Pi Buy? Got the PDP-10 experience, but not the Pi experience

[Ric Werme]

This is touched on in April's https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-10/c/ERRBDTLZis0/m/pRCFfX8BBgAJ on Pi5 cooling, but apparently my PiDP-10 is in the mail and I've been busy with another 50 year anniversary.  Gotta buy a Pi.

My Pi experience is limited to the Pi3 that came in my RaspberryShake seismometer (a totally amazing device that rivals research grade units).  It's so awesome that it lives full time on the floor of my garage, listening to all sorts of stuff.  It's not a good system to experiment with Pi stuff!

Poking around Amazon, I'm attracted to a Pi4 starter kit with the expectation I'll upgrade to a Pi5 when I learn I need a fan and more memory.  I'm sure I can find other uses for the Pi4 (and the case the kits include).

Things that look promising are GeeekPi's https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Raspberry-4GB-Starter-Kit/dp/B0B3M2HKN6/ref=sr_1_8 and CANA's https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V5JTMV9/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1 .  Are those sources good to deal with?  Where else should I (we!) look?

My PiDP-10 will spend most of its life running my "lights" program with a new option for a binary date/time display, but I'll also write an assembly language graphics hack for ITS and MIT's emulated display.  I don't know if it makes sense to port TULIP, a wonderful TOPS-10 I/O library, to ITS.  If it does, I'll get sucked into that too.  Don't have much ITS experience either, but do have experience in using DDT as a command language.

So, buying a kit seems to makes sense (I don't have a micro HDMI cable anyway), I may regret aiming for low memory models (hey, my first KA-10 had three boxes of 16 kW core) but I'd fix that later with a Pi5.

[Ken Hansen]

RPi kits were popular at one time, then they sorta went out of favor... then came the bad times, and RPi boards were hard to find. Since authorized sellers couldn't charge 'demand' or 'surge' prices for the rare boards they could get their hands on, they opted to sell them in over-priced kits with marginal accessories.

Now, RPi boards are plentiful, and you can just buy what you need.

I really liked the Official Radpberry Pi Starter Kits, I have one for the A+ model and another for the 400 model (the RPi is built into the keyboard (kinda like the old TRS-80 Model 1, Apple ][, BBC, Sinclair, or most Commodore and Atari computers from the 80s), but they come with good parts.

The price premium of an RPi 5 over a similar RPi 4 is about $5, and it really a much better machine. It has an RTC, it can take a PCIe NVMe SSD, and the processor is much faster. I suggest you buy an RPi 5, get the 'official' active cooler and the cheap 'official' case and the official RPi 27w(?) power adapter. There are SSD boards that fit around the active cooker and the whole mess fits inside the 'official' case.

I have an RPi 5, active cooler, RTC battery, and NVMe SSD in an official case, and it works great.

The biggest USB-C power adapter RPi offers is a great adapter, I'd spend the few extra bucks to get it over smaller adapters, even if you wind up buying an RPi 4 board.

If buying for the PiDP-10, get the RPi 5 board, it's what Oscar recommends.

Ken

On Jun 27, 2024, at 10:53, Ric Werme <r...@wermenh.com> wrote:

This is touched on in April's https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-10/c/ERRBDTLZis0/m/pRCFfX8BBgAJ on Pi5 cooling, but apparently my PiDP-10 is in the mail and I've been busy with another 50 year anniversary.  Gotta buy a Pi.

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[terry-...@glaver.org]

I buy the Canakit Basic 8GB Pi 5 version on Amazon which includes the Pi, PSU, and some stick-on heat sinks, then add a Samsung PRO Endurance 64GB SDXC card (intended for write-intensive use) and the official Pi 5 heatsink/fan combo. Amazon links:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVR1LP7G
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W9XYQCQ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1JYTXSS

[Jeff Crilly]

Parallax has them on sale for 24% off. 

But they’d are sold out on the 8GB Pi5. 

4GB is available.   Is it adequate?

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 27, 2024, at 11:17 PM, terry-...@glaver.org <terry-...@glaver.org> wrote:



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[Whit Turner]

Shop around for the active cooler - it is only $5.00 US from many outlets.

Whit

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[Whit Turner]

I bought a bare Pi 5 8 GB ($80), "official" 27 Watt Pi power adapter ($12), and the active cooler ($5) from Digikey. This was cheaper than buying one of the bundles at the time (last March). They have plenty in stock.

Whit

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[Andy]

Hi Jeff - I've a 4gb and 8gb Pi 5 I am sure there is a difference but speaking as as a civilian I cannot tell the difference with normal PiDP-10 usage, even under load.