This has been a market highly served by the mighty Zilog Z80, the processor that may never die (and a personal favorite).
This will increase demand for ARM-based chips even further. The Android SDK rev 1.5 release 1 notes specified no Z80 support. It was bound to happen.
I never knew that there was a branch of Linux that supported 8-bit, no-MMU processors. You'd need the Linux part to run Android, wouldn't you? Are there versions of Android that don't run on Linux? I never thought about that!
One of the reasons why I spent a lot of time with
Minix was that there was a version that ran (albeit with restrictions) on the old
AT&T 6300 that was my only PC until I earned enough money to buy the parts to build a 486 box. Good times!
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When it comes to something as basic as food preparation, I snicker at the idea that something like a well-placed lightning strike could render a high-tech homeowner unable to cook a meal. I'm a renter, so I didn't get to pick the range with the microcontroller run oven. At least the stove top uses good old-fashioned rheostats, and my slow cooker has a 4-position switch and nothing else. If that fails, my gas log fireplace is always an option.
The nicest feature of my range is that the digital clock's display can be turned off. OTOH my mom's 80-year-old
mantel clock that plays
Westminster chimes is a real pain to get back in sync. That's one clock that really could use a mute button!
My TV problems are more than slow boot-up times, which to be fair is something that plagues many embedded devices that use the bare minimum of hardware to maximize profits. I don't much care for the long pauses when I switch between HDMI inputs either. Would it kill them to develop an ASIC to speed things up?