5 ms·

I wish I understood hardware at this level. His “PS I built a scsi disc drive emulator with a rasberrypi” is an awesome humble brag.

sen 5y ago
I'm always in awe of people who have such advanced knowledge of hardware down to the bare metal level. I know there's probably plenty of people on HN who think nothing of it, but for someone such as myself from a software background who just tinkers with hardware as a side-hobby, it verges on wizardry and I absolutely love it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I started on hardware. I don't really miss it, but I do like connecting to things.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  wrt wizardry: “Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect” - Teller
mhh__ 5y ago
FWIW I think the only way hackers learn this stuff is by reading and then one day going "Huh I understand CPU caches [or similar]". It isn't forbidden knowledge by any means, so just follow your curiosity and see where it takes you. For interfaces, I would maybe start with something like the art of electronics just for the basics. If I want to understand the basics of some bus or whatever, I usually do some tactical googling alongside terms like "FPGA" to see what comes up so I don't have to make sense of a 150000 page spec.
theodric 5y ago
In fairness, that's been a thing you can just -do- for years now
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Why is it a thing you could do, you mean? Using the GPIOs?
  - wanderingjew 5y ago
    RaSCSI is a virtual SCSI device emulator that runs on a Raspberry Pi. It runs in userspace, and can emulate several SCSI devices at one time. There is a control interface to attach / detach drives during runtime, as well as insert and eject removable media. This project is aimed at users of vintage Macintosh computers from the 1980's and 1990's. https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI
    - gattilorenz 5y ago
      It's aimed at vintage Macintosh, but wouldn't it work with any old computer using SCSI? I have an HP machine that I would be happy to resuscitate with a new install of HP-UX, but its CD drive is dead.
smoldesu 5y ago
I'm not here to take the wind out of his sails, but SATA and SCSI are mostly interchangable these days. He's probably referring to a software solution that he deployed with a Raspberry Pi as the deployment platform. Still impressive, but relatively common sysops knowledge at a certain level.
- allenrb 5y ago
  This is not SCSI as you know it. This is “antique” 8-bit parallel SCSI. The protocols might be related but the signaling is most certainly not.

sen 5y ago

I'm always in awe of people who have such advanced knowledge of hardware down to the bare metal level. I know there's probably plenty of people on HN who think nothing of it, but for someone such as myself from a software background who just tinkers with hardware as a side-hobby, it verges on wizardry and I absolutely love it.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I started on hardware. I don't really miss it, but I do like connecting to things.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
wrt wizardry: “Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect” - Teller

mhh__ 5y ago

FWIW I think the only way hackers learn this stuff is by reading and then one day going "Huh I understand CPU caches [or similar]". It isn't forbidden knowledge by any means, so just follow your curiosity and see where it takes you. For interfaces, I would maybe start with something like the art of electronics just for the basics. If I want to understand the basics of some bus or whatever, I usually do some tactical googling alongside terms like "FPGA" to see what comes up so I don't have to make sense of a 150000 page spec.

theodric 5y ago

In fairness, that's been a thing you can just -do- for years now

kzrdude 5y ago
Why is it a thing you could do, you mean? Using the GPIOs?
- wanderingjew 5y ago
  RaSCSI is a virtual SCSI device emulator that runs on a Raspberry Pi. It runs in userspace, and can emulate several SCSI devices at one time. There is a control interface to attach / detach drives during runtime, as well as insert and eject removable media. This project is aimed at users of vintage Macintosh computers from the 1980's and 1990's. https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    It's aimed at vintage Macintosh, but wouldn't it work with any old computer using SCSI? I have an HP machine that I would be happy to resuscitate with a new install of HP-UX, but its CD drive is dead.

smoldesu 5y ago

I'm not here to take the wind out of his sails, but SATA and SCSI are mostly interchangable these days. He's probably referring to a software solution that he deployed with a Raspberry Pi as the deployment platform. Still impressive, but relatively common sysops knowledge at a certain level.

allenrb 5y ago
This is not SCSI as you know it. This is “antique” 8-bit parallel SCSI. The protocols might be related but the signaling is most certainly not.