Mel Tsai wrote: > > >Ok, you have to think this out a bit more. Do you remember 286's? I do, I > >have one. It is 3 times the speed of a gameboy, yet I still feel like > >popping the thing open and pushing the data (whenever I'm forced into using > >it). > > But this is only due to inefficiencies in the operating system, and > the slow secondary memory. Running a 286 or even an 8088 computer > completely from ROM or RAM is very fast. My Zenity Minisport 8088 > laptop (8 MHz) has DOS 3.1 in ROM and a 2 meg ram disk, everything > runs *very* quickly. No latencies. I used to go to the local park & was able to spend an entire day coding, on my old Sanyo XT laptop (640k, 2 720k floppies.) With the 486 laptop along, I could compile about twice before running out of 486 battery power (3 hours), but I had just over 8 hours of use on the Sanyo before running out of juice. That's a LOT of coding (or other text entry & lookup) capability, but I wouldn't want to try to compile on the Sanyo. (Compiling would've taken over 2 hours. As it was, I saved periodically to floppy, mainly using Edwin, similar to QEdit, and edited in the 640k RAM in the machine. QUITE satisfactory, for me, at the time.) "Enough" computing power is totally USER-relative & depends greatly on what you are trying to accomplish; A graphics artist, for example, could find a wearable with less than 512 Mb or RAM & several gigs of HD space, much less less than a SVGA HUD, unusable for their work, where I'd love even an XT with a 20 Mb hard drive & 12 hours of battery power, with basic parallel port adapter networking capability... And, of course, the more your tool can do, the heavier you may lean on it (If/When I get a wearable that I can web surf, modem, and do file transfers with, maybe I can sell off a few desktop machines, plus the laptops <G>) - and if the wearable ALMOST will do something convenient but won't quite do it, it'll be ANNOYING! So I'm planning to get a bit more power than I think I'll ever need, as I'll probably find a way to use it, in about 3 weeks of wearing the wearable... And no matter HOW fast it is, I'll be pushing it to start up faster every time I boot it, same as all of us <VBG!> > <snipped> > No processor switches clock rates during operation (well actually some > do, but generally small embedded processors don't). The TI-8x Heh. I remember the old S-100 bus days where some 8008 or Z-80 machine had a speed dial (potentiometer? Variable Cap?), about 1976 or 1977? Turn it up for faster processing, until it hiccups, then back down for proper operation <G> Long time! I can dig out old Byte mags someday & look. (Was that a Cromemco or is my memory inaccurate?) If we use ATA Flash RAM for data storage (Expensive, BUT quite possible for those with "simpler" Wearables!), battery life can be greatly increased over using regular HDs; the same interface (basically) can be used for either PCMCIA HDs or PCMCIA SunDisk style Flash - I see nothing wrong with reducing clock speed for power savings, either, provided it's what the user wants & needs (and if Flash RAM was used, maybe it wouldn't be wanted OR needed.) I own a bunch of old 386/486 machines with "Turbo" switches, same concept of clock speed reduction for the same reasons (I change my 486 laptop to slow mode once it's booted, to conserve battery power when on the road; same for the PC110 much of the time.) I can figure out & remember to turbo a wearable up when I need to web surf, etc. <G> IMHO nothing's wrong with letting those who want/need speed, have it, or those who want battery life, have that <G> Basic power management... > <snipped> > with how much time you're willing to spend developing. While the NEC > VR chips are cheap, super high performance, and use very little power, > the simplest VR chip is a 120 pin quad flat package! Most of the VR's > suitible for wearables (the VR41xx series) are 180 or more pins. > There's *no way* you can homebuild a circuit board in which this chip > can be mounted. You must resort to expensive board fabrication Sorry, I "have to" say it: Wirewrapped might do it. SCARY thought <G> but, as we say, "Never dare an engineer" <VBEvilG> Don't think it's very practical, agreed, it's horrible to think of making 5 or 10 without PC boards... My hands hurt, just thinking about wirewrapping one <G> Mark Willis
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