[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is the most powerful, fully open, fully...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ask HN: What is the most powerful, fully open, fully programmable
       computer?
        
       I'd like to write a software stack from scratch, starting from low
       level assembly to explore alternative and novel avenue for
       computing.  I'm looking for some hardware that comes with as many
       modern features such as multiple cores, USB, PCI, etc., and with
       datasheets and open specs for all components of the board, that are
       reasonably possible for a single person to grok.  That cuts out all
       modern x86 and ARM systems (you need a lifetime just to program a
       single GPU driver), RISC-V boards still depend on binary blobs and
       underdocumented auxiliary chips.  Without going as far down to a
       Z80 microcomputer, what is the most powerful and programmable
       computer I can plug a keyboard and monitor to, and start hacking?
        
       Author : sph
       Score  : 4 points
       Date   : 2023-08-06 22:40 UTC (21 minutes ago)
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | You might just want an FPGA at that point. It won't be
       | competitive with modern CPUs (by an order of magnitude), but it
       | _will_ be fairly well-documented and more flexible than most
       | other boards. You could target RISC-V with emulated cores, or try
       | your hand at implementing custom logic.
        
       | johndoe0815 wrote:
       | Perhaps the Talos-II Power 9-based systems. Unfortunately, these
       | are rather expensive, systems start at around US$5k.
       | 
       | https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-08-06 23:01 UTC)