Pi5 vs Pi Zero-2w

[Robert S]

Moving this question from the "Raspberry fan?" thread to its own thread...

I'm wondering what is the thinking behind using a Pi-5 on the PiDP-1?  This seems to be such a low compute power use case that the Pi Zero-2w would be all you'd ever need.  And, for <$20 for the zero vs. >$130 for the pi5, it seems a pretty good value.  I've been running mine on the zero and have never come across a scenario where it wasn't up to the task. So, what are you guys doing that needs the additional compute power of the Pi-5?  Maybe you just need/want a physical Eth port?   BTW, I run my -11 and -8 on the Zero-2w too with no issues.  However, I did put a Pi-5 in my -10, but that's still probably overkill.

Robert

[Angelo Papenhoff/aap]

It depends on how you use the system. personally i haven't tried the rpi5 myself yet (i got one last year but don't remember powering it up, i don't understand why it even exists, the concept makes little sense to me), but oscar has been using one.

the problem is that running a GUI on a raspi zero is a bit much for the poor thing in my experience. because there still is a lot of load due to having to simulate all sorts of analog crap (lamp glow, type 30) it gets sluggish or unusable (try running a webbrowser...)

but for headless it works pretty ok i think. LED flicker is still a nightmare to deal with though...haven't looked into that in a while now

so i tend to agree, the zero2 is in my view the "right" raspi to use, even if performance can be problematic depending on your setup

[Bill E]

If you want to run the hardware panel or the Type 30 display on the zero, you will probably not be happy. Both of those are resource hogs, although I've tweaked the panel driver to greatly reduce its loading from 180% to 65% on a pi5 (!). They both do a lot of floating point calculations. A LOT. An exercise for the reader that I'm not even going to consider, convert all that floating point to fixed-point 32 bit integer, that would help.

But, just the emulator itself is very low overhead, so that should be OK. I haven't seen it go over 5% on a pi5.

BTW, things run fine on a pi4, at least using the web intf. I don't know if the hardware panel would work, though it probably would.

I agree that the pi5 is not all that wonderful, and it's because of moving all the gpio off to a separate processor over the pci bus, what a lame idea that is. It introduces silly latency and overhead.

Bill

[sunnyboy010101]

Well, I tend to buy the 'latest' Raspberry Pi whenever Oscar releases a new kit, so the Pi 5 came out in time for the PiDP-10 kit in 2024, so that's what I bought. Frequently I buy two of whatever it happens to be - one for testing before the kit arrives, and another once the kit arrives and I can see what I need for mounting the Pi and other essentials.

(aside: for example my first Pi 5 had a "top hat" NVME M.2 SSD board, and the PiDP-10 clearly needed a 'bottom hat' version. I bought one that  had GPIU 'touch pins' that ran fine until it didn't...)

So I had a spare Pi 5 literally sitting around running PiDP-10 without hardware when the PiDP-1 was announced. I then loaded the PiDP-1 software and started playing while I waited for my kit. I *knew* the top hat NVME (still on this Pi5) would not work with the PiCP-1 (from reading the build instructions) so found a cheaper bottom hat NVME board that didn't have those GPIO 'push pins'. It turned out to be totally compatible with the top hat (just removed one hat, installed the new one and swapped the SSD. Boot up and working!). So that became the Pi5 solution for the PiDP-1.

Otherwise I would have had to purchase a new Pi of some flavor for the PiDP-1.

(back to the aside... after the bottom hat NVME with push pins failed this year, I just bought another of the bottom hat NVME boards that was now on the PiDP-1's Pi 5 and it worked perfectly. Plus no stupid underside 'push pin' connectors to the gpio.)

Living off the west coast of Canada, getting stuff is always difficult. Basically now I just buy whatever I can get from reliable vendors on amazon.ca because shipping and returns are excellent, and prices are good. That said, the Pi-0 runs from unobtanium to exorbitant on amazon, so I'll likely never get one. AMZN prices and availability tend to be best on 'the latest', so that figures into what I buy.

This has worked well for me. My PiDP-11 started out on a Raspberry Pi 2B, then got moved to a Pi 3 when they came out. Funny though, I'm still running the Pi 2B with PiDP-11 software (no kit for it) even now. More recently, I was able to start resurrecting the rack mound glass front display case that holds my PiDP-8, PiDP-11 and Altair-duino, plus my 9x Pi cluster computer. I need to resolve some out-of-date wifi info and static IPs, but I should soon have all Oscar's kits running!

I think the PiDP-8 runs on a Pi 2B, the PiDP-11 runs on a Pi 3, the PiDP-10 and PiDP-1 both run on Pi 5s. 

For some reason Oscar's kits skipped the Raspberry Pi 4 entirely (for me). I do have one of them that I bought and originally configured as a Kodi-Pi TV (never really worked well for me) but now it's running Ubuntu 24.04LTS as a web server for one of my overall static IPs. It's sitting in one of those FLIR super-cooling aluminum cases that needs no fan. Kinda nice, actually.

[R Clark]

All depends on how you use your machines...

My PiDP-8 runs on an RPI-3 (seems like there was a reason for this at the time).  All the others run with an RPI-5 installed.  Why? Because I can. Also I need (well want) two network connections.  One for the internet side for updates, and one for the home network side (hard-wired).  I also do more with mine. The PiDP-10 is also a file server which needs the USB ports for SSD drives and HDD and dedicated Ethernet. All that just sitting quietly on a shelf  Note the RPI-5 fixes all the USB issues that plagued the previous versions. All USB ports are independent.  And the machines are UPS backed.  Loving it! My PiDP-11 is running other tasks for the home as well. Note that I am not using the PCI-e connection as I boot off an external USB SSD which is plenty fast and very reliable.  My PiDP-1 isn't doing anything extra at the moment but the emulation, but I had an RPI-5 available so used it...  I've replaced all my RPI-4s with 5s. The RPI-5 got everything right for an SBC.  Also using an RPI Zero 2W for an e-paper display... And yes, I use RP-2350 and RP-2040 boards for more timing sensitive needs.  Great time to be in computing/micro computing!!!   Looking around I have around 10 RPI-5s and 5 are running 24x7... Handy little computers.

[Oscar Vermeulen]

For the PiDP-1:

- enjoy the power and might of a Pi 5 if you want to use the GUI interface. Bring the Type 30 display to the Pi's HDMI port. Although a Pi 4 is plenty good enough, the Pi 5 runs day and night in my bookshelf, and do all sorts of useful Pi tasks whilst the front panel blinks away and Snowflake improves my living room ambiance.

- enjoy the minimalist elegance of a Pi Zero 2 if you use the Web interface. It is enough.

Kind regards,

Oscar.