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I was just wondering cause a micro controller can cost tons of money for no mhz but i have some old athlons laying around that would be otherwise useless... i just want something that i could program in c code to do some crap??

5/15/2010 4:03:18 PM

What do you mean by microcontroller?

I ask because what I consider to be microcontrollers are pretty cheap.

Using an old Athlon is probably more trouble than it's worth for just fucking around. An old 8086/88 would be fun though.

5/15/2010 4:55:37 PM

umm… you either have to reflash the BIOS with your own code, or write your own bootloader (with your own drivers, etc., to run the peripherals).

The easiest thing to do is to find some barebones “real time” linux kernel, and write your app in that. The advantage to this is that you don’t have to worry about writing your own drivers for the peripherals (keyboard, mouse, serial ports, etc.) if you compile them into the kernel, and it’ll boot up very quickly.

[Edited on May 15, 2010 at 6:49 PM. Reason : ]

5/15/2010 6:49:25 PM

Even before you get to that point, something like an Athlon will require a lot of external components.

I wonder what sort of control (if any) you would even have over individual pins?

5/15/2010 9:55:26 PM

You can screw with the serial ports. But as mentioned, you'd be better off buying the little "linux in a box" devices that are so cheap and small now.

5/16/2010 12:05:10 AM