Re: Just got a Pi1B. What can you actually do with it these days?

Gordon Henderson <gordon+usenet@drogon.net> wrote:

In article <101teqs$1rt4d$2@dont-email.me>,
TronNerd82  <tronnerd82@aol.com> wrote:
 

If you can think of any productive use-cases for an original Pi model B
(not even the B+) let me know, and I'll consider it :-)

 
I have a few (dozen) of these - 1B and 1B+ (40 pin GPIO header). I run an
older Debian Jessie on them for Linux and am experimenting with Devuan,
but I also have my own bare-metal framework under which I run either my
own RTB Basic (a modern basic where line numbers are optional) which
supports high resolution graphics but not (yet) sound. I can also run
my own OS under the same framework which is written in BCPL which allows
local editing and compiling of BCPL programs.

If you're going non-Linux, RISC OS runs well on the Pi1.  It was designed
for an 0.5MB 8MHz ARM2, so a 512MB 700MHz Pi1 is ample.  It can't use
multiple cores so the Pi1 being single core is no problem.  Also it doesn't
do wifi so you'll have to use the ethernet anyway.  Most apps are designed
to run on 1990s CPUs so a Pi is no sweat.

The main issue is likely to come for heavyweight apps like web browsers, but
then you aren't running an ultra lightweight OS on underpowered hardware to
surf the web anyway.

Theo