Information about Raspberry Project Boards

The following is subject to updates, and URL changes:

"The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard [... and] can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.

The design is based around a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, VideoCore IV GPU, and 256 Megabytes of RAM. The design does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, instead relying on an SD card for booting and long-term storage. This board is intended to run Linux kernel based operating systems. [...]

The Raspberry Pi use Linux-kernel based operating systems. Debian GNU/Linux, Iceweasel, Calligra Suite and Python are planned to be bundled with the Raspberry Pi."

Related excerpts:

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charitable organisation registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.[3] The board of trustees was assembled by 2008[1][5] and the Raspberry Pi Foundation was founded as a registered charity in May 2009 in Caldecote, Cambridgeshire, UK.[3] The Foundation is supported by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Broadcom.[2]..."

more from this excerpt's source at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation

"The Charity Commission for England and Wales (Welsh: Comisiwn Elusennau Cymru a Lloegr) is the non-ministerial government department that regulates registered charities in England and Wales.

The Charity Commission answers directly to the UK Parliament and to Government ministers..."

more from this excerpt's source at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Commission_for_England_and_Wales

"The Computer Laboratory is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. As of 2007, it employs 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 155 research students.

The Computer Laboratory built and operated the world’s first fully operational practical stored program computer (EDSAC, 1949) and offered the world’s first taught course in computer science in 1953. It currently offers a 3-year undergraduate course and a 1-year masters course (with an optional natural language processing theme). Recent research has focused on virtualization, security, usability, formal verification, formal semantics of programming languages, computer architecture, natural language processing, wireless networking, biometric identification, routing, positioning systems and has achieved the top ratings in recent UK Research Assessment Exercise evaluations. A new research focus is sustainability (“Computing for the future of the planet”). Members of the Computer Laboratory have been involved in the creation of many successful UK IT companies such as Acorn, ARM, nCipher and XenSource.

It was founded as the Mathematical Laboratory under the leadership of John Lennard-Jones on 14 May 1937 [...] The Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science was the world’s first taught course in computing, starting in 1953.

In October 1946, work began under Maurice Wilkes on EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), which subsequently became the world’s first fully operational and practical stored program computer when it ran its first program on 6 May 1949. It inspired the world’s first business computer, LEO. It was replaced by EDSAC 2, [...] in 1958.

In 1961, [...]Autocode, one of the first high-level programming languages, for EDSAC 2. [...] Titan, based on the Ferranti Atlas machine, were developed. Titan became fully operational in 1964[...]

In 1970, the Mathematical Laboratory was renamed the Computer Laboratory, with separate departments for Teaching and Research and the Computing Service, providing computing services to the university and its colleges. The two did not fully separate until 2001, when the Computer Laboratory moved out to the new William Gates building in West Cambridge, off Madingley Road, leaving behind an independent Computing Service..."

more from this excerpt's source at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cambridge_Computer_Laboratory

The Raspberry Pi in use

Raspberry Pi

Launch

Where manufactured?

The first batch of 10,000 boards was manufactured in Taiwan and China,[39][40] rather than in the UK. This is in part because import duty is payable on individual components but not on finished products. Chinese manufacturers also quoted a lead time of four weeks, compared to 12 weeks in the UK.[...]

When did they start getting sold?

Initial sales commenced 29 February 2012[44] at 06:00 UTC;. At the same time, it was announced that the Model A, originally to have had 128 MB of RAM, was to be upgraded to 256 MB before release.[12]

How many have been made, shipped, received...?

Post-launch

On 16 April 2012 reports started to appear from the first buyers who had received their Raspberry Pi.[50][51] As of 22 May 2012 over 20,000 units have been shipped.[52]On 16 July 2012 it was announced that 4000 units were being manufactured per day, allowing Raspberry Pis to be bought in bulk.[53][54] On September 5th the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a second revision of the Model B Raspberry Pi[55] On 6 September 2012 it was announced that going forward the bulk of Raspberry Pi units would be manufactured in the UK, at Sony's manufacturing facility in Pencoed, Wales. The foundation estimates the plant will produce 30,000 units per month, and will create about 30 new jobs.[56]

What software is required?

Software

The Raspberry Pi uses Linux kernel-based operating systems. Raspbian, a Debian-based free operating system optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware, is the current recommended system, released in July 2012.[81]

The GPU hardware is accessed via a firmware image which is loaded into the GPU at boot time from the SD-card. The firmware image is known as the binary blob, while the associated Linux drivers are closed source.[82] Application software use calls to closed source run-time libraries which in turn calls an open source driver inside the Linux kernel. The API of the kernel driver is specific for these closed libraries. Video applications use OpenMAX, 3D applications use OpenGL ES and 2D applications use OpenVG which both in turn use EGL. OpenMAX and EGL use the open source kernel driver in turn.

On 8 March, The Raspberry Pi Foundation released Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix, at the time its recommended Linux distribution,[85] which was developed at Seneca College in Canada.

Slackware ARM (formally ARMedslack) version 13.37 and later runs on the Raspberry Pi without modification. The 128–224 MB of available memory on the Raspberry Pi is twice the minimum requirement of 64 MB needed to run Slackware Linux on an ARM or i386 system. (While Slackware can load and run a GUI, it was designed to be run from the shell.) The Fluxbox window manager running under the X Window System requires an additional 48 MB of RAM.

In addition, work is being done on system-specific light Linux distributions such as IPFire, OpenELEC, Raspbmc and the XBMC open source digital media center.

Operating systems [per article-source as of September 2012]

This is a list of operating systems running, ported or in the process of being ported to Raspberry Pi

Full OS:

• AROS
• Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
• Arch Linux ARM
• Debian Squeeze
• FreeBSD[101]
• Firefox OS
• Gentoo Linux[102]
• Google Chrome OS
• NetBSD[103]
• Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix
• Raspbian[104] (Debian Wheezy port with faster floating point support)
• RISC OS
• Slackware ARM (formally ARMedslack)
• QtonPi a cross-platform application framework based Linux distribution based on the Qt framework

Multi-purpose light distributions:

Squeezed Arm Puppy, a version of Puppy Linux (Puppi) for the ARMv6 (sap6) specifically for the Raspberry Pi.

Single-purpose light distributions:

• IPFire
• OpenELEC
• Raspbmc
• XBMC
• Xbian

more from this excerpt's source at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

General information:

The size of microcomputers, credit cards, and technology therein are all subject to change.  Room is left in this blog for other computers in similar ilk to the Raspberry boards.