I'm not sure if this is interesting to others. And I have yet to refresh 
my stale programming memory for the winter.

But I got a little into the Arduino Uno last winter IIRC. The actual 
programmable Atmel chip is quite amazing enough, though nothing like the 
Raspberry Pi (Arm chip IIRC).

What amazed me was the "USB virtual serial port" terminal device 
connecting the Uno. This is provided by a separate chip on the Uno not 
normally flashed. However, I think there are even methods to reprogram 
this USB chip.

The reason I think this interface is interesting is that it exactly 
follows the design of Unix; a "mainframe CPU connected to users via 
controlling terminals."

And the "mainframe CPU" can now be some of many amazing pocket sized 
systems, many of which made Apple a leader again. And I know nothing 
about all those amazing micro supercomputers either, except my daughter 
was an engineer with Apple. She just started at Square, and I know 
nothing about credit cards either.

But I do know there will soon be a lot of old people in nursing homes 
wetting their pants if they don't have a babysitter. That babysitter can 
either be an unhappy young person or electronic.

The secondary user devices attached to mobile Linux CPUs via the USB 
virtual serial port seems like it could be anything. And it probably 
will. Very nice device interface IMHO.

Jordan Heinz wrote:
> This is actually a pretty interesting train of thought.. I may investigate making it an emulation box.
>
> ----------------------
>
> From: Andrew Dahl<droidjd at gmail.com>
> To: TCLUG Mailing List<tclug-list at mn-linux.org>
> Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Raspberry Pi fun uses?
> Message-ID:
>          <CAFjzMdyz_PV3dMshMKfPyKqg0Goj=A2QjCvrXUxP5t0R47OzYA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Although not too complex of a project, and maybe not too much what you're
> looking for, but I won a Raspberry Pi a few weeks ago and was thinking of
> using it in a MAME Arcade box.  Here's a link:
> http://store.raspberrypi.com/projects/mame4all_pi
>
> -Andrew
>
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Jordan Heinz<jordan at jbheinz.com>  wrote:
>
>> I am a relatively new member to the mailing list.. I saw someone did a
>> presentation on the Raspberry Pi last year.. I just got my hands on two of
>> them about a month ago.. I googled some fun projects to use them for.. Not
>> hitting any that I'm absolutely in love with yet.  I am actually using one
>> to run my bitcoin mining rig.. the other sits idle with Raspbian on it.
>>   Are there any users out there of them?  I'm not really into programming or
>> robotics.. so that annuls quite a few projects for it.  Any good URLs would
>> also be appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jordan
>> _______________________________________________
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>> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
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>>
> _______________________________________________
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