Silly Little Projects!

[bicostp]

Project #1:
I have an old laptop lying around, so I figured I might as well make a fast-booting internet ready computer with productivity software on it. I plan on installing DSL linux, mainly because of memory and hard drive constraints. It's running 98 on the current hard disk, but it's not second edition, and I can't get it to work with anything.
Here's what I hope it will have:

Hardware:
Toshiba Tecra 550CDT
64 MB RAM
540 MB HD (using a spare I have)
12" active matrix TFT screen
1.44MB floppy
CD-ROM
either 2x SanDisk 256 MB PCMCIA ATA flash storage cards OR 1x storage card and a NetGear FA411 10/100mbps ethernet card
use of USB mass storage media

Software:
DSL Linux 2.1
AbiWord
The GiMP
Firefox

Progress:
I have downloaded DSL 2.1, and swapped the hard drives out.

Silly little project #2: GBC USB power cable
I have a few USB cables lying around, and a matching plug for the GBC. All I really need to do is figure out what resistors are needed to drop the voltage from 5v to 3v on a 500mah line with a 200mah power draw.

Progress:
Gathered supplies, done nothing else

Project #3: Flash for Newgrounds
Yes I have dabbled in Flash before, and I haven't really made anything big in it. YET! I plan on making a short movie with a bunch of sprites from SNES, Genesis, 32x, on down including some arcade sprites. It will be in a pseudo Robot Chicken format, with short clips of sprites doing some funny short antics. Now on Newgrounds Sprites and stick figures are kind of hit or miss, mainly because the kiddies who download the Flash demo either are illiterate, have never rendered images in anything but crayon before, or have extremely immature senses of humor. Another common problem is that they use bitmapped images in a short movie, making a 30 second Mario vs Sonic 64342398452364532742837452-4 movie fill up the entire 5 megabyte file limit. However I have found a few tricks for vectorizing sprites, and the demos I made and tinkered with turned out rather well.

I already have a bunch of ideas, but I am asking for some more. Does anyone have any good ideas for a sprite antic?

Busy is me! (all this and I'm supposed to be doing a major cleaning of all the junk in my room too )

[madc0w]

It's running 98 on the current hard disk, but it's not second edition, and I can't get it to work with anything.

GRRR same here! im too lazy for linux too.

[daguuy]

i also have a pretty old laptop (133mhz 32mb ram 1gb HD / 256 color 800x600 screen) but with no operatiing system at all. what's the best version of linux i could put on it and have it work?

[SpongeBuell]

Lately I've been playing with Linux on my iBook. Having a hard time getting anything that supports my AirPort card, but I'm about to see what Ubuntu can do for me.

[joelanders]

i also have a pretty old laptop (133mhz 32mb ram 1gb HD / 256 color 800x600 screen) but with no operatiing system at all. what's the best version of linux i could put on it and have it work?

Just don't use a less-demanding window manager (not Gnome or KDE), make sure you don't have a lot of unnecessary processes running, and you're set.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Make a digital picture frame and shove a wifi card in if possible (altho most likely not) then have the picture frame download some funny pictures each night or get the home pc to upload them to the pictureframe so when u wake up in the morning you have a funny picture to see

Or you could have the picture frame show some latest hitting stories whichever

check out www.applefritter.com has some cool mac hacks including a digital picture frame

[madc0w]

Make a digital picture frame and shove a wifi card in if possible (altho most likely not) then have the picture frame download some funny pictures each night or get the home pc to upload them to the pictureframe so when u wake up in the morning you have a funny picture to see

Or you could have the picture frame show some latest hitting stories whichever

check out www.applefritter.com has some cool mac hacks including a digital picture frame

i was thnking about trying to get my friend's window's 3.1 lappy and doing that, but it would have a speaker built in and it would cycle ytmnds.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Not a bad idea personally i wanna get a house then have these kind of things around the house

But id use 2-way mirrors so it looks like a mirror on the wall and when i disturb the laptop it turns the screen on and the mirror becomes glass

Wanted to do it to my tv in my bedroom but then i thought people and gonna wodner why i had a mirror at the end of my bed lol

[cennar]

Lately I've been playing with Linux on my iBook. Having a hard time getting anything that supports my AirPort card, but I'm about to see what Ubuntu can do for me.

dick all...

[bicostp]

Sorry for the bump but I've made progress with the lappy.

I tried installing DSL 2.1, but it was giving me some bizarre CD error. So I reinstalled 1.5, and all is well... sorta.

The sound system refused to work on startup. However, after some searching I came up with a solution. Apparently sound problems are common with some distros on old Toshiba laptops. However, the root command

Code: Select all

modprobe cs4232 io=0x534 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0

remedies the problem. So I tried it, and it worked! *yay* I never realized how boring a PC without sound can be!

Now all I need to do is install TuxNES, Stella, and maybe a GBO player, you know for those kickbutt homebrews. And of course I'll add stuff like the Gnu Image Manipulation Program and AbiWord. (not gonna go running OpenOffice on this relic!)

It's playing "Black Magic Woman" right now. Great music.

[G-force]

Sounds spiffy! Good job with that sound fix... I would have never figured that out.

[Triton]

here is me and foxxs possible future "silly little project" gateway connected touchpad this thing has a 10 inch stn (eww but livalbe) touchscreen a 400mhz Transmeta Crusoe processor, expandable SODIMM ram up to 512mb, built in CF cardslot and uber hackability of everything! plus fing cheap, dont buy em all you bastards