Minecraft coming to Raspberry Pi in hackable edition Minecraft will soon be available for the Raspberry Pi, and in true Pi fashion will be hackable. The Pi guys have blogged that they “sent a bunch of boards out to Notch and the guys at Mojang in Stockholm a little while back, and they’ve produced a port of Minecraft: Pocket Edition”. The port, dubbed Minecraft: Pi Edition, …
void answer post() {
if (AC 0653h is troll){
votePost --;
} else {
post reply " What are those PR lies (from a non-profit foundation?) and what's the USB problem? It's ususally solved with a better power supply or an active hub. RPi are made to tinker with; if that's not your thing, buy an iPad."
}
}
If you're going to post a clever "I can write in code look at me!!" answer you should at least write code that;
A - makes some sort of sense, B - is properly indented.
<insert reply formatted into code here about PR lies about "open drivers" and the USB problems being numerous and well reported.. the drivers are cack, the USB controller is fairly broken to start with, the PCB is laid out badly... but I guess you know all of this being able to almost write c0d3>
If you're going to post a clever "I can *really* write in code look at me!!" answer you should at least write a post that;
A - Is readable given criticism B pertained to the readability of the code, B - Doesn't hinge on criticism that has f-all to do with the actual meaning of the code.
Well done on finding a real-world outlet for the knowledge you're gaining in your I.T. AS-level though...
If you're going to post a clever "I can *really really* honestly write in code look at me pretty please" answer you should at least understand what code is.
>A - Is readable given criticism
Your eyes not working as well as everyone elses then? Or maybe you just can't read?
>B - Doesn't hinge on criticism that has f-all to do with the actual meaning of the code.
The "code" doesn't have any meaning.. other than the use of some constructs like braces and oh my god! an attempt at an if-statement none of it made any sense as code.
>Well done on finding a real-world outlet for the knowledge you're gaining in your I.T. AS-level though...
Maybe you'll be able to write some code here when you finish your GCSEs? Nar Nar!
What's the USB problem? Probably best to start here -
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12097
There seems to be three main issues cited -
1. The USB interface circuitry and functionality not conforming to USB specification.
2. The USB driver software being on the poor side.
3. The USB hardware being less than great as a host adapter.
It is understandable the Pi USB has limitations because it was designed that way to keep costs down but it's the perfect setting for a grand stand-off over expectation and blame.
For example; how can USB be fit for purpose when the Pi brown-outs, crashes, resets and reboots whenever a USB device that works fine on a PC is connected?
Choose your corner...
I too had power/USB problems I bought a very cheap portable powered USB hub from my local Tescos and it works like a charm now, powering an old Apple keyboard and mouse and a wifi USB stick (also from Tesco).
The only problem I had setting it up was the need to buy a fairly well specced SD card to get the thing to boot.
http://www.mc-server.org/
Not the official server but this can be compiled to run on the Pi, and since it is written in C++ rather than Java it is pretty quick too. its missing a few features such as proper mob AI, and I think redstone is a little borked ATM, but it works just fine for walking around and building things :)
I have seen several reports that the USB is inefficient. Some blame the driver, some the chip, some both.
My experience the the Pi XBMC would support this. It plays compressed 1080p content fine (e.g. a 4GB 2 hour file looks great) but less compressed content (i.e. 20GB for a 2 hour movie) keeps pausing, and is unwachable. An Oplay (or an Hisense 1080) plays the same media fine.
Hopefully there will be new drivers sometime.
But it's only £30 quid
I agree, the USB is a bit slower than the other computers I have, but its fully capable of playing all of the movies I have (as I don't have a habit of keep 20GB movies, mostly 1GB files, sometimes 2)
But my experience with getting the Pi was fantastic, ordered mine with a case and pre made SD card for $70 shipped. And best of all was it all arrived the next day (Go Element 14!)
For ultimate movie playing, Raspbian with XBMC and a 256/256 ram split, over locked to 900Mhz, and forgo X, just slows it down. And definitely install Netatalk and Samba if you have you movies installed on other computers.
In hind sight, you probably already know all this :P
Or just use network storage.
The Playstation 2 can have its arm twisted into being a very nice media player/C64 emulator, but its USB 1.1 ports mean media has to be stored on the network. Curiously, my mate's PS2 plays NAS-based video more consistently than his PS3, which occasionally buffers.
At the moment I don't want my Pi to act as a media player. However once multiple boot is simple without unplugging SD Cards. (The is supposedly going to be a Linux loaded from RISC OS), this situation will change.
Ultimately I would like to boot in RISC OS, and then have the option of loading RaspBMC, Raspian, Android, PupPi etc.
If the USB drivers get improved then a second Pi could find its way into my hifi system, but it would need to work as well as the Asus Oplayer.
I've got a 12GB 1080p file that plays fine over my network, and a 14GB one of the same film that pauses a bit when there are fast moving scenes. Seems there is a limit to what it can manage on xbmc. However I do have hopes the 512Mb Pi will solve some of it as I got the 14GB one to the point where it would only pause once by upping the xbmc pre-buffering to the max. More memory and more buffer will hopefully fix for me... It is all still pretty beta so give it time, also one openelec build seems quite different to another so there is some luck involved.
We bought four of these devices to develop for use in our local school. The project goal was to have 40-50 available to the students.
We have had USB problems with all 4 to a greater or less degree. We also found that they are super sensitive to the power supply - we suspect this was due to the polyfuses. They are all very sensitive to the brand of SD card we used, the "high quality" SD cards were not necessarily the ones the Pi liked. Of the 4 Pi's 2 of them will not reliably work with any brand (and we tried loads) of USB wireless dongle. One of the Pi's also gets almost too hot to touch - we believe this is due to a wiring mistake. All this on top of constant Linux hangs and one of them suffering a broken micro USB power connector after only a few days.
Then the bombshell - a member from the foundation said on the Raspberry Pi forum words to the effect "What do you expect these V1 Pi's are development systems not production (or was it "educational") quality parts - you should have realized this." Huh?
Well it was a good idea but implemented by a small group of developers with no experience of how to take an idea through development and into production. The attitude of some members of the foundation on the Raspberry Pi forums is also worrying - bannings are a regular occurance. We have abandoned the PI project - these devices are just too flakey and likely to end up just frustrating the students we are trying to motivate.
Sounds like you have very early boards. The latest ones do not suffer from the hot LAN chip - this was a wiring fault caused by a less than comprehensive datasheet. It jsut gets hot thoruhg - shouldn't affect anything else. Also, the polyfuses are replaced with 0ohm resistors on the latest boards so power shouldn't be so much of an issue. You can mod you boards if you want to to get the same effect.
As to the USB connector - well, rough handling can break anything.
Banning on the forums - bollocks. Very few people have been banned. To say it is a regular occurrence is completely wrong. In one year I have banned about 5 people (excluding spammers who don't count). Please don't let the tiny minority of people who have been banned (and for bloody good reason too) tell you otherwise- they fucked up and now spend there whole time whining about it (although even they have quietened down recently), making the whole place sound like some draconian concentration camp which it plainly isn't. It's just sour grapes.
USB drivers. Massive improvement over the last 6 months. I suggest anyone still having problems upgrade to the latest kernel and drivers - the vast majority of people should no longer see problems. That said, there are still some areas being looked at. Considering there are nearly a million boards out there, we now get only a few reported issues. If you still have problems after trying the latest code, then report them on the Raspberry Pi forum - we need to know specific issues so they can be investigated.
I guess this is what the OP meant by "blatant lies as PR". I wouldn't go so far as to call it that myself but I can see how such allegations arise.
Those allegedly "very early boards" were on sale from March through August, the new version 2 boards only arriving around the start of September. There are hundreds of thousands of version 1 boards shipped which have the USB polyfuses fitted and the 1V8 short which can cause the LAN chip to overheat. Sounds rather disingenuous to me to suggest it's only early boards, a small minority, that are affected.
If I remember correctly the stated aim was always to get the first Pi's out to hackers, tinkerers and enthusiasts, then, when the product has a higher level of maturity, release it for as a cased product for mass educational use. I always thought it should be considered in the same way as a Microsoft operating system, no sane person would use it in a liive / production situation until at least service pack one.
Having said that I have had non of the problems with USB stated above and quite happily run a SSD via USB on a powered hub as well as the normal gubbins like a keyboard, mouse, wireless dongle etc.
@csumpi
My normal Pi setup of Pi, power supply, keyboard, mouse, powered hub, wireless dongle, second hand laptop SATA drive and SD card came to about £70. Exactly which netbooks were you considering in this price range?
Probably because you are allowed to distrubute YOUR mods? Just not the specific code of minecraft itself. Many of the early mods revolved around modding the minecraft.bin file and distrubiting the entire bin, including the mojang code. This practice is what their T&C is refering to.
For the normal version of minecraft this issue has been mostly resolved with the rise of specialised launchers and mod/patch programs. I assume the same could happen for a Pi-craft version.
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