The Arduino Project Gets a Core Memory Accessory 46
Stoobalou writes "A pair of mathematicians have created an electronics project that nostalgic computer buffs will likely recognize straight away: a magnetic-core memory shield for the Arduino electronics prototyping platform." The creators' web site has more, including schematics, if you'd like to make your own.
Tired of all this Arduino crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we stop the flood of Arduino nonsense? Yeah, I know people get excited when they discover how fun microcontrollers are. However, Arduino isn't all there is and it's not even particularly interesting. It's a family of boards with non-standard header pin spacing (WTF guys?!) with a shitty ATmega at its core. Most hobbyists would be better served by something from Parallax. For more demanding projects, the beagleboard is awesome. For tiny, cost sensitive projects, TI's launchpad dev kit is under $5 with additional microcontrollers (MSP430 series) selling for just a few cents a pop! If you don't mind a bit of a learning curve, ST's STM32 and STM8 series are great and dev boards are cheap.
Arduino isn't the only game in town. Let's stop covering every freshman-level EE project done with it.
Re:Tired of all this Arduino crap (Score:5, Insightful)
atmega 328 chips are $5 or less, usually less. resonator and other minor parts are a dollar.
the only cost is the $15-20 ftdi or similar serial/usb cable. pl2303 for $5 on ebay works fine, btw.
its VERY cheap and works on all platforms. gcc is free (I use makefile based arduino dev, myself) and the IDE is usable and free.
PIC got left behind. no one cares about PIC anymore. what else is there for this kind of cheap change?
and who is still thruhole friendly.
and who has a huge user contrib library online, in src format?
this is why arduino 'won'. I spent the last year or more doing arduino things and while its still more 'home' than industry, you can make speedy progress and get help fast with your projects if you get stuck. it really is the 'linux' of the very low end embedded world, whether you like it or not.