On a sunny day (Mon, 16 Apr 2018 21:14:42 +0100) it happened Gareth's
Downstairs Computer
  wrote in
:

>On 16/04/2018 20:38, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Mon, 16 Apr 2018 19:40:17 +0100) it happened Gareth's
>> Downstairs Computer
>>    wrote in
>> :
>>
>>> I wonder if anyone has implemented a blinkenlights
>>> interface for the RPi, so that one is not reliant on the
>>> complexity and reliability of VDU monitors, mice and
>>> keyboards?
>>
>> What do you nean by 'blinkenlights'?
>> You can hang anything you like on GPIO (with proper hardware driver).
>>
>
>Was brought up on PDP11 and PDP8 and miss the ability, on the few
>occasions when necessary, to drill right down to the machine
>itself. Blinkenlights  is a (fairly standard in alt.folklore.computers)
>reference to a front panel with binary lamps and switches.

Ah, I remember the PDP11, was IIRC my first encounter with Unix.
But the word 'blinkenlights' is new to me, I am in different language country.
Seems to be German-English ?? 'blinken' and 'lights'.

That is simple to realize, connect some LEDs (via series resistor) to GPIO
pins,
you got at least a byte, and use the other pins to multiplex.
Maybe if you want to do it the big way with hundreds of LEDs:

http://panteltje.com/panteltje/raspberry_pi_FDS132_matrix_display_driver/index.
html
  I bought that display in the army surplus, basically shift registers and LED
drivers...
  Had to modify it a bit... to connect to GPIO.



>What I anticipate is using one Pi to drive the JTAG on another.

Pi has JTAG? I must be getting rusty.
On my site you find a raspi JTAG driver for an FPGA proto board:
 http://panteltje.com/panteltje/raspberry_pi/

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