Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Technology catches up with history...

OK, I'm back. Sorry I got busy for a few days.

As I've mentioned before, I started computers when you connected a terminal to the computer, typed in your program, saved it, and then ran it (and hope it worked...)

However, back then, the computer you connected to was "big iron", an expensive mainframe that was shared among many users to save on costs.

However, things have gotten smaller, cheaper, and faster. You can have the same experience today with a microcontroller and telnet (or hyperterminal).

Yup... you can take your cheap little microcontroller and run it as an interactive, programmable system like an early mainframe. Only 1 user, but you were only 1 user when you used the mainframe, too...

Check out StickOS for an embedded programming host that runs on multiple CPU types, and PicPuter for a system that runs on a PIC16F877.

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