Pico Board and Scratch

Alright, here are going to be the steps we take to get this awesome tool to run with scratch under ubuntu. Keep in mind I could not have set any of this up without the help of Michael Badger, and Jeffrey Elkner for contacting him for me, thanks.

NOTE: this has been tested under Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid LTS 32 bit and works well from my experience with it. Also, this process only has to be done once for it to be loaded on each reboot as far as I know.

1. go here to get the USB drivers for ubuntu

2. download and extract them to your desktop

3. open up a terminal by going into Applications>Accessories>Terminal


4.in the terminal, type this: sudo modprobe ftdi_sio and hit enter.

5. go into scratch and in the sensing tab you should find a seperated section at the bottom, these are the blocks you use to take input from the pico \board, they can be subbed in for values for multiple uses, Have fun.

Serving Computers out for Education

Since my bud Dogi has been rather busy lately and unable to contact me, I've been helping Jeff Elkner setup machines to be shipped out to students who don't have computers at home. It's something Jeff started working on independently with no help from APS just a lot of machines without homes and people who have homes that need machines, different motherboards and power supplies can be seen being moved around the table as they are assembled into machines that are being shipped out, I'll post up pictures when I find time.

Update: Building an Apt Server

So, since I've been spending most of my days trying to burn up time since I have not been in contact with dogi until today, I've been helping Jose Aparicio work on getting the apt server for our class up and running, as of now we have worked on atleast two different machines and have been considering the second choice as our apt server. Time spent so far has been put to use trying to find a motherboard that works, and hard drives that will cooperate. I'll try to post pictures soon. :)

How to Upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid from a Past Version of Ubuntu.

1. click "Applications" Button in Upper Left-hand corner of screen.

2. click the "Accessories" button.

3. click "Terminal"

4. In the new window you should see something like: "your_username@your_computer_name:~$ ", in this window, type "sudo update-manager -d", click enter, enter your password, and then click enter again.

5. You should see a new window pop up called the "Update Manager", so just click "upgrade" and thats all there is to it.

That's it for this tutorial, written for Michael Yabes
if you need anymore help just send me an email and I will be glad to help and even update this post
for future reference :)

Fourth Quarter Project Proposal

Computer Hardware Configuration

April 5th, 2010

Goals

1. expand my knowledge on computer hardware and the various configurations associated with them.

2. get 4 dell poweredge 1750's up and running.

3. be able to swap motherboards efficiently in rack servers.

4. get all of the computers sitting around Jeff Elkners room fixed and updated.

5. Learn about SCSI and updating BIOS's

Resources

1. about 6 computers, 4 of them are the dell poweredges

2. the internet

3. personal experience

4. computer hardware toolkit

5. many spare parts lying around the classroom

Timeline

1. May 5th, 2010 - all Dell poweredge's fixed at the latest.

2. May 30th, 2010 - all 6 computers finished and ready to be utilized for educational purposes.

Links

SCSI

Dell poweredge Service Manual

Turtle Art - Sun

New Picture I made in Turtle Art, I named it Sun:



Download it here.

The Rack Server I Was Working On...

On Saturday, I completed swapping three 250 gb hard drives, 4 gb of RAM and the fans from the bad machine to the good one and screwed on the rails after I messed up and accidentally put them in the bad case. I then removed 2 of the 250 gb hard drives for use in other places, all I have left to do is install either Debian net install or Ubuntu Lucid Server.


current server being worked on:

500 watt PSU
1x 250gb Western Digital SATA HDD
2x AMD Opteron (not sure of the specs) Processer
8,096 MB of DDR RAM total (4,048MB per CPU)
4 x 30mm? fans

Updates: I'm Doing Hardware (SWEEET!)

This week I'm going to start being more active in posting my activities and projects on my blog, I've been quite busy lately but you wouldn't know it by looking here, that's all about to change. New subject, I'm hopping onto Hardware and continuing my Google App Engine in my morning classes, I'm Extremely excited about this as I have been wanting to do hardware for a while and it's what I do in my freetime.

Current machines being worked on:

-- I'll add some later on --

Updates! Updates! Updates!

So, new semester just started, I am learning Java for the competition coming up, I started working again teaching python at Taylor Elementary School. I don't know whats to come of the Python we were learning I think we just drop it, but then, i can do that in my freetime anyway :).
I'm also taking a class on google app engine aswell which is something new(kinda) so let me get to the main news, I probably wont be posting for a while, and rather than leave my blog neglected and sa, I decided to post a post telling why I won't be posting. so see you all in a few weeks.


Cheers,
Howie