Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

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> I think that the spirit on hobby electronics is really found in FPGAs these days instead of rarer and rarer DIP parts. Which is a bit sad, but I guess that's just the passage of time. I wonder if that's how some people felt in the 70s when CPUs replaced many distinct layouts, or if they rejoiced and embraced it instead.

Microcontrollers have taken over. When 8kB SRAM and 20MHz microcontrollers exist below 50-cents and at miniscule 25mm^2 chip sizes drawing only 500uA of current... there's very little reason to use a collection of 30 chips to do equivalent functionality.

Except performance. If you need performance then bam, FPGA land comes in and Zynq just has too much performance at too low a cost (though not quite as low as the microcontroller gang).

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Hobby Electronics is great now. You have so many usable parts at very low costs. A lot of problems are "solved" yes, but that's a good thing. That means you can focus on solving your hobby problem rather than trying to invent a new display driver or something.

Another advantage of hobby anything is that you can just do, and reinvent whatever you want. Sure, fast CPUs/MCUs exist now and can do whatever you want. But if you feel like reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it, no one will stop you![1]

I do think some people that remember fondly the user experience of those old machines might be better served by using modern machines (like a raspberry pi or even a standard pc) in a different way instead of trying to use old hardware. That's from the good old Turing machine universality (you can simulate practically any machine you like using newer hardware, if what you're interested in is software). You can even add artificial limitations like PICO-8 or TIC-80 does.

See also uxn:

https://100r.co/site/uxn.html

and (WIP) picotron:

https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php

I think there's a general concept here of making 'Operating environments' that are pleasant to work within (or have fun limitations), which I think are more practical than a dedicated Operating System optionally with a dedicated machine. Plus (unless you particularly want to!) you don't need to worry about all the complex parts of operating systems like network stacks, drivers and such.

[1] Maybe we should call that Hobby universality (or immortality?) :P If it's already been made/discovered, you can always make it again just for fun.

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