Raspberry Pi basics

Microcomputers have been around since the 1970s. In the 1970s, several systems aimed at the enthusiast based on the Z80, 6502, and 6809 8-bit microprocessors appeared. Operating systems, apps, and the web didn’t exist then.

Then, in the late 1970s, Intel introduced the 8086 and Motorola its 68000 16-bit CPU (the 68000 microprocessor actually had a 32-bit instruction set architecture, but Motorola marketed it initially as a 16-bit machine. In my view this was a catastrophic marketing mistake. 16-bit computers were a giant leap up from their 8-bit predecessors for two reasons. First, the technology had advanced, permitting designers to put far more circuitry on a chip (i.e., more registers, more powerful instruction sets, etc.), and second, processors were far faster due to the reduction in feature size (i.e., smaller transistors). Finally, the declining cost of memory meant that people could run larger and more sophisticated programs.

In the 1960s, the...