h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I always preferred raspberries to strawberries as a kid, and ever since then too.

So I think I'll get a Raspberry Pi. After all, less is more.

Oh, we have no smiley, unless you count

Ah, much better

It's funny. I have no worries building a sodding great tank of a desktop PC like the one I'm using right now, with its huge power supply, five hard drives, a jillion gigs of RAM, graphics card, etc, but the Pi uses a lot of stuff I'm utterly unfamiliar with. It'll be a steep learning curve.

I think fords has been playing around with Raspberry Pi.

I know very little about it but keep hearing about it everywhere. That and Arduino.


Between Raspberry Pi, Arduino and 3D printing, the home hobbyist could easily build a robot army to take over their neighborhood if not the world.

get one of the new MK2 ones
And it is not difficult... Kids can do it

ok someone enlighten me. What exactly is a Raspberry Pi?

A bare board computer, mostly aimed at education but much used for hobby projects.

To use one you will need a screen and keyboard / mouse which can be second hand.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Yep... robot armies!

http://youtu.be/9WOxRIo8AGI

I'm planning on using it for, er, the things I have this one running 24 hours a day for My electricity bill might be considerably smaller.

I have a few bits and pieces left over from previous PCs and projects that might come in handy, like a KVM switch and a USB hub.

I still have the motherboard and CPU from my previous desktop. I don't think the processor will run any Windows later than XP, which is why I upgraded to this one, but Linux shouldn't be a problem. If I used that instead of the Pi it'd still mean a larger power supply though, and that sort of defeats the object, but it has onboard sound, graphics and ethernet. And I still have the driver disc.

I wonder...

you might want
Raspberry Pi – Where do I start?
http://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=12000

You might also want to look at this which we published at the launch of Raspberry pi - written by Alex/Tufty

Here's the introduction : A13735596

Both very useful

Well. The amount of dosh I'll need to cough up to get it working is starting to rack up

ah - now I understand.

That's been the problem, for me at least, reading about these things on the periphery: nothing actually ever said what they were for. Now I know.

When I've finished with the OU I'm going to get one (I learned Basic and LOGO back when I did Computer studies O-level in 1980 - but I've done nearly nothing with a computer since then)

:D

if its anygood. and I truely recommend using it, and I can find it. I'll snail mail you a copy of win 98, if I can find the CD disk, if its any use.... and if I've not lost it... and so long as the airmail charge is not too pricey... mind, I've just quit smoking, so actually... relatitive prices of things look somewhat differnt since becoming err... £60 quid a night better off, a week, rhoughtly

Ah, Win 98 Wish I still had my old disc. I do have the old XP disc still, probably. I have a bunch of old drives, ranging from 2GB to 500GB, and if I can find a cheap, suitable power supply, I might just get that old motherboard and CPU running again. The processor is AMD, maybe around 2.5GHz? All I really need to do is get it powered and hooked up to the KVM.

Gonna need a router though.

And it would be a good way to start messing around with Linux after all these years.

heck, just realised, I may sill have some DOS 6.22 or thereabouts floppy discs floating about.... and probably a floppy drive in a PC destined for the dump, that would take it! actually, think that PC had XP stored on it, aTM....