I won the SAE's e-book download netbook giveaway contest, they sent me a
brand new HP Mini-110. It has everything, came loaded with windows 7
starter.
Seemed like a good candidate for a Linux trial.
I downloaded the latest Ubuntu 9.10 netboot remix, burned iso cds. Tried to
make USB live image with USB creator, in both windows and booting from the
live CD (standard edition) on my tower, but couldn't seem to get it to work.
Unetbootin from sourceforge was able to create a bootable thumb drive, then
I created a bootable 4GB SD. They both boot just fine, but have yet to
figure out how to get the WiFi connection up and running. Webcam works fine
in ubuntu.


Everything seems straight forward, tho. I have to say maybe a bit boring
with the NBRM gui.
I also stumbled on http://moblin.org/ this looks like a much better gui,
although it looks as though they are still developing. They have gotten
Intel on board, supporting their Atom processor, so I expect a bright
future. Also

have created a developer network similar to Apple's iPhone for application
development and distribution.
I'll try to make a bootable Moblin SD after work today.

As a side note, I just upgraded both my tower system and laptop from vista
to windows 7, only problem noticed so far is my epson cx3200 needs another
driver, will have to sort that out with epson tech support.
It appears as though all installed programs came through except for iTunes,
the upgrade advisor informed me prior to upgrade this would need to be
reinstalled. That has been the smoothest windows system upgrade I can
recall.
System resource usage is way down, my tower now only uses 30% of installed
memory at the end of system loading, instead of the 45% it needed in Vista.
Everything is faster, rather pleased with the result.
C. Smith

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Here are some ideas for your new toy.
See if it will go into command mode or DOS mode. Don't laugh. Dos has some
real time advantages. XP will go into DOS mode. If it goes into DOS mode it
may be possible to do all sorts of real time  hardware stuff like fuel
injection systems. Windows and Linux are multitasking which make them near
useless for real time hardware stuff. Too much background house keeping
going on.

If it will run DOS it will probably run Quick Basic Compiler that can access
the USB ports directly as serial ports in real time. I run QB in XP all the
time.  Quick Basic has real time commands for directly controlling hard ware
including serial ports. It is small enough that I can email it to you. It is
very easy to learn. Many of us older computer users already know how to
program in QB. I have tons of source code including a moving map program
that
takes in data from a GPS. UPS GPS receivers are available.   One can buy a
USB to parallel adapter kit that will out put 8 bits at a time with hand
shaking. Each bit could control an injector. The key is what is avaible in
USB as most note books or net books no longer have parallel printer ports.

The other possibility is boot up DOS directly from a 3.5 inch floppy disk.

I have a VIA EPIA PC mother board at the hanger that cost less than $90 with
the processor on board with floppy connector. It has a PCI connector so a 4
parallel port card can be bought at low cost and plugged in. The combination
is way more powerful than you need but the price is far far cheaper than
some embedded systems that are designed for hard ware control. A fuel
injection program can be written in minutes. The only thing missing is an A
to D.
Of course any old mother board will work too.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/empowered/pc3500_mainboard/index.jsp

I'll get it up and running tomorrow with DOS and QB.


Paul Lamar

You can still call up the command mode in windows 7. Even on the little
netbook. I have to say that windows 7 is the best yet. I have had 8 open
browser windows with multiple tabs in each, and memory use is like 30% (on
the tower) and for the first time, all of the computers on my home network
can share all their files and printers. It was just a matter of opening the
home group window and entering in a pass code in the other computers.
Typical memory usage on the net book is about 50% of the available 1Gb hard,
and there is a 2gb virtual available.


Back to linux, I got a moblin SD running on the netbook, still no wifi, but
I sent an e-mail to the team to see if they can help. I tried the sudo
apt-get command, then got prompted for a sudo password.
I do agree that the application installation process is very nice. Only
problem is the moblin live image, even on a 4Gb sd doesn't have much room
left, I ordered a 16Gb SD. It appears that the moblin and ubuntu use
different file structures on the SD.

I have the TAR file for the linux driver from the broadcomm website, just
don't know how to get it to install. I will go back and see if the sudo
command string will work in ubuntu, off the SD. One last thing is that my
only connection to the net is through a wired Ethernet connection, as I
designed my home network primarily around wireless, the only cable I can get
to easily has me sitting in my dogs stinky chair. Until I'm sure I can get
full use of the hardware, I'll continue to run off the live image SD.
Currently moblin has a much smaller application base, I haven't tried to get
and run apps from other sources. Next step is to see how far I can take the
ubuntu install with 4gb.
Thanks for the help and advise.
C. Smith

The sudo pass word is what ever you gave it when you logged in. It is the first password it gets when installing U-Bun-tu. The guy that installs it is the super user.

Tar is like zip. It has to be untarred :) It may be the source code so to use it you need the free C compiler. I try to avoid that can of worms and only run programs that install automatically and that have been pre compiled for the version of Linux I am running.

Make a folder  under 7 called QB1. Save this zip file to that folder.
unzip it and delete the .zip file. Call up the command line. "cd" to the qb1 folder with a successions of "cd". When you get there type qb on the commad line and the qb program integrated development system will run. You will come up in the editor and you can run the the program directly from the editor or compile it from the editor. The help is self contained. The editor is smart and will automatically correct a lot of your syntax errors. It is the easiest programming language ever written.

type in this program:

for x = 1 to 10
print "craig"
next
exit

A high speed data acq system is trivial to write.
We are talking 1000's, of samples per second here.

It could be as simple as this

Start:
data1= peek (xxxxx) 'where xxxxx is the address of the A to D hooked to
                     ' the parallel port.
print data1
goto start

http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/zines/qboa/4-beginner.txt


Paul Lamar