Chapter 1
Meet the Raspberry Pi
YOUR RASPBERRY PI board is a miniature marvel, packing considerable computing power into a footprint no larger than a credit card. It’s capable of some amazing feats, but you need to know a few things before you plunge head-first into the bramble patch.
A Trip Around the Board
The Raspberry Pi is currently available as two different models, known as the Model A and the Model B. While there are differences, with the Model A sacrificing some functionality in order to reduce its cost and power requirements, both share plenty of similarities that you find out about in this chapter. Figure 1-1 shows a Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 2, the most common board type. Its layout is shared between the original Model B Revision 1 and the cheaper Model A; the latest Model B+ uses an altered layout discussed later in this chapter.
In the rough centre of all Raspberry Pi boards is a square semiconductor, more commonly known as an integrated circuit or chip. This is the Broadcom BCM2835 system-on-chip (SoC) module, which provides the Pi with its general-purpose processing, graphics rendering and input/output capabilities. Stacked on top of that chip is another semiconductor, which provides the Pi with memory for temporary storage of data while it’s running ...
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