The centerpiece of the Mindstorms kit is the RCX brick.

The Brick

  • 6AA batteries
  • Hitachi H8 processor with 32Kb of RAM and startup ROM
  • 3 A/D input ports
  • 3 Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) output ports that run small 9 volt DC motors.
  • LCD screen
  • 4 control buttons
  • IR port for communication to the host computer
  • speaker for 1 bit audio
  • port for external power (rumored to not be on newer RCX bricks)
  • lots of Lego studs to connect lego pieces to it

    The IR Tower

    It has a 9 volt battery and a 9 pin serial port. When the host computer sends it serial data, it will power up and send the data on to the RCX brick. According to Lego's documentation, when both the RCX brick and IR tower are in "long range IR" mode, they can communicate when 70 feet apart.

    Programming

    All the software that Lego ships with the brick runs (or didn't in my case) under Windows95 or better.
    Lego supplies a basic firmware that is downloaded into the brick from the CD that comes with the kit. This firmware implements a byte code interpreter that the Lego supplied visual programming system uses. It implements simple timers, basic multitasking, conditionals, and simple data storage. There are now several other languages that are now using the interpreter ( Not Quite C being the most notable).

    pbForth skips the interpreter and just uses the ROM routines. It is notable that it doesn't need a host computer to program, just an ASCII terminal.

    The kit is aimed at the early teen age group, but rumors are that half of the purchases are made by adults for adult use.

    Main Next - Building the Cross Compiler
    Monty Stein Dec 18, 1999
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