So, we spent this morning cleaning and then, in a burst of doing something that we’ve been meaning to do for months…
We cleared off the kitchen counters and rewaxed/oiled them. Dear god does that stuff smell hideous.
I mean really hideous.
Headache inducing hideous.
I’d forgotten. For a ‘natural’ finish, it’s surely pretty wiffy. We also cleaned the rugs and put them back in the hall, transiently rediscovered our dining table (it’s got all the stuff from the kitchen on it) and did rather a lot of loads of laundry.
I also, yesterday, finally got around to picking up another SD card for the Pi. We’re going over to America in a while, and I promised Kathryn’s mom I’d take the Raspberry Pi with me. As part of that I wanted to try out ‘Berryboot‘ which (I thought) would allow me to put lots of serious educational OS’s onto my new 8 gig SD and hopefully RISC OS. Because that would allow shedloads of nostalgia to be visited upon me. That and I could run Super Foul Egg, which as all people know is the very peak of tetris-like computer games. Although Bloxed was pretty close. Anyhow, that’s basically the entire purpose of being able to run RISC OS. So I can play SFE.
As a side point, I’ve just discovered that someone’s most of the way through an App version of SFE. Make it happen universe!
Anyway. It turns out that, in fact, RISC OS cannot be installed using Berryboot, because it’s not a linux based OS. Essentially, Berryboot can do many things, but it can’t make an OS that has no idea that other OS’s exist boot from an disk which is formatted with something it can’t understand and has the option to boot into other OS that it doesn’t understand either.
So, err, no, that isn’t happening. Although I’m pleased to hear that my beloved RISC OS is having a bit of a resurgence with the old Pi there.
But anyhow, Berryboot did exactly what it said on the tin with no fuss, installing a couple of different flavours of linux and the OLPC OS, which should be cool for showing the Pi to Kathryn’s mom when we do go over. The other thing I picked up for the Pi, whilst I was out and about was a mini-keyboard/trackpad.
Now, whilst it is undoubtedly not very good quality and over priced, it is very small. Small enough that I can sort of consider it a remote control. The iPhone apps are great as replacement remotes, but sometimes a keyboard is just that bit handy. And there it is.
I have to admit to being quite impressed. The PS/2 keyboard/trackball combo that I used to use was always ‘somewhat flakey’. It would require periodic tweaks of its drivers to avoid clashing with some other unknown thing. And whilst it did work at the level at which the BIOS operated, I think, it was just fairly unreliable. So far this one has ‘just worked’. I plugged it in, and instantly we had a working keyboard. The odd extended keys seem to largely do what they have printed on them. I mean, the music player key doesn’t launch a music player. But that’s probably as much because it’s a bare linux installation as anything else.
I also had a second go at my Bellset 33 / 238L Combo.
Now, when I say ‘I’ had a second go. I did what someone on the internet told me to do. That is because the internet is filled with much cleverer people who beyond the fact they’re much cleverer, also have access to circuit diagrams for my archaic equipment. Now I must admit, I’d assumed that someone else would have done this. There are plenty of A-B payphones out there, but it appears that what I have is a bit of an oddball combination. I’m pleased, however, that it’s slightly stumped the vintage radio/telephone peeps, because my dad had a go and couldn’t make it work (not the first time, anyhow). Having the most experienced telephonic geeks not manage to get it, twice, makes me feel better. Also, it makes me feel better for the fact I looked at the circuit diagrams and though “Oh…I’ll get me hat”.
We’re now up to voice and earpiece working, but dialling and hook-sensing not working properly. However, voice is poorer quality than it should be. And in this iteration of the wiring, the coin mechanism is completely ignored. Which is a shame. I mean, it’s pointless having the coin mechanism wired in. Hell, it’s positively likely to be irritating. But just as Kara’s Aunt Peter-Ann’s jukebox was still coin-op, I feel the phone should, ideally, be too.
Anyhow. That is pretty much it for today. Cleaning and oiling kitchen surfaces. I know how to spend a Saturday, don’t I :)
