Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi
- Reference: 1705329009
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/15/eben_upton_on_sinclair_acorn/
- Source link:
Upton, born in 1978, was given his first computer in 1988, just as magazine code listings were dwindling and game consoles were starting to dominate.
He recalls: "Before I was involved in it, there was a world of build-your-own-computers, the stuff where Acorn and Sinclair started off. And then you have that first wave of 8-bit computers.
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"We talk a lot about the BBC Micro, because it's a machine that I had – it's a machine a lot of people had – but if you think about the actual impact, probably the Sinclair products are the ones that had more impact. They had more impact because they sold more units. And they sold more units because they cost less."
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The Sinclair computers were famously built down to a price point and represented considerably better value for money in the UK than many of their rivals. However, it seems that with just a few more British pounds, the hardware could have been significantly improved.
Upton says: "There are always two philosophies in computer design. There are the design-to-featureset and design-to-price models. With Acorn, it has to be a design-to-featureset because the feature set came from the BBC. The Sinclair products were always design-to-cost, and probably overdesigned-to-cost in that they were frankly more focused on cost than was really necessary.
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"We talk a lot when we're doing engineering about this idea of a knee and a curve, where you have some linearity up to a point. You can always get more performance, but you end up having to pull more cost and more engineering effort into designing the product to get [that] incremental performance.
"A lot of what we do at Raspberry Pi is about finding where that knee in the curve is."
Returning to the theme of Acorn and Sinclair, Upton continues: "You can see the Sinclair and Acorn products as being on either side. I don't think either of them hit the knee quite right. On one side, you've got the Sinclair product – if only they'd spent a tiny bit more money, it would have been amazing. And then you've got the Acorn product where probably you spent too much money on it and added features which are not relevant to anybody.
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"Suppose you'd taken the Tube out. Would anybody have really cared?"
The Tube on the BBC Microcomputer was an expansion interface that permitted a second processor to be added. While we agree with Upton that the vast majority of users would have been unlikely to notice its omission, we have to acknowledge the importance of the interface during early development of the ARM processor.
The Raspberry Pi has become a powerhouse for retro computing applications. Implementations such as the PiStorm can give a huge performance boost to aging Commodore Amiga hardware, and the TIPI is a shot in the arm for Texas Instruments 99/4a users lacking the space or resources for a fully loaded peripheral expansion box. And, of course, there are applications for the diminutive computer for nearly every retro system in between.
Peter Onion of The National Museum of Computing told us that the team used a Pi for storage emulation on the museum's ICL 2966 mainframe to save wear and tear on moving parts.
[6]81's 99 in 17: Still a lotta love for the TI‑99/4A – TI's forgotten classic
[7]The toy of tech: The Mattel Aquarius 30 years on
[8]Raspberry Pi Linux micro machine enters mass production
[9]Sord drawn: The story of the M5 micro
And then there is complete system emulation. Applications such as RetroPie have long existed to bring obsolete platforms and software to the Pi, and Upton notes that the Pi 5 should usher in more hardware emulation.
"It does bring in another generation, the Dolphin-era stuff. Not everything runs at speed, but you have a recognizable PlayStation 2, even before people put huge amounts of effort into tuning."
Dolphin is an open source emulator, first for the Nintendo GameCube and more recently the Wii.
The cost of a full-fat Pi is, however, creeping upwards. At the other end of the scale is the RP2040, a microcontroller that doubles as a low-powered computer and a home for the computers of yesteryear.
Upton ponders markets where having a PC is simply not an option.
"What I've always wondered – particularly for developing markets – is there a story about ultra-low cost? How useful is an 8086 DOS machine? And if I could make a 50-cent machine that is a PC XT, is that actually useful?
"You wonder if, for some of these markets, the choice between not having a PC at all or having a computer that has this huge back catalog of software ... what would I have as my first computer as a 10-year-old? Would I appreciate having a BBC Micro today? And is it better than if the choice is to have no computer?"
It's a good question. Is it better to have something retro, with a vast library of software, instead of nothing at all? While being able to bang out some Python on an inexpensive bit of hardware attached to the TV carries a certain allure, so too does the idea of being able to fire up something from decades ago with a huge number of software titles.
Although modern environments continue to expand their girth, there is something to be said for looking to the past. You could build something from scratch, as Upton observes, and you could also go for an emulator.
"What is that world?" he asks. "What are the platforms? Is that world PC XT? PC AT? Is that world Archimedes? Is there some point that lets you deliver a sub-dollar PC experience?"
Great things have been achieved with the full-fat Raspberry Pi. However, the lower-tier possibilities on offer from the RP2040 and its ilk are intriguing. Yes, you can run MicroPython on the device, but, as Upton posits, perhaps heading down the retro path might be a better option.
A modern computer with a single-digit dollar price tag emulating long obsolete hardware might seem retro to some users, but for others, it could represent a first entry into the world of computing. Just like Acorn and Sinclair did more than 40 years ago. ®
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2017/02/27/community_builds_around_ti_99_4a/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/10/feature_30_years_old_the_mattel_aquarius/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2012/01/13/raspberry_pi_foundation_rolls_out_linux_based_pcs/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2013/04/23/feature_the_sord_m5_home_micro_is_30/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: The glory days of UK IT
"Pissed away by successive governments"..
Not really, most European countries read the tea-leaves wrong and stuck with oddball personal computers when America was moving wholesale onto the PC standard. Acorn was still pushing RISCOS when it was finally bought out, and many users were still on Amigas, Atari ST's and other long-forgotten machines right into the 90's. None of that was the government's fault, so much as the obsession of UK (and European - hello Nokia) companies to chase "smart ideas" and fragmentation.
We kept trying to out smart people, when what was really needed was a consistent, affordable and compatible experience.
Backwards
I don't think a backwards and cheap computer would be useful, even to poor cash-strapped Third World denizens. There's also the question of copyright to consider if you want to run that on it. Even though the software is long defunct someone is bound to claim foul is you bundle it with your device.
In that sense the cheap smartphone has already taken the role of the desktop computer. And for those who really need it, there's a thriving pre-owned computer market where you can buy a still useful desktop or laptop for a pittance.
I'm somewhat puzzled that Upton is contemplating this. I'd rather see him staying true to the Raspberry Pi legacy by churning out cheap computers which don't need active cooling.
In that sense the cheap smartphone has already taken the role of the desktop computer.
Not really. Even AOSP isn't really hackable enough.
How useful is an 8086 DOS machine?
Isn't he describing the "Book 8088" (more or less)? Bit pricey, mind - especially given that I could just install FreeDOS on my old eee 701 instead:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/brand-new-laptop-recreates-1981s-ibm-pc-complete-with-8088-cpu-and-640kb-of-ram/
There's something quite appealing about a computers not tied into advertising behemoths in some form.
I am very, very tempted to pick up a professionally refurbed Amiga with capacitors that will last longer than me. As fun as the interweb is, I spend enough time emulating old hardware to say that I prefer to "play" in that environment over current stuff.
Hmmm..
You can't possibly do this subject justice in the comments section on El-Reg - or even within interesting interviews - there are a lot of nuances and interesting ideas floating about.
There are two competing challenges here. The first is not the 'core processing unit', but the overall delivery mechanism to get 'computing' into the hands of many. The keyboard, display, network and storage that make up a complete working system. That's actually where Sinclair excelled. Where other manufacturers (including the BBC) were using expensive off the shelf components such as mechanical keyboards and floppy drives, Sinclair was pushing the limits of industrial design to come up with lower cost alternatives. Rick Dickinson, the designer behind the Spectrum and many other Sinclair machines came up with revolutionary techniques for delivering a computer that you could plug in and go, for a fraction of the price of any competitor. There are plenty of tales of where Sinclair himself pushed things too far (both in flaky hardware that made it to the consumer, and some of the internal projects that were cheekily referred to as "special Sinclair technology" within the company), but arguably the ZX81 and Spectrum were very close to a sweet spot.
The other challenge is accessible software. Arguably, Acorn didn't quite make it as they were pushed into the education niche, though the BBC stood way above its competitors when it came to a functional language and fledgling disk O/S. Some CP/M machines got closer thanks to the system's ubiquity, but it was IBM that finally achieved the scale that meant every tool could be found on a DOS disk somewhere. Remember though that even with the IBM machines, a simple "get you up and started" BASIC programming language was still around so that users could always write something for themselves. I can't decide if Python is a modern equivalent, or over-exposes new users to the complexity of vast, arcane software ecosystems and tools.
Regardless, we're currently at an interesting stage where there are many systems designed to fit every possible niche, from the Micro:bit to the Pi 400, via ESP-32s and Arduinos. That new ones are being launched on a weekly basis perhaps suggests that we're both benefiting from fragmentation, and perhaps still searching for that sweet spot of innovative, low cost hardware and highly accessible software.
The tube
"Suppose you'd taken the Tube out. Would anybody have really cared?"
He is basically describing the Acorn electron. Problem is by removing what made the Beeb special just meant you were competing with other low end computers, most of which had a larger software catalogue
In my day, the rich got a beeb, the well off got a commodore 64, while the rest got a spectrum. In the end however whichever one you bought was enough to give you a glimpse of the world ahead
Re: The tube
I'm not sure it was the presence of the Tube that made the Beeb sell - just that it was the flagship educational machine. The Electron came later when Acorn realised they were missing out on the much larger market Sinclair had captured, but not only was it too late, it also managed to be incompatible and slightly underpowered when directly compared with the top selling Spectrum and C64. The absence of the Tube was not as important as the relatively limited and slower graphics capabilities.
BBC, Tube and RasPi
You managed to mention the BBC Micro and the Tube in a Raspberry Pi article, but somehow, despite pointing out the Pi being used as expansions to several other retro platforms, you managed to forget about PiTubeDirect, a Pi interface and software that gets your Pi able to be virtually any of the various Second Processors ever created for the Beeb, and even some new ones that don't yet exist in physical forn (e.g. RISC-V).
Another Pi project (very well suited for the Pi 0) is Pi1MHz, that emulates some other peripherals, including 4 ADFS hard discs giving a massive 2GB (total) disc space across 4 drives (all simultaneously accessible), and fully supported by the built-in ADFS in the Master; an 8MB RAM disc add-on, and Music 5000.
The glory days of UK IT
when we really did lead the world (yes, even China).
Pissed away by successive governments.