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The olimex company just announced the: RVPC - a kit PC with a RISC-V CPU, and they say it'll cost US$1

It will support PS/2 keyboards and VGA. Intended to be a learning platform for RISC-V coding, it’s only got 2k of RAM. (I tried finding a 3rd party source for this announcement but I struck out, so I’m linking the actual olimex webpage. Not affiliated with them, just thought this looked neat.)

Tylerdurdon ,

While I understand some of the hate in the thread, I appreciate someone creating something for us old timers. Working within the constraints of a system and making things work was a real satisfying experience.

mogoh ,

I’ll believe it, when I ordered one for $1.

trolololol ,

Yeah it’s a “PC”

mustbe3to20signs ,

Even at this price point isn’t it more economic and sustainable to emulate a RISC-V device with already owned hardware. Especially since it’s so low powered.

AbidanYre ,

And an emulator doesn’t require you to find a PS/2 keyboard.

SpaceNoodle ,

You mean the agony of deciding which one to dig out of my bin of PS/2 keyboards?

AbidanYre ,

I’m not going to say I definitely don’t have a PS/2 keyboard somewhere in the basement, but that box got thrown away at least a decade ago.

SpaceNoodle ,

Bet you feel like an idiot now!

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dd80805e-f540-4a3b-b37f-0515690207bb.gif

Shdwdrgn ,

So basically something like this only a whole lot LESS capable? Although if you specifically want to do RiscV coding then it does limit your options.

Buffalox ,

The esp32 doesn’t have VGA.
I seriously doubt you can get these special Esp32 that have VGA and USB for $1 USD, I can’t find pricing on any of them.
Cool concept though.

Shdwdrgn ,

The board costs about $10, I have one on hand. Besides VGA and PS/2 ports, it also has an audio-out jack and a slot for SD cards. And if you want to compare specs, the ESP32 blows this away. Sure $1 sounds impressive, until you realize just how little you can do with it.

Buffalox ,

Thanks.
Funny, for me it shows $12.01 USD.
Now that’s 12 times the price of the Risc board, so of course it has to be more powerful.
If you make it another 12 times more expensive, you can have 4 Raspberry Pi or compatible, that are also way more powerful.
Add another 12 times to that, and you can have a full blown gaming PC.

Again it’s a coll concept, between an Arduino and a Raspberry PI.
Unfortunately it’s useless in many cases, because they’ve removed access to the pins.

Unfortunately it’s become pretty hopeless to order from China where I live. We pay $30 declaration fee, and on top of that 25% tax.
We still have a couple ESP32 left from before they tightened the rules on imports for personal use.

Shdwdrgn ,

Hmm I’m seeing a sale price right now, might be based off my order history though. I found another that has a standard price of $10.39, but all the ones I looked at are now also including a shipping cost around $4.50 so that jacks the price up even more.

All these taxes and tarrifs and what-not are really hurting people’s ability to get access to affordable items. I was looking at some solar panels right before the US added a tarrif to those items, so now I’ll wait to see what happens.

Buffalox ,

They must have different prices for different regions, I’m also told the “normal” price is Kr 109,82 DKK = $16.16 USD. Shipping is $7.71.
If it was sent from EU when sold to EU, so there wasn’t any import fees or taxes, it would be very nice, but these sites rarely write where they are shipping from.

Shdwdrgn ,

If you’re curious enough to get one, I’ve seen them on ebay as well. Might even be available on Amazon. I think they’ve been around for a couple years, I just got mine in April but still haven’t had time to fire it up and play with it.

SpaceNoodle ,

Sounds groundbreaking for 1997.

CaptainBasculin ,

I don’t think defining a microcontroller kit as a PC is an accurate description.

drosophila , (edited )

Some ARM CPUs that are advertised as microcontrollers have 32 bit address spaces and roughly the same power as an i486.

CaptainBasculin ,

A CPU on its own cannot be a microcontroller alone via its definition; as a microcontroller contains a CPU and other needed components to drive it.

No microcontroller is going to beat a computer with a modern microprocessor on complex computing though. But it’s good to know tech is still improving on all sides.

trolololol ,

Yeah nah still in micro controller space. When you say PC it comes w with up to date expectations attached and VGA is not one of them. Or 2k RAM.

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