Arduino Adventures

A couple few years ago, I came across a great little micro controller project called the Arduino.  Having been interested in micro controller projects for many years, the cost to getting started was prohibitive.  To get started, I purchased a couple of kits.  One was the Ardweeny from Solarbotics, and the other was the Boarduino from Adafruit.  Though small and tedious, I successfully assembled these kits and started LED experiments.

To better understand the Arduino, my next project was to wrestle with the Arduino on a breadboard.  The first few attempts failed and I even let the magic smoke out of the Atmel ATMEGA 328 chip.  Eventually I got it right.

With a better understanding of the Arduino circuit, I successfully completed an Arduino on Perfboard.  Unfortunately, the board used for this project does not fit into an Altoids tin.  There are some really nice breakout boards available, they also do not fit into an Altoids tin.

So my next Arduino project is to custom fit a perfboard Arduino into an Altoids tin.

ThinkPads On The Way!

On Friday, I ordered two ThinkPad T60's (model 1952) each with a docking station, for $271US from NewEgg.com.  The docking station alone goes for $200, I couldn't pass up this deal!  The memory from the dead Compaq Presario F500 should work in the ThinkPads, instant memory upgrade!  They are due to arrive sometime this week.

Portable Quandry cnt'd

Decision is made! Lenovo ThinkPad from IBM's official refurbishes site.

Portable Quandry

The Compaq Presario F500 finally died, internal power circuit between power jack and battery quit.  Since I once had two ThinkPads that lasted ten years, I am leaning that way again.  It looks like it will take about $400 to get back into a ThinkPad with some flavor of a DVD RW drive.  So far I have checked NewEgg and IBM's official refurb site.

Maybe a couple of  Netbooks would be better . . .