One Laptop per Child

Looking forward to helping out with the One Laptop per Child project. I went over to Micro Center to pick up supplies yesterday, and they had USB hubs for $20, USB network adaptors for $30, and a combination three-port powered hub and network adaptor for $23. It’s a D-link DSB-H3ETX, and works fine in both the Fedora installer and OLPC image via the ‘pegasus’ driver.

I’m hoping to get Dasher up and running as an input method, and to look at alternate calibration techniques for the tablet — “tap these four points at the corners of the screen in order” isn’t easy to explain to a six year-old, but “play this game that happens to involve tracking an object with the stylus while it moves” might be.

Comments

  1. Hi, Chris. I’m a senior writer for eWEEK and also an editor at DesktopLinux.com. We’ve been following the OLPC story for quite some time. How much do you know about Fedora’s involvement — how the licensing will be handled, and how the imaging is going to be done? OLPC now has an apparent solid order for 1 million laptops from Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina and Thailand. Possibly more countries. Can you email me, please, asap? I’m working on a deadline today, July 31. Thanks!

    Reply
  2. Its a bad idea to set a board like that on a conductive surface while its plugged in.

    Thanks. However, I was going on the part of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Notes_on_using_the_OLPC_developer_boards that says:

    So please treat the boards carefully; boards are not yet common. Developer boards will start coming through with standoffs. They arrive in a anti-static (slightly conductive) bag, which you can leave the board on.

    I wonder why the writer’s advocating leaving it on the bag, if it’s such a danger; perhaps it’s not conductive enough to cause a problem.

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  3. Its more likely that the parts on the bottom of the board are large enough to make it stand off the bag. Probably large capacitors.

    Standoffs with a grounded antistatic mat would be ideal, but its probably true, there probably isn’t enough voltage in the board to make much of a difference with the bag.

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