So I finally got my bus pirate in the mail, and now I'm just orienting myself with it's use.
I thought I did good in buying the bus pirate cable to go with it, only to find out I also need some clips/connectors to go on the end of each cable wire, so I can hook it up to stuff. Connecting them to header pins is useless as they're too big; at least on the cruddy round ones I'm using for my breadboard (they suck, thank you).
I plan on using it for a few projects, all pretty miscellaneous, but this will definitely help in debugging lots of problems, whether they be communications or sniffing protocols off of ICs. I don't really have much in mind for it as of now, but when I do come up with a problem that could use it I'll be sure to post it.
In other news, I was planning on assembling a junk-pc-parts music player / pandora streamer, with a web, ssh, and physical control interface. I had the motherboard, the PSU, the CD drive, and an old 20 GB HDD, and was ready to get to work on installing a minimal linux distro (probably a base debian install, which is about 40-300 MB depending on what you use) or just installing ubuntu server edition and installing the packages for audio support. I hooked everything together, and nervously plugged in the PSU, only to be greeted with the ugly sound of 3 beeps, in a continuous loop. After looking over everything and trying again, I got the same message. I was sure there wasn't anything wrong with the board or PSU, nor the HDD or CD drive, and I had a keyboard plugged in, so I was stumped.
Of course after feeling mentally defeated (didn't take to long...), I finally resorted to searching google for the beep code.
I find it's for lack of RAM.
I look at the motherboard.
Guess what I missed.
Well, besides admitting to being the victim of absentminded idiocy, I couldn't go on with the project, for lack of RAM. I didn't have any modules that were that... ancient.
I'll go scavenge at goodwill or a computer shop for some parts.
I don't need much processing power or other resources to do this project, so almost any decommissioned, rusty, old, 333 MHz, DOS running, serial port wielding, 3.5" floppy booting- okay so I got a little carried away. Almost anything will do.
Maybe another time.
I thought I did good in buying the bus pirate cable to go with it, only to find out I also need some clips/connectors to go on the end of each cable wire, so I can hook it up to stuff. Connecting them to header pins is useless as they're too big; at least on the cruddy round ones I'm using for my breadboard (they suck, thank you).
I plan on using it for a few projects, all pretty miscellaneous, but this will definitely help in debugging lots of problems, whether they be communications or sniffing protocols off of ICs. I don't really have much in mind for it as of now, but when I do come up with a problem that could use it I'll be sure to post it.
In other news, I was planning on assembling a junk-pc-parts music player / pandora streamer, with a web, ssh, and physical control interface. I had the motherboard, the PSU, the CD drive, and an old 20 GB HDD, and was ready to get to work on installing a minimal linux distro (probably a base debian install, which is about 40-300 MB depending on what you use) or just installing ubuntu server edition and installing the packages for audio support. I hooked everything together, and nervously plugged in the PSU, only to be greeted with the ugly sound of 3 beeps, in a continuous loop. After looking over everything and trying again, I got the same message. I was sure there wasn't anything wrong with the board or PSU, nor the HDD or CD drive, and I had a keyboard plugged in, so I was stumped.
Of course after feeling mentally defeated (didn't take to long...), I finally resorted to searching google for the beep code.
I find it's for lack of RAM.
I look at the motherboard.
Guess what I missed.
Well, besides admitting to being the victim of absentminded idiocy, I couldn't go on with the project, for lack of RAM. I didn't have any modules that were that... ancient.
I'll go scavenge at goodwill or a computer shop for some parts.
I don't need much processing power or other resources to do this project, so almost any decommissioned, rusty, old, 333 MHz, DOS running, serial port wielding, 3.5" floppy booting- okay so I got a little carried away. Almost anything will do.
Maybe another time.
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