Close-Up On The RP2350 HSTX Peripheral

August 20, 2024 by 24 Comments

The new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 with its RP2350 microcontroller has only been with us for a short time, and thus its capabilities are still being tested. One of the new peripherals is HSTX, for which the description “High speed serial port” does not adequately describe how far it is from the humble UART which the name might suggest. CNX Software have taken a look at its capabilities, and it’s worth a read.

With a 150 MHz clock and 8 available pins, it’s a serial output with a combined bandwidth of 2400 Mbps, which immediately leaves all manner of potential for streamed outputs. On the RP2040 for example a DVI output was made using the PIO peripherals, while here the example code shows how to use these pins instead. We’re guessing it will be exploited for all manner of pseudo-analogue awesomeness in the manner we’re used to with the I2S peripherals on the EP32. Of course, there’s no corresponding input, but that still leaves plenty of potential.

Have a quick read of our launch coverage of the RP2350, and the Pico 2 board it’s part of.

A Lunar Lander-meets-Flappy-Bird game where you must rescue puppies from a Moon base, on an OLED display.

2024 Tiny Games Contest: Save The Stranded Puppies Of Moon Base P!

August 19, 2024 by 4 Comments

Usually, if something is tiny, it’s probably pretty cute to boot. [Luke J. Barker]’s lunar navigation game is no exception to this unwritten rule. And as far as contest rules go, this one seems to fit rather nicely, as it is tiny on more than one level.

Moon Base P (for Puppies) is built upon a XIAO ESP32-C3, an SSD1306 OLED display, and a single button to keep the BOM tidy. In this riveting side-scroller which sort of marries Lunar Lander and Flappy Bird, the top bar is always yellow and displays fuel and such, and the bottom is a rough, blue lunar surface over which you must maneuver your lunar lander. Keep pressing the button to stay up and avoid mountains, or let off the gas to cool the engine.

Fly that thing over the terrain, avoiding stray meteors and picking up free fuel, and then land gently at Moon Base P to save the stranded puppies. But you must keep flying — touch down anywhere but where you’re supposed to, and it’s game over! Once you’ve picked up the puppies, you must fly them safely onward to the rescue pod in order to win. Don’t miss the walk-through and demo after the break.

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An Amiga 2000 on a carpet floor

Amiga, Interrupted: A Fresh Take On Amiga OS

August 19, 2024 by 20 Comments

Serena OS is not just another operating system—it’s a playground for hackers, tinkerers, and Amiga enthusiasts pushing vintage hardware to new limits. Born from modern design principles and featuring pervasive preemptive concurrency and multi-user support, [dplanitzer]’s Serena OS is far from ordinary.

Running on Amiga systems with a 68030 or better CPU, it challenges traditional OS concepts by ditching threads in favor of dispatch queues, akin to Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch. The result? A dynamic, flexible kernel that combines forward-thinking design with retro charm.

The real innovation in Serena is its kernel, which uses a virtual processor concept to manage system resources efficiently. Instead of threads, Serena dynamically adjusts a pool of virtual processors based on dispatch queue needs, ensuring tasks are executed with precision and speed. Interrupt handling is also unique: interrupts are converted into semaphore signals, allowing the code to handle these signals at its convenience without missing any, making hardware interactions more controlled, especially where timing is critical.

For Amiga enthusiasts already customizing their setups, Serena OS offers new possibilities. It shares some spirit with projects like AROS (Amiga Research Operating System) but adds its own twist with object-oriented design and cross-platform goals. Whether you’re developing software for your classic Amiga or exploring new hardware interfaces, Serena OS provides a robust and adaptable foundation.

A very wide beige laptop sits on a wooden table. A hand manipulates a teal ball in a semicircle attached to the right sided of the device. The track ball and hand are outlined in white.

A Trackball Retro Laptop

August 19, 2024 by 6 Comments

While track pads and mice dominate the pointing device landscape today, there was a time when track balls were a major part of the scene. In order to really sell the retro chops of his portable computer, [Ominous Industries] designed a clip-on style track ball for his retro Raspberry Pi laptop.

Starting with a half circle shape, he designed the enclosure in Fusion360 to house the guts of a USB trackball. Using the pattern along a path feature of the software, he was able to mimic the groovy texture of the main device on the trackball itself. Flexures in the top of the track ball case with pads glued on actuate the buttons.

We appreciate the honesty of the cuts showing how often the Pi can get grumpy at the extra wide display in this video as well as the previous issues during the laptop build. The bezel around the screen is particularly interesting, being affixed with magnets for easy access when needing to work on the screen.

Retro portables are having a moment. We just covered the Pi Portable 84 and previously saw one inspired by the GRiD Compass . If you’re more interested in trackballs, maybe give this trackball ring or the Ploopy trackball a look?

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Cost-Optimized Raspberry Pi 5 Released With 2 GB RAM And D0 Stepping

August 19, 2024 by 42 Comments

When the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC was released last year, it came in 4 and 8 GB RAM variants, which currently retail from around $80 USD and €90 for the 8 GB variant to $60 and €65 for the 4 GB variant. Now Raspberry Pi has announced the launch of a third Raspberry Pi 5 variant: a 2 GB version which also features a new stepping of the BCM2712 SoC. This would sell for about $50 USD and feature the D0 stepping that purportedly strips out a lot of the ‘dark silicon’ that is not used on the SBC.

These unused die features are likely due to the Broadcom SoCs used on Raspberry Pi SBCs being effectively recycled set-top box SoCs and similar. This means that some features that make sense in a set-top box or such do not make sense for a general-purpose SBC, but still take up die space and increase the manufacturing defect rate. The D0 stepping thus would seem to be based around an optimized die, with as only possible negative being a higher power density due to a (probably) smaller die, making active cooling even more important.

As for whether 2 GB is enough for your purposes depends on your use case, but knocking $10 off the price of an RPi 5 could be worth it for some. Perhaps more interesting is that this same D0 stepping of the SoC is likely to make it to the other RAM variants as well. We’re awaiting benchmarks to see what the practical difference is between the current C1 and new D0 steppings.

Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip.

Historical Microsoft And Apple Artifacts Among First Christie’s Auction Of Living Computers Museum

August 19, 2024 by 9 Comments

Recently the Christie’s auction house released the list of items that would be going up for sale as part of the first lot of Living Computer Museum items, under the banner “Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection”. One auction covers many ‘firsts’ in the history of computing,  including a range of computers like an Apple 1, and a PDP-10, as well as early Microsoft memos and code printouts. The other auctions include such items like a Gemini Spacesuit as worn by [Ed White] and a signed 1939 letter from [Albert Einstein] to [US President Roosevelt] on the discovery by the Germans of a fissionable form of uranium from which a nuclear weapon could be constructed.

We previously reported on this auction when it was first announced in June of this year. At the time many were saddened at seeing the only computer history and its related educational facilities vanish, and there were worries among those who had donated items to the museum what would happen to these now that the museum’s inventory was being put up for sale. As these donations tend to be unconditional, the museum is free to do with the item as they see fit, but ‘being sold at auction’ to probably a private collector was likely not on their mind when filling in the donation form.

As the first auctions kick off in a few days we will just have to wait and see where the museum’s inventory ends up at, but it seems likely that many of these items which were publicly viewable will now be scattered across the globe in private collections.

Top image: A roughly 180° panorama of the “conditioned” room of the Living Computer Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA. Taken in 2014. (Credit: Joe Mabel)

Portable Router Build: Finding An LTE Modem

August 19, 2024 by 8 Comments

Ever want your project equipped with a cellular interface for a data uplink? Hop in, I have been hacking on this for a fair bit! As you might remember, I’m building a router, I told you about how I picked its CPU board, and learned some lessons from me daily-driving it as a for a bit – that prototype has let me learn about the kind of extra hardware this router needs.

Here, let’s talk about LTE modems for high data throughput, finding antennas to make it all work, and give you a few tips that should generally help out.  I’d like to outline a path that increases your chances of finding a modem working for you wonderfully – the devices that we build, should be reliable.

Narrowing It Down

If you look at the LTE modem selection, you might be a little overwhelmed: Simcom, Qualcomm, uBlox, Sierra, Telit, and a good few other manufacturers package baseband chipsets into modules and adjust the chipset-maker-provided firmware. The modems will be available in many different packages, too, many of them solderable, and usually, they will be available on mPCIe cards too. If you want to get a modem for data connections for a project, I argue that you should go for mPCIe cards first, and here’s why.

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