This weekend my wife said we had to clear the top of the wardrobe, and the fitted cupboards in the bedroom. While clearing up we found loads of really great stuff
While we were sorting out the cupboards I re-discovered my NES PC which has been a bit neglected, so it was brought out and all its necessities (power pack, output leads etc.) were marked and put with it. Then I decided to take off Linux which sucks and re-install Windows which still sucks but in a way which it can still do stuff without having to rewrite the whole code base (try installing something on it for the first time and there’s no clicking it’s all command line stuff). Then it turned out that the CD rom in the NES PC no longer works so I can’t get it to boot the install disc.
I tried a USB solution but the old Mini ITX board powering the NES PC won’t boot from a USB pen drive even though the BIOS gives the option for USB HDD booting (maybe it has to be a USB HDD and not a pen drive?). So after a few fruitless hours my NES PC still has Linux on it and does little but show the desktop and a few icons.
So then it was on to a little hacking experiment involving a USB cable and a Wii sensor bar. I wanted to use the Wii remote on my PC based arcade machine to use as on gun games. So I hacked the USB cable onto the Wii sensor bar (it isn’t a sensor just some IR LED’s) to power it from a PC USB port. Then I didn’t want to test some bodged wiring on my PC or my wifes laptop so I hacked the other end of the USB extension lead onto a 5v supply to test it. Using a mobile phone camera you can see the IR LED’s light up so it works. Next is to get it in the cabinet and fit USB ports and a bluetooth adaptor to take the input from the Wiimote. Some useful stuff like drivers are available for this so it’s on the to do list.
Finally I had a play with the little Raspberry Pi again, this time I have an 8Gb SD card and tried installing RISCOS which is a bit Alpha right now but seems to work well and now I just need to learn a little more to use it a bit.
All in all not a bad weekend at all.
