Thursday, February 12, 2009

olpc xo Physics Activity

Very cool;

liked by all; dropping blocks and balls on top of each other and watching them roll and bounce away elicits giggles...

Sugar on Fedora 10

Finally got around to updating kpc to Fedora 10

and running sugar-emulator !

so have sugar running on the downstairs system, and the upstairs actual XO laptop.

is bigger, brighter and faster on the kpc, but a bit less stable;
not everything works.

Monday, October 13, 2008

New XO Keyboard

finally giving up on hacking the old "sticky keys" keyboard.

found online supplier for OLPC parts:

XOExplosion.com

they seemed legit; and take paypal, so filled out the online form to order a new one.

<$20

Keyboard arrived Friday!

(was away this weekend)

will try to replace... this week?

here's how...



wiki
or video:



Wednesday, October 8, 2008

KPC in Canada...

Picked up yet another computer:

a shuttle KPC.
This was a full system from a local shop, all I did was plug it in
celeron E1200 (dual core)
1 Gig Ram
80 gig HD

came with Fedora 8 pre-installed.
I've kept it running that.

Comments:

  • Hooked up our Quickcam PRO 9000; needed to add the extra module to support that, since Fedora 8 didn't support that out of the box.
  • is a bit noiser that I'd hoped.  Have found similar comments on the web; their solutions was to mount an external, larger fan, and disable the internal one; may also do this
  • main uses: my OGG collection (didn't have MP3 support by default, due to being Fedora, so am moving to OGG, from MP3)
  • web surfing/flash
  • looking at video from our digital cameras:  again had to add codecs, due to Fedora (here I relented and put some on, since modifying the default from the camera is currently difficult)




Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Skype voice on OLPC

got the current skype_static-2.0.0.72 running voice only mode on the OLPC.

notes:
the missing xscreensaver library was a bit hard to find;

running from a USB flash drive, don't yet have an SD card;

looked at postings on getting the video running;

is similar to my K6, so may work...

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Skype and QuickCam Pro 9000 on K6 (puppy 3.01)

Skype is running and able to use the quickcam pro 9000 on puppy linux 3.01

on a K6 450!

let's see how annoying it is to use...

loaded the quick cam drivers and the uvcvideo pets

qc-usb-messenger-1.7-k2.6.21.7.pet
qc-usb-0.6.5-k2.6.21.7.pet
uvcvideo_20070706-k2.6.21.7.pet

had to modprobe them in the correct order, or else you get odd errors about missing stuff...

Notes:
1)xawtv does not seem to pick it up, still need to tweak it
2)skype didn't pick up the microphone on the camera... still need to figure that out...

Thursday, July 24, 2008

nvidia on inspiron 8200 and ubuntu hardy

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP"
EndSection


needed the option to use the laptop's "Digital Flat Panel" (?DFP?) otherwise just get a black screen