Converting the KT3(W) to a network or standalone computer ?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Does the kindle have enough RAM to write even small programs?
I know they only have between 2 and 4 megabytes of storage.

We wrote large programs that ran on minicomputers with RAM measured in kilobytes, so yeah, the kindle has more than enough (and swap files are easy if you need more). That is what native mode programming (and talking to the bare metal) is all about. Megabytes are a THOUSAND times larger, but modern software does not care (except in embedded processors, my specialty). Old-school programming, where every byte counts...

And if you need a high level language, there is microPython on the ESP8266 (which has WAY less RAM than a kindle). And kindles have python and lua and java already, and tinycc (tcc) as well.

Remember that a large app can reside on flash and only cache the parts it needs at this moment in RAM. And native mode programming is easy with data structures residing in memory mapped files.

[NiLuJe]

Yep, after all, I'm doing some fairly heavy-duty image processing via ImageMagick for the screensavers hack, and it's been working wonders .

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Yep, after all, I'm doing some fairly heavy-duty image processing via ImageMagick for the screensavers hack, and it's been working wonders .

What you can do is limited only by your imagination, rarely by the hardware.

My first computer had 256 BYTES of RAM and I did awesome things on it. If you think 256 byte programs are impossible for anything interesting, you have not been following the "demoscene" since the dawn of computers. There are lots of 256 byte programs that do amazing things: http://hugi.scene.org/online/hugi35/...ound-table.htm

And if you have a whole 256KB to spare, check out debris (177KB) here:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244

Here is a youtube recording of that realtime 177KB demo:

And remember that we had BASIC interpreters that loaded and ran on our massive memory (at the time) 1K RAM computers, with room left over for useful programs:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9154319

So yeah, a few dozen megabytes is plenty if you know how to program old-school style.

[eschwartz]

The Kindle can compile anything which can be compiled in 256 MB of RAM + your use of swap space. Which is a fair bit. We're not exactly planning to compile Firefox here...

Obviously, given the processor in question, it will take a while (~days potentially). But I have it on good authority it is a good way to avoid cross-compilation issues.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The Kindle can compile anything which can be compiled in 256 MB of RAM + your use of swap space. Which is a fair bit. We're not exactly planning to compile Firefox here...

Obviously, given the processor in question, it will take a while (~days potentially). But I have it on good authority it is a good way to avoid cross-compilation issues.

It took me about 12 hours to compile X11 on my K3, back in the day.

And it kinda sorta actually almost worked too.

Now with a whole 38MB, imagine porting something like this to a kindle with sound (using gmplay video code as a base):

Now if you tell me a kindle does not have enough RAM for "real programs", you have barely begun to learn the craft the way the masters did it in the olden days when RAM was precious and scarce (and still is in some embedded devices).

EDIT: Just for a size reference, Apple-2 diskettes were typically bootable and contained an entire application, from things like accounting and bookkeeping, payroll and taxes, development toolchains, and of course games. My Corvus hard drive held FIFTY Apple-2 diskette images, and it was a whopping FIVE MEGABYTES. I still have a couple of those ginormous 5MB hard drives around here. And it was very unusual to see an Apple-2 with more than 16KB installed. Kids these days don't know just how good they have it compared to the "good old days"...

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

We wrote large programs that ran on minicomputers with RAM measured in kilobytes, so yeah, the kindle has more than enough (and swap files are easy if you need more).
- - - -

Another example -

The computer in telephone office switching machines had 16Kwords (32Kbytes) of ram available for both the program and a disk based operating system.

The goal was to complete a dialed call between any two points in the nation (USA) in under 2 seconds.
They did it easily, from 4,000 to 16,000 simultaneous calls each.
(Just in case you needed an example of a hand written, multi-tasking, program (each call was a task) )

The processor in the Kindle has that much ram (each) for i-cache and d-cache.
And it is a 32-bit processor that is running light years faster than those 16-bit mini-computers where running.

Another example -
See our 'Mainframe in a zipper case' thread - about running IBM, OS-360 and its application programs on the Kindle Touch.

You would be impressed if you ever had to stand inline in the hallway, waiting for your job to finish on the mainframe.

[Yourcat]

Being Euphoric about the new Kindle is fine. Anyhow it is designed as a reader. Kterm may be fine if you use an external keyboard with all keys, not sure if bash autocomplete is supported. Investing some time here may be fun. It has limitations so I would not use it as a computer.
At geekmaster Nice links, a demo app getting out everything of Kindle would be interesting. With video and bt/otg audio one could build an amazing demo. Anyhow I don't follow the scene any more, TZ/The Jungly Kitchen was the last interesting one I saw and can remember. I wonder whether people still take the time to create such amazing demos. Also BW has its own magic.

[Cinisajoy]

Ok my favorite geeks.
I asked a simple yes or no question.
Enjoyed the answers though.

[eschwartz]

@Yourcat,

/{etc,usr/share/bash-completion}/bash-completion is not installed, just the default command/file completion (baked into the actual shell itself) is supported.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Ok my favorite geeks.
I asked a simple yes or no question.
Enjoyed the answers though.

You opened the can, my dear. Now step aside and let (geek) nature take its course.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Does the kindle have enough RAM to write even small programs?
I know they only have between 2 and 4 megabytes of storage.

Yes, they do. For instance, KOreader is not exactly a small program.

And they have 128, 256 or 512 megabytes of ram, depending on model.

For example, one of my PCs (a HP Vectra) has a limit of 512 megabytes of ram and it shipped (to someone else) with Windows 2000 Pro pre-installed.

[geekmaster]

The "2 or 4" is gigabytes of eMMC, not megabytes of RAM. And you can memory-map some of that eMMC into the CPU address space so it acts like RAM from a software point of view (memory-mapped files and/or a swap file).

[NiLuJe]

USBNet bundles a full zsh setup, with full support for its complete and utter awesomeness at being a shell that gets shit done .

[Euphoric]

Ahah, it seems there are some people who are older than me in this forum...
(started programming TRS-80 at the local Radio Shack store on Wednesday afternoons when I couldn't buy this beast, then bought a ZX-81 kit... that's right, with 1KB ram for both the screen ram and the user program, you had to use quirks to save a few bytes...

I'm going on holidays tomorrow and haven't find a way to attach the bluetooth keyboard to the Kindle, so for now I'm using the same trick as http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html , excepted that the number of parts is reduced and it doesn't use wires:
- android phone with Corbin Champion's gnuroot, debian Jessie, dropbear ssh server on it
- Kindle 8 with kterm in landscape mode, ssh to my phone, screen command started
- bluetooth keyboard connected to the phone, screen -xR to join the same screen as the kindle

... that's what I wanted : an outdoor screen to type in vi, compile and run...
It's not running on the kindle, and I have 3 parts instead of two... but I would still have needed the android phone with its 3G/4G connection and its Wifi hotspot in order to have the Kindle communicate on the Internet when not in a Wifi area, and the phone has more storage, and apt-get, etc.

So I guess I will stick with this configuration until someone comes with a native debian install on the Kindle (do you know any advances since 2013's https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/a...ting_kindle_3/ ?)

[knc1]

By a few decades at least.

That post was not written by any of us, you will have to contact them for support (and corrections to the posted material.)

You can run (Hmm... KT3 ....) at least Debian/Jessie binaries in USB storage area concurrently with the Kindle's firmware.

See my post today in reply to someone who wanted us to update the thread on running Optware in a chroot.
It simply isn't required (the chroot that is).