Comments on: Coming Soon to an OpenSource Platform Near You

By: Marion Delgado

Marion Delgado — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:09:13 +0000

nearly all comic book fonts are ttf.

kewlness!

By: James McCann

James McCann — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:41:29 +0000

An 8 bit Z-80 running at 4 MHz is more than enough horsepower to run an eBook reader that doesn’t require Internet access so the vendor can delete your legally purchased licensed books.

Sure but such a device is so limited I really don’t see the point.

A cheap 32 bit system would permit learning to write code and hack an OS such as linux. I guess learning Z-80 assembly language would be a good exercise for a young student but it really wouldn’t translate into learning a 21st century 1st world employable skill. Something like the Indian device mentioned in this post or the One Laptop Per Child project is so much more valuable that I think resources going to this are almost wasted.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:28:48 +0000

Re. the Open 8-bit computer, what would the purpose be other than teaching? I can get various versions of the Freescale HS08 series for under $10 – hardly expensive, and in bulk those processors are much cheaper. Also, is the computer implemented on an FPGA or what? (VHDL, which can be compiled for FPGA or for automated chip production?)

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:21:38 +0000

I just hope those folks really did do their homework; patents can be extended as you please by filing additions. So you have FontTech-A, then FontTech-A.1, FontTech-A.2 and so on. Unfortunately it is not only the addition which is protected but the entire patent as originally granted.

@LightningRose: What eBook reader has a 4MHz Z80? One of the contemporary mutants of the Z80 runs at up to 50MHz (the Rabbit 4000, and I think there may be a 5000 now). However, without a floating point arithmetic unit, rendering can be painful. Font rendering can be done with all integers (and it’s great) but you still need to build up the library to do it. As for the C64 – the most popular mutants of the 6502 are the Freescale HS08 series (Motorola sold the tech long ago) which run up to 48MHz and have loads of built-in peripherals. However, for an eBook reader I’d look at the ARM cores and the ColdFire CPUs rather than the more ancient 8-bit devices (which I still use all the time for other things).

By: LightningRose

LightningRose — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:26:32 +0000

James, sometimes I still miss my Commodore 64, and not for the games.

An 8 bit Z-80 running at 4 MHz is more than enough horsepower to run an eBook reader that doesn’t require Internet access so the vendor can delete your legally ~~purchased~~ licensed books.

By: James McCann

James McCann — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:04:48 +0000

8-bit computer? Oh my. Can’t we at least send something only a couple of decades obsolete? I get that it’s cheap and better than nothing, but that is SO lame.

Yay for the fonts and the Indian device looks interesting.