On 16/04/12 14:01, Mark Rogers wrote:
I want to play with Linux (inc. maybe Android) on ARM platforms, and figured the Raspberry Pi would be a good target platform, albeit hard to get my hands on right now.
Has anyone here played with this who can give me any suggestions as to where I should start? I can see various suggestions on the R.Pi website (QEMU or Scratchbox) so I'm really just asking to seek the benefit of anyones experience here, otherwise I'll pick one of the examples out there and see where it gets me.
Separately: I've not done a lot with ARM in the past. How transferable are skills learned (and code written) between ARM platforms? I quite like the look of some of the ARM dev boards you can get on eBay, for example, and I'm sure the range of options will only increase over time, so I don't want to tie myself to the R.Pi any more than I need to at this stage.
If all you want to do is gain some experience of ARM coding, have you thought of RPCEmu? The original Risc PC by Acorn was developed from the Archimedes which used an ARM2 chip, later upgraded to ARM3.
The Risc PC started with an ARM610 CPU and was later upgraded to a StrongARM. These are all options on the RPCEmu menu. A compiler is available as is an inbuilt assembler if you have, or want experience in that area.
All of that is free of course, save the cost of the ROMs for RPCEmu - a fiver from RiscOS.com.
Although I run RPCEmu here, I'm thinking of buying a Raspberry Pi but not quite sure why! I just like to tinker though so perhaps that explains it.