After getting the Blackberry up and running and finding a way to sideload applications, I enjoyed a few "native" games and then thought about some emulators. I found the retroarch and PPSSPP should work. So first try was the Retro Arch.
There are a lot of systems that are supposed to work. My first attempt was with the SNES, but I am still not able to load any ROMs, because the emulator still sees only empty folders instead of a list of ROMs.
I did try the NES emulator though, and surprisingly it works. So I downloaded an archive with lots of ROMs sorted by genre and am going through it now, but it seems to be working fine and I have not found any problems with any games. So I will play with NES for a bit and then I will try some other emulators, or maybe I will try to get more involved with SNES and try to get it to work.
By the way, I tried Tetris and spent almost two hours with it... so... don't try running emulators unless you want to kill time.
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I received a very special delivery today. It is a Blackberry Classic with Blackberry OS 10.3. I have never had a Blackberry phone before, so this is my first one and it is fantastic.
It is in perfect condition, with no cracks or scratches on the screen.
So I was really looking forward to turning it on. However... as support has ended and the Blackberry servers are down, there is a bit of a problem getting through the initial setup.
So, the way to go through the setup is as follows.
When the phone is turned on, it must not have a SIM card in it, so in the setup, skip the question about the cellular connection. Then move on to the WiFi setup, which is necessary. I was able to successfully connect to my wifi, but then the setup got stuck on the wifi setup screen, as if it was not connected, but the green text next to my wifi said it was, and I got stuck. The next step is to scroll to the bottom of the list and select "Hotspot Login". This took me to a screen with some information and the Blackberry logo at the top. Now ...
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Finally, I set up my server to serve my photo archive in a "civilised" way.
I started building a photo archive as it was a general purpose buyin server. So I sort it by my own, just by samba shares, and sort all the photos into folders manually to keep it under control.
I was still wondering about a way to deploy any media server to access photos in a better way than just directory listing. I always wanted to get Photoprism working on my TrueNAS, but I was unable to deploy it properly as it always got stuck while deploying the app container. I tried it for at least the tenth time just in case it would work, and now it accidentally worked. So I deleted it and tried again, as the try was with default setups. So I set up the "originals" folder at the root of my photo library and made it read-only to make sure it would not corrupt my files. The thumbnails and other stuff is stored on the system disc as it is not needed. Photoprism is now indexing the folders and photos, but it looks like it is working and the photos are starting to ...
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I got a Lenovo Yoga 300 a few weeks ago. My friend sent it to me in exchange for a broken 3D printer I gave him.
Despite the fact that the post office completely destroyed its plastics during shipping, I decided to make it work. Initially there were some problems with the battery and the drive. The drive looked OK when I got it, but the battery was .... tricky. It was caused by a broken connector. So I disassembled the connector from the motherboard, and carefully pinned all the wires from the battery directly to it.
After some tinkering it looked like it was working. So I moved on to installing the system. I decided to install Xubuntu. After a few tries I managed to get it to boot from USB and installed the system. After rebooting and unplugging the USB it said "no bootable devices detected". So another installation with different BIOS settings, another reboot and the same result...
It took me about three hours, but I finally found a solution to get it working.
But I was disappointed again. I wanted to use the notebook to take notes with a pen. I thought the touch screen was good enough, as ...
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I received some phones to expand my collection. I have already resurrected the Samsung Galaxy J1 (Android 4.4.4) and the Huawei Y6 SCL-L01 (Android 5.0). The Nokia 6230 is still waiting for charger to arrive, and then it will get some attention.
I loaded the J1 with a few games, such as Flow, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, etc., tried them out, and charged it.
The Y6 is a little more interesting. I also installed a few apps, again using sideloading, as the lowest version of Android supported by Google Play is currently Android 8. I installed some more sophisticated games as it has a bit more power. Then I remembered my favourite game - Race of Champions, which I used to play many years ago. The game is no longer available on Play, and I don't sideload apps onto the phones I use for everyday use, so I put it on this phone and I really like it, even after all these years. I think I will spend many hours playing it on long winter evenings...
By the way - Finding the working copy of this game for sideloading is almost impossible, as you can download .apk files anywhere ...
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The replacement "W" key for my laptop has finally arrived and it is great.
I had very low expectations but it is indistinguishable from the original, I really like it and for about 6 Euros it is the best I could get.
The package included the keycap and spare "csiscors", which I did not need as this part was fine in the laptop. I just 'clicked' the new keyboard onto the keyboard and it works absolutely fine. If you need a spare keycap, feel free to contact me, I can give you the link for the seller on Aliexpress, I can really recommend him.
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My colleague gave me a small, almost unused LED projector. It can project from the HDMI port, USB or SD card.
I have just taken it home and have not tested it yet, but I am really looking forward to trying it out. I have never had one before, but it is really interesting for me. I am not expecting too much from it as it looks like it has been bought off the shelf, but I have just tried turning it on and it works.
I suspect the resolution will be low, but it would be good enough for some cartoons or some background entertainment at garden parties.
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I bought my first touchscreen laptop, the IdeaPad C340, many years ago. Then I found it useless and put it in a drawer.
In about a year ago, I found out that it is able to use an active pen, so I would use it to make notes. I ordered one, tried it out and it is just fantastic. I have been using it daily and I really used to do all my notes on notebook because I can then share them to any PC and Android phone.
Unfortunately one of the keycaps broke (the "W" one) and I really cannot have things messed up. So I was looking for a way to fix it, so I took the keycap off and found that one of the snaps was broken. I tried to glue it on or repair the snap, but it was impossible because it is really tiny and I cannot really understand how the rest of the keycaps are still holding their position.
The replacement keyboard cost more than the remaining value of the notebook, so that was out of the question. However, I have found a Chinese guy who should be able to make me ...
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Today I was thinking about React OS and how it is going. I remembered that about eight or ten years ago I tried this operating system in QUEMU and I really liked it and the idea behind it.
For those who do not know, React OS is a project started in 1996 that is trying to reimplement the entire Windows API from scratch to create an open source operating system that is able to run Windows applications and games natively.
The project is still "alive" but is still in alpha stage, and the public secret is that it will never get past that stage and would never get to beta stage at least.
The system is able to boot, is able to run the desktop and supports a lot of applications today. You can run almost anything, such as Blender, Age of Empires, Live for Speed... everything... but the system is unstable and not recommended for daily use, or for any use on real hardware, as it can corrupt the data on the HDD, so it is not recommended to run it even as a dual-boot.
And it is really sad, because I liked the project so much and hoped we would get a ...
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I have finished installing software and games to laprop from previous post, so I moved to another of the four pieces that have arrived.
This one is a Compaq Armada M700. It has a sticker with a Windows 98 licence, so I inserted my installer CD and set up the OS. Everything worked fine, the CD booted without a problem, but the cursor does not move (another faulty mouse). I tried both trackpoint and touchpad and nothing worked. I later discovered that the part that looks like a touchpad is just a piece of plastic that holds the buttons for the trackpoint.
The first thing I would do is try to get USB plug and play to detect and install USB disk drivers, so I would be able to try different drivers transferred via USB drive, as I have my PCMCIA card with CF reader packed somewhere in the basement after moving.
So I hope I would be able to make it work and not repeat the usuccessful attempt with the previous non-working touchpad. So..fingers crossed
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