Tutorials

Recover Unallocated Space on SD card

by  •  • 22 Comments

I used RiscOS for a couple of days and then decided it wasn’t nearly as useful as Linux. So, I decided to write over the SD card containing RiscOS.

I tried using WinImage but for some reason the card refused to write. I had a lovely cyclic redundancy check error and the SD card was reporting the wrong amount of space free.

I tried using the Disk Management tool in Windows but it wouldn’t let me expand the primary partition to the full space.

I found this tutorial about using DiskPart to reset the card:

Recover Missing Unallocated Space On USB Drive Using Windows DiskPart.

In short:

  1. Press Windows-R and type DiskPart in the ‘Open’ box.
  2. This will bring up a DOS box with DiskPart running in it.
  3. Type ‘list disk’ and look for the disk that resembles your SD card. (For this tutorial, we’ll assume it’s Disk 1)
  4. Type ‘select disk 1’
  5. BE REALLY SURE YOU WANT TO WIPE THE CARD.
  6. Type ‘clean’. This resets the disk.
  7. Type ‘create partition primary’
  8. Type ‘exit’ to quit.

You can now go into Windows Explorer and Format the SD card before writing your image to it.

Accessories, Making, Shopping

PiFace – new product from Farnell/Element 14

by  •  • 0 Comments

element14 announces exclusive deal with new Raspberry Pi accessory - PiFace Digital | Premier Farnell

Proving that Farnell/Element 14 are still championing the Raspberry Pi cause, they’ve just announced that, in addition to their Gertboard Pre-Assembled product, they will soon be supplying the Pi-Face.

Pi-Face Digital plugs directly onto the top of your Raspberry Pi, and allows you to sense and control the real world. Detect switch states, for example from a door sensor, a pressure pad or any number of other switch types. Then write your own software for Raspberry Pi that determines how to respond to that switch state. You can drive outputs to power motors, actuators, LEDs or anything you can imagine.

Press release here: element14 announces exclusive deal with new Raspberry Pi accessory – PiFace Digital | Premier Farnell.

Register your interest here

Uncategorized

PiBang Linux OS

by  •  • 0 Comments

PiBang Linux

UPDATE: The creators of PiBang Linux have updated their download. However, they did not notify me in order to change my download. I don’t have time to keep on checking, so please don’t look here for more updates.

Saw a reference to this via ScoopIt and tracked it down myself.

This is a Linux distro inspired by Crunchbang Linux and based on Raspbian. There are a list of differences here. Key features seem to be removal of a lot of extraneous software (like Scratch) and use of the Openbox desktop environment, rather than LXDE. Apparently, Openbox is faster.

Release candidate 4 is now available to download.

PiBang Linux homepage is here.