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Topic: DSL running a digital photo frame?, I'm building one, and wondering bout DSL

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joedornan

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2005

Posted: May 15 2005,03:59

Hi folks,

So here's the deal: I'm embarking on a project to turn an abandoned Thinkpad 560x into a digital photo frame.
1) http://www.awooga.nl/index.p....&page=1
2) http://81.5.185.34/tc-one-thousand/others.html#PictureFrame

No CD drive, and the hard drive is dead. So i got the idea of using a pcmcia-based drive as a boot drive. that'll make the frame quieter... which is good for a picture frame! :-)
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=73035&cid=6575885

Now I need to choose an OS. I guess I could do this:
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/forums/printthread.php?t=425
(booo hiss booo)

Or I could use a small version of linux on a cheap 128MB CF card in a cheap CF-PCMCIA adaptor! yay!

But what's that? I'm a Linux Newbie (aside from installing Red Hat 4 times and never using it)? Damn. Then I'll need some guidance getting things set up.

Then I saw that you can actually buy DSL on a bootable flash drive! Perfect! But I can't fit a USB dongle in my frame, and anyway I don't think the 560x BIOS can boot from USB. Damn.

So dear readers, I turn to the DSL community for some advice:

1) Is there a newbie-friendly way to install DSL onto a bootable CF card? How about to make it run totally or partially (ie swap file) from a RAM disk? Apparently there are limits to the number of writes a CF card can take before it conks out.

2) I intend to use the frame to slide-show my photo files from a drive shared on the local windows network. I see that DSL comes with a picture viewer Xzgv. Can Xzgv show a slide show with one new picture every day drawn from a network drive?

3) Will DSL be able to use the wireless PCMCIA card that I have to connect to a windows network upon first booting? Linksys WPC54G

If you like I'd be happy to share my experiences getting things up and running!

Cheers,
-Joe

cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: May 16 2005,17:10

1.) Yes. You can use a cheap (under $10) CF to IDE adapter and plug it into the Primary Master IDE cable on a desktop PC. Then boot from the DSL livecd and do a "frugal install" to the card. DSL Frugal is a read-only filesystem and will not make frequent writes to your CF drive so it is ideal for a flash drive. It uses a ramdisk for the storing of temporary files.

2) I am unsure about xzgv but I am sure that there is a program out there that can be installed and give what you are looking for.

3) DSL supports many wireless PCMCIA and CARDBUS lan cards. Check the compatibility list in the forums for details. However, it is likely that your old laptop will only support the original PCMCIA style cards and NOT the 32-bit CARDBUS cards. I believe that the Linksys card will not work with this laptop. You will probably need to by something like an Orinoco Silver or Orinoco Gold card. Make sure that your card is truely a "PCMCIA" card and not a "CARDBUS" card.

joedornan

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2005

Posted: May 17 2005,18:05

Quote (cbagger01 @ May 16 2005,13:10)

1) Wow. Thanks. I searched on 'frugal' in the forums and found everything I'll need to make this work.

2) Some searching around found ZGV and this:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/8658&ignore=1

But nothing that tries to stream photos over a network. Though this comes close: http://evl.sourceforge.net/peersnap.html

3) I think the 560 will be able to handle the WPC54G, and it looks like so will DSL (with ndiswrapper - whatever that is): http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....4;st=55

So it looks like I'm all set! Thanks for responding and sending me off in the right direction! Much appreciated.

Cheers,
-Joe

joedornan

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2005

Posted: May 17 2005,18:09

aha.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

now I get it.

macjones

Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: May 2005

Posted: June 01 2005,12:09

Just finished a photoframe on an old toshiba lappy key points are:

- i tried zgv for showinf images but the lappy didn't like it, so I now use 'fbi' - a frame buffer image shower.

- i use 'wget' to grab a psudo-random (weighted for the last month) images from my server every minute (special script on the server), they come into image.jpg, and fbi is set on random for 1 minute to grab the image from its directory.

the script that does the wget is followed by an & so it works in the background getting images and FBI works in the foreground showing them.

Cheers
Mac
New Zealand

8 replies since May 15 2005,03:59

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