Brief Answers to the Big (Pyra) Questions

[Asaggynoodle]

I've not seen (pardon me if posted elsewhere) any information on cross compatibility for PND's? I'm aware that the Debian has divergences from Angstom (SZ), but would this be doable with some sort of compatibility wrapper perhaps in the works?
Obviously the Debian ecosystem for ARM v7 is pretty massive, and replacements for many of the big players (emulators, browsers, productivity) already exist in repositories universally.. Though there are some gems some on the Pandora Repo that I think might have some value to others. Is this something that has been discussed for future implementation down the line at all?

 

[levi]

There have been rough plans to PND compatibility discussed, but there are problems still that need to be worked out that I can't quite recall at the moment.

 

[matzesu]

Ok according to the answer from the Evildragon himself, the DPAD is Plastic,,
I think I will find some questions when I got my Pyra..


Send from something, i guess ^^

 

[levi]

Yes, we've already seen it as it came out of the injection moulding machine. I think they come on the same spine as the nubs.

 

[matzesu]

Thanks for the Answer, but i allready got the Answer from ED on Twitter, although i dont know how the solution for the noise is..

I cant remember pictures of mouldet Parts, only on the Prototyphe assemble Videos..

On the Pyra as Desktop PC, : do whe allready have something that makes Reading and Writing on 3,5 * Disks possible? And dit HDMI Out allready work?

And would it makes sense to buy a Blueray Drive in the next year? Or just a DVD Drive whit Burner?

 

[pyrat]

I think I still have somewhere a floppy unit for extradensity 3,5 disks, with an IDE interface. I think that read normal 3.5 disks too, I don't remember. Then I think I have an USB2 to IDE adapter (IDE or SATA to USB2).
Normal 3.5 floppy drives had some other interface, not IDE, and wouldn't work. But It's so old hardware that one might suspect it's already broken. Last time I used that was maybe last century. It worked with linux on some x86 but maybe current drivers would be confused, who knows...

 

[matzesu]

I have an USB 3,5 * Disk Drive, so its just a USB Storage Device, but on a Windows 10 System, the Discuette is not readable..
Its not meant for daylie use, just for a bit fun..
1,4 mb is enough for everyone.. ^^

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

640K ought to be enough for anybody. 1.4M ought to be far too much!

 

[pyrat]

Ah. And have you tried your USB drive in some modern linux ? I don't think it should be very different from a Pyra. If it uses the USB mass storage class of the USB protocols, it should work. But I don't have experience with such a USB floppy drive.
Another problem could be that the floppy disk died. I'm not sure they last long. If the disk is damaged, then there is not much one can do.

 

[matzesu]

No i ditnt try thé drive on a Linux système (o ma téléphoné c’est français ^^)
I have Ubuntu on my Thinkpad but I thought when shipping is around the corner I don’t want to try to find a space for it on my desktop ^^
It’s not that important as I put the Data from most of the Disc all ready on my USB Stick


Send from something, i guess ^^

 

[levi]

I have a USB 3.5" floppy drive that works under modern linux, tested on linux 4.something on x86 and x64. That's only a high density drive for 1.44MB diskettes, I've not come across anything called extra density before now. Single and double density on 5.25" drives, and standard and high density on 3.5" disks.

 

[pyrat]

It wasn't called "extra density". I don't remember the name. It was some 3.5" format for higher capacity disk (like 100 Mb or something). But I think it also read 1.44 MB 3.5" normal disks.
I can dig it up if you're courious.

 

[levi]

Maybe superdisk, maybe MO drive? There were curious things like that just at the end of the floppy disc age that got supplanted as soon as CD-Rs came out.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

It wasn't called "extra density". I don't remember the name. It was some 3.5" format for higher capacity disk (like 100 Mb or something). But I think it also read 1.44 MB 3.5" normal disks.
I can dig it up if you're courious.

LS-120. I have one but it doesn't work anymore. I've actually had three of them over the years, they don't seem to last very long. The drives, not the disks.

 

[pyrat]

Yes, LS-120 rings up memories, it must be that.

 

[PowerGod]

Those things came out almost when the ZIP drives did, but the second ones had supports that contained 10 times more and had a way better error protection, so there was no challenge at all.
When optical supports became widespread, ZIP and JAZ drives just became forgotten... I was sure it was the future... I cried... I never liked optical supports...
Luckily at some point NANDs became the norm...

 

[levi]

Yeah, LS-120 is a superdisk disc standard. Plagued slightly by the association with Iomega zip drive and apparently about as reliable as those things were.

 

[pyrat]

I think LS-120 was chaper than Iomega ? I don't know. At the time I was intern somewhere where they had that, and needed to do something there paid and something home for college with the same code, and was convenient for me.

 

[matzesu]

How to set the language to German if I made a mistake on the first boot wizard?
It’s in English now, is this somewhere in the configuration menu??
How to use symmatic? Do I have just to search per example “Firefox”, and then just klick on it to install?? And how do I know which is the right file?


Send from something, i guess ^^

 

[pyrat]

How to set the language to German if I made a mistake on the first boot wizard?
It’s in English now, is this somewhere in the configuration menu??
How to use symmatic? Do I have just to search per example “Firefox”, and then just klick on it to install?? And how do I know which is the right file?


Send from something, i guess ^^

Not sure about any specific Pyra stuff. General Debian I think would be:

sudo update-locale LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=de:fr:en

or whatever you prefer (I don't know what languages you speak, LANGUAGE is a colon separated list of the language you understand in your prefered order. If one program doesn't find a message translated in the first language it wil look for the next and so on). I guess with German is not so important because most stuff will already be translated. It is not necessary to list English at the end, but most often everything has an English translation, so any languages after it will get very little use. (German and French are both quite well covered).

If that's not already done in Pyra, you could also try

sudo apt install task-german

(repeat for any languages you like better than English)
And you might theoretically maybe need

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

and select german and any other language you like.

Synaptic should be in mate menu, menu System, submenu administration.
But I never use it, so I can't give you detailed instructions. I think it's quite self evident, but I may be terribly biased.

[I only write sudo to indicate you must do it as root. I don't know whether sudo is setup by default on Pyra. If not, try su - first, and then the commands without the sudo word]