and surprise same happening to the LPT ports...

sure you'll still find PCs or main boards with LPT port - but it's uncommon or even rare nowadays. there is simply no use for LPT anymore for the ordinary end users - so the manufacturers are saving few bucks by removing the LPT.
the primary role of an LPT port was... a big surprise ! connecting a printer ! .. now show me a recent mass produced general purpose printer with parallel interface.... hmm... let me think... there is none ! everything is USB, ethernet or wifi.

so teaching kids to interface HW with LPT is useless and hopeless nowadays.

[tjb1]

well... let's take a look at ISA bus - boards were still manufactured with a single ISA slot long after it was dead, just to provide compatibility for existing old gear, but the the vast majority of the boards were manufactured without ISA... same happening to the PCI slots nowadays.... and surprise same happening to the LPT ports...

sure you'll still find PCs or main boards with LPT port - but it's uncommon or even rare nowadays. there is simply no use for LPT anymore for the ordinary end users - so the manufacturers are saving few bucks by removing the LPT.
the primary role of an LPT port was... a big surprise ! connecting a printer ! .. now show me a recent mass produced general purpose printer with parallel interface.... hmm... let me think... there is none ! everything is USB, ethernet or wifi.

so teaching kids to interface HW with LPT is useless and hopeless nowadays.

www.linuxcnc.org

The world does not revolve around you and what you do, much of the manufacturing world still uses floppy disks and parallel ports.

[rob77]

The world does not revolve around you and what you do.

i could say the very same about you

how many idustrial PCs are manufactured per yer ? and how many Personal Computers are manufactured per year ?
you see the difference ?

and yes i know linuxCNC very well and i also know how difficult is to find a suitable LPT port... many of the PCIe expansion cards with LTP are simply not working with linuxCNC...

so accept the fact... LPT is dead when talking about recent Personal Computers..

i will not discuss this anymore... live happily in your isolated world and keep ignoring the changes around you if that makes you happy peace for everyone !

[miguelvp]

Even new mobos have parallel headers populated, the thing is that the connector is not exposed on the back.

Not sure if anyone cares about the BIOS anymore but there is access to the LPT1 port from the old MS DOS interrupts. And since they are still clones they might still have support for all those INT 17h and INT 21h function 05 (hex or decimal makes no difference on the function 5 since it's the same number).

[Rigby]

The whole reason why Eben Upton created the Raspberry Pi was because today's kids see computers as sealed boxes for accessing the internet and playing games.

...and all he's created is another even more closed system.

It's a lot less "black box" than conventional PCs, and openness really isn't something that students give a rats ass about anyway.  The RPi is MORE than open enough to be what it is intended to be.

[davorin]

I've used and tried several different boards in the price range between $30 up to $100...

Raspberry Pi has just a huge community behind, and what is best, the OS provided just works...so you can start immediately working on your small project...

Just this week I got the SAMA5D3 Xplained board from Atmel....nice board I thought...one ethernet with 10/100 and second one with GBit port....
Apparently they sell it for quite some time now...so you would think the Linux support should be in the same state as the Raspberry...

I still can't get a reliable ethernet connection from the GBit port...some times it works, most of the times not....and I am not alone...
The documentation is really poor...

Another board I tested (I tested shitloads of boards) was the Riotboard....which is backed by Element14/Farnell...
I tried to find the documentation to get a Debian image onto it, as the install process was mentioned on the Element site...

But just recently I found out the the blog post from the contributor has been deleted by Element14/Farnell....which is really great!


Community and support-wise...Raspberry Pi is a winner.....

Performance wise? Never...I rather go with i.MX6 or Jetson TK1 (o;


Ah...forgot to mention Beaglebone Black....nice little board....but after several times getting notified by Mouser that the delivery has been postponed again
made me think to switch to other boards and dumped it from my store...

[Rigby]

I have a few BeagleBone Blacks, and I LOVE these little boards.  Worth the wait.

[amyk]

The whole reason why Eben Upton created the Raspberry Pi was because today's kids see computers as sealed boxes for accessing the internet and playing games.

...and all he's created is another even more closed system.

It's a lot less "black box" than conventional PCs, and openness really isn't something that students give a rats ass about anyway.  The RPi is MORE than open enough to be what it is intended to be.

Are you really suggesting the RPi is more open than a standard PC?

The amount of technical information you can find about the PC architecture both online and offline (I have over a dozen books...) is absolutely enormous. If students don't "give a rats ass about" openness, maybe they should, because otherwise they'll never realise the freedom they lost.

[Rigby]

It's a lot less "black box" than conventional PCs, and openness really isn't something that students give a rats ass about anyway.  The RPi is MORE than open enough to be what it is intended to be.

Are you really suggesting the RPi is more open than a standard PC?

OK, fair point, your definition of conventional PC differs from mine, I suppose.  What I'm saying is, that it's open enough that no one who is looking for an educational PC needs to worry about exactly how open it is.  I'm saying there's value in that, you're saying it's not enough, I think.  I disagree with that.