Python

The BeagleBone comes with a basic webserver written in Javascript in the bonescript.js file. This is run by node.js which is a browser-less javascript engine. This took a bit of reading about to get my head around because the idea of javascript being used to write server side scripts was a bit odd, but the whole server seemed implausible. Unfortunately when I tried to make this do what I wanted to do for the BigTrak project, node.js wouldn't work and seems to be in some sort of version conflict but has to be maintained at this version for the Cloud9 IDE software. Instead I decided to write my own web page server in Python.

I was wandering how to store and represent the programs for the BigTrak. I wanted to stick to the original spirit of the toy and make it programmable via the web so I naturally got to thinking of LOGO commands. Most of my experience with the language was in a program called "WinLogo" ironically running on an Acorn Archimedes not Windows at all.

More progress on the Z80 project; I have fitted the first RAM chips tonight. After sorting the code so far into 3 source files, I implemented the memory read and memory write functions. These appeared to work on single memory locations, so I implemented the block read and write functions. Using a Python script (see the Z80 Project page for the file) I wrote the XOR combination of the high and low address bytes to each memory location, then read the memory back and tested it against this value.

I had a day or two waiting for parts to arrive recently, and started tinkering with PIC programming in Linux. I was really pleased with how easy it was to program a PIC with my PICKit 2 programmer using the available command line tools, but what I wanted was an even easier GUI interface for it. So I wrote one.