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How-To: Installing Linux on the Rasberry Pi with the Adafruit SD Card

Using the Adafruit SD card to load a Linux distribution onto the Raspberry Pi couldn’t be easier. It’s nothing like the mid-90′s Linux experience of painstakingly writing 20+ floppy disks. Which leads to a all night long installation process. Following these instructions and you will be looking at a raspberry pi command line in less than 20 minutes.

- Download debian squeeze ( torrent or zip ) (443MB)

Note: there are other linux distributions for raspberry pi, but debian squeeze is the recommended version at the moment.

The following example uses the ‘dd’ UNIX utility on a OS/X system. The process of loading the SD Card on Linux is almost identical except for device names. Windows users should use win32 disk imager. Different techniques for loading SD Cards is available here.

- Extract the image:
$ unzip ~/Downloads/debian6-19-04-2012.zip

- Verify the image is not corrupt:
$ shasum debian6-19-04-2012/debian6-19-04-2012.img
$ cat debian6-19-04-2012/debian6-19-04-2012.img.sha1

- Plug-in and find the Find the MicroSD card device name:
* Note: if nothing shows up it probably means your card reader is too old and not SDHC compatible

- Find the SD Card
$ df -H | grep Vol
/dev/disk1s1 3.9G 639k 3.9G 1% /Volumes/NO NAME

- Unmount device (you must unmount to write!)
$ diskutil unmount “NO NAME”

- write to raw device disk1s1 –> rdisk1s1
$ sudo dd bs=1m if=debian6-19-04-2012/debian6-19-04-2012.img of=/dev/rdisk1
(takes about 6 minutes with no output until complete)

- After the dd command finishes, sync & eject the card:
$ sync
$ diskutil eject /dev/rdisk1

- Insert card, plug-in HDMI cable to a monitor, usb keyboard and power to see the raspi boot

- login:
* Username: pi
* Password: raspberry

- add a mouse and try running X if you want a graphical interface

$ startx

Note from Ladyada..: On Fridays we’re going to do a series of Raspberry Pi posts as we work on more how-tos, designs & products, we’re calling today PiDay around the shop here

Filed under: Raspberry Pi — Tags: boot, dd, linux, osx, raspberry pi, raspi, sd card, sdhc — by Mikey Sklar, posted June 22, 2012 at 1:51 pm

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Learn about Electronics by Playing Games : Rocky’s Boots

This is the first of a series of posts looking at software that teaches kids about electronics. We will start by booting up the earliest electronics game that I know of called “Rocky’s Boots”. This was released by the Learning Company in 1982 and later followed up with “Robot Odyssey” in 1984. The same game engine was used by a number of other educational games at that time.

Rocky’s Boots teaches the user how to connect logic gates, flip flops, clocks and sensors to accomplish simple tasks. While I appreciate the game the logic gate tutorial section was more enjoyable for me to go through. Within minutes of following the logic gate tutorial you will see fascinating things. My favorite was connecting a not gate to itself and watching it become a oscillator.

There are two ways that I’ve played Rocky’s Boots.

1. The Easy Way – Web based using virtualapple. This is a little slow and takes away from the gaming experience.

2. The Cool Way - Local emulation on OS/X using Virtual ][. This was way more fun booting up a Apple //E disk and having a full screen retro gaming experience. I'm sure if you fired this emulator up in a public space any passer by would have to stop and comment.

Here is what I had to do to get the Apple II version of Rocky's Boots up and running on OS/X.

- download Virtual ][
- start virtualII
- download apple //e rom
* ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/emulators/rom_images/
* apple iie rom.zip
- Make sure rom file is unzipped and ends in .rom or .ROM
- Make sure rom file is in same folder as virtual][
- Start Virtual ][
- Press the Disks button and launch game.dsk
- Turn the speed dial to 3
- Use the caps lock key

What did I like about Rocky's Boots?

- The tutorials are focused. One room at a time
- Easy to learn key movements (i, j, k, m space bar)
- Excellent tutorials - logic gates, flip flops and clocks

What I do not like about Rocky's Boots.

- Devices like clackers and knives seemed too abstract when compared with modern electronics
- In game circuits seemed overly busy and complicated losing my attention

Filed under: discover electronics,educators,science,Uncategorized — Tags: apple, educational, electronics, emulation, game, kids, osx, rocky's boots — by Mikey Sklar, posted April 16, 2012 at 2:31 pm

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