Programming Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 03, 2023

• Sidecar: How to get a Psion online in 2023 • The Register

  Code whizz and tinkerer Kian Ryan's ingenious "Sidecar" is a self-contained, battery-powered Wi-Fi-to-RS232 bridge that enables his elderly Psion 5MX PDA to access a little bit of the modern internet.

  The Sidecar is an inspired homemade device which combines an assortment of bits of hardware and software, a 3D-printed case, plus considerable ingenuity, to create a pocket-sized gadget that turns a vintage mobile computer into a mobile Linux terminal – and which can also permit elderly gadgets access the internet.

  You can trace the development of the Sidecar over six months on Ryan's blog. Back in June, he described a fairly complicated setup. This used a MAX3232-based [PDF] RS232-to-TTL level converter, plus a gender-converter and a null-modem adapter to hook a Psion serial cable to a Raspberry Pi Zero. (He didn't mention it, but we think it must a Pi Zero W to provide an upstream network connection.)

• Bash Set Command

  Bash has many environment variables for various purposes. The set command of Bash is used to modify or display the different attributes and parameters of the shell environment. This command has many options to perform the different types of tasks. The uses of set command for various purposes are described in this tutorial.

• Inet Pton() Function in C Language

  The socket functions use structures in their input arguments that contain client and server specific data. The most important information in these structures is undoubtedly the IP addresses.

  There are several types of structures which are used by socket functions to store these addresses. For example: sockaddr, addrinfo or in_addr, etc.

  Regardless of the type of structure in which they are stored, IP addresses are not encoded, which means that each of the numbers in their fields is represented by its binary equivalent. This means that in certain cases, it is necessary to convert the IP addresses to strings or strings to IP addresses in order to work with them.

• Limine Installer check duplicate UUID, PARTUUID and label

  I have now added a check in Limine Installer for non-unique UUID, PARTUUID (GUID), or filesystem label. If two partitions have one of those the same, and it is specified in the 'limine.cfg' file, at bootup Limine and/or EasyOS will get very confused.

  Now, these conflicts are detected. In the case of the conflict being a partition on an internal drive and on a USB-stick, the user is advised to avoid the conflict by unplugging the USB-stick before the next bootup.

• [GNOME] Crosswords: Puzzle update - Jonathan Blandford

  Happy New Year, Crossword-lovers!

  This is a minor update in preparation for a bigger release in the next few weeks. We’ve done a lot of exciting work on Crosswords over the past few months that’s almost ready for release. However, there are a few things available already that I wanted to highlight early.