serv VS IronOS

In short: it works, though the implementation lacks the crystal clarity of FemtoRV32 and PicoRV32. The core is larger than SERV but has higher IPC and (very arguably) a more conventional implementation. The compressed instruction set is easier to expand into regular RV32I instructions than it is to execute directly.

https://github.com/olofk/serv

As for the size advantage: this mattered more when LUTs were precious and when PicoBlaze's competition was either similarly unorthodox (J1 Forth CPU) or several times larger (MicroBlaze). Nowadays, there are very small RISC-V cores like FemtoRV32 Quark or SERV. RISC-V benefits from mainstream open-source tooling and has momentum that's hard to beat.

The RISC-V spec does allow non-trapping behavior and SeRV in particular has non-trapping behavior, which is an important part of how it can fit into 200 4-input LUTs.

https://github.com/olofk/serv#good-to-know

It will be interesting to see if a Serv will fit with some usable gates left over.

So apparently the Pinecil is a BLE-enabled soldering iron with a 108 MHz RISC-V processor running a custom real-time operating system [0]. The author wanted to access the UART logs, so they repurposed a Raspberry Pi Pico (a dual-core microcontroller system running a real-time OS) for the task.

That's a staggering amount of hardware, sortware and computing power devoted to decoding one of the simplest and oldest serial protocols from a device whose sole purpose is to essentially melt tin. Maybe I'm out of touch, but I think I'll stick to my thermostat-controlled Weller soldering station and FTDI UART converters. I apologize if this post comes across as snarky, my point is that these are solved problems and have been for half a century.

[0] https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS

I got a TS101 and wanted to switch to IronOS straight away as it seems like an improvement to stock firmware. On the website it says that TS101s are supported, but there is no file for it. I figured it must be the TS100 .hex file, but flashing it just gives me an error (a .NOT file). Is the TS101 really supported and how do I flash the firmware in that case?

but the pinecil can also use IronOS https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS

Look at this ticket in Ralim's IronOS, all 4 people same issue and all they had to do was clean their Cartridges with IPA 90-99% Alcohol. https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS/issues/1601

I'm very happy with the Pinecil. The $25 price is very reasonable for a reliable soldering iron that is open source hardware[1] and runs on free and open source firmware.[2]

[1] Schematics: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil:_How_to_Repair#Schemati...

[2] IronOS: https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS

Also, I'm not sure what exactly is happening with the OS on the irons, because I thought the pinecils shipped with IronOS but it may be an old or cut down version because when I loaded the latest https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS on my pinecils I just ordered two weeks ago, I definitely got a ton of options I didn't have before.