Subject:
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Re: Linux & RCX mini-HOWTO- comments/thoughts?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Sun, 13 Aug 2000 02:34:02 GMT
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Viewed:
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603 times
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On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Steve Baker wrote:
> Luis Villa wrote:
>
> > Because I'm sick of Linux people telling me "I thought you couldn't use the
> > RCX with Linux"...
>
> Those must be especially stupid people!
When was the last time you read /.? For better or for worse, there are
many new Linux users who are not particularly clueful.
> Plus I'd already noticed that SuSE Linux has a handful of Lego tools on the
> release CD's and NQC was *already* installed on my machine.
Really? That's a shame- I'd hoped to make Debian the first "Lego ready"
Linux release. Oh well... I'll survive with second :)
> > Are there options here that I'm missing? These don't need to be full-blown,
> > legOS-type OSs- clearly, RCX.pm doesn't fall into that category. I'm just
> > looking for any systems (of any type) that allow Linux users to use an RCX.
>
> I havn't seen any others - although it might be nice to explain about the
> various Lego-specific CAD programs (like LeoCAD) that work under Linux.
Good idea!
> The two 'gotchas' that caught me out were:
>
> 1) Finding a suitable serial port for the tower.
> This isn't always easy because there are only two free
> interrupts on the PC and Linux doesn't like driving two ports
> from one interrupt. Hence, your mouse and your modem (which are
> both serial devices in all probability) may prevent you from using
> the serial port connector on the back of the PC directly. For me,
> the answer was to connect the tower to my son's PC and write a
> shell script to redirect NQC commands to his PC for execution and
> download. There may be a better way - but some discussion of this
> somewhere would be useful.
OK.
> 2) Since I wasn't using Windoze (I don't even own a copy), I didn't
> even *look* at the instructions and came close to throwing away
> the CD-ROM. Hence, I didn't realise that I needed the Lego
> firmware from the CD - and it was mostly a matter of guesswork
> to figure out what Windoze file I needed off the CD and how to
> download it using NQC.
Good point.
> Those were not *big* problems for me - but less experienced Linux newbies
> might have a REALLY hard time of this. So a paragraph or two might help.
I'l try to figure out a way to incorporate these. I'm sure there are
others.
> > You can read what I've done so far here:
> > http://www.duke.edu/~liv/Linux/index.html
>
> Nice! It's always good to have everything together in one place.
That's why I wanted to do this. As you mentioned, searching on Google
returns a /lot/ of stuff- I hope that with a little luck this might
someday turn up first on a Google search and save people the trouble that
you went to.
> So, how to we pursuade Lego Inc to put a copy of this into every
> Mindstorms set - and a copy of all the software packages onto the
> CD-ROM?
Dunno. TLG? Anybody listening? ;)
Luis
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"Summertime... and the living is easy...
fish are jumping and the cotton is high...
So hush, little baby, baby don't you cry."
-Ella
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