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Home / Other I-Appliances / MSN Companion What do you use your ia-1 for?

What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) wildwildwes Profile I don't use mine for much of anything. Occasionally I check my email or open a web page, but with 2 desktop computers in the same room, it's not really that helpful. From previous discussion, it sounds like a lot of you are using it as a digital picture frame. What about the rest of you? If you don't use it for what you want to do, what would you use it for if you could? 02-28-2002 13:13:49

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) davideweaver Profile I use mine as a front-end to an MP3 server. The interface is written for a browser and shows album covers, playlists, currently playing song, etc. I would really like to be able to control it with a remote-control instead of the keyboard... if only I had the time. 02-28-2002 16:25:39

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) Karouser Profile I use mine as aportable fro simple txt docs and as a calculator for DND this allows me to carry everything in a large toolbox I would like to add addice roller for DND to it but havent got python on it yet by the way thanks wwwes for the midori work maybe get the power switch to turn off the back light on the screen? "there can be only 1" as heard at closed boardmeeting by Gill Bates 02-28-2002 16:48:47

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) RatBastard Profile David, that sounds like what I'm using it for... what's your interface? I'm using edna.sourceforge.net. 02-28-2002 18:53:50

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) GeoDude Profile I use it primarily as a digital picture frame, using xv and NSF mounted images, and an MP3 player connected to my living room stereo, using cmp3, a console-based frontend for mpg123 - relatively crude, but allows for searching in a playlist, useful in a 'jukebox' type application. For a $115 total investment (and a fair amount of play-time), a pretty good deal. It's been working just great with no problems at all for 3 or 4 weeks now. Never been turned off/rebooted. I still maintain my previous position that using it as a firewall or in the car is a little nuts - apparently a lot of you disagree tho :) . 02-28-2002 19:19:18

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) DGMage Profile | Email I use mine as a reason to cry and beat my head against the wall trying to make it do things it shouldn't. :) Kyle 02-28-2002 19:39:06

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) radarman Profile Although I really bought my IA-1 to play with, I figured I could use it as a "lite" computer for the living room or bedroom. My gaming computer is a fire-breathing Pentium4 that sounds like a jet taxiing. My server computer is a FreeBSD file server that, while quiet, lacks certain features that would make it useful as a workstation. Specifically, a video card, keyboard or mouse... The IA-1 is small, relatively quiet (I had to add a cooling fan), and unobtrusive. With a K6-III+ CPU running at 450MHz and 100MHz FSB, it is still fairly quick. So, the IA-1 will end up as my mini-desktop system. 02-28-2002 19:59:44

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) IMadman Profile Picture Frame MP3 player feeding to Stereo And I'd also like to use it as a calendar - It would be cool to have the normal flow of pictures interrupted with a reminder that John's B-Day is coming up, or the Parents 40th anniversary is next week (yikes I forgot again!), and things like that. I told myself that it would be worth it just as a picture frame, and I think it is... But every extra thing I add is gooooood..... If I picked up another one, I'd use it for browsing from the bedroom, or the Bathroom (there are never enough magazines...) Anyone got any ideas on what could be used for the Calendar/date reminder? Thanx! Eric 02-28-2002 20:12:29

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) DGMage Profile | Email I'm working on something like the calendar/date thing for my audrey's right now... I'd like to have somehting that flips between calendar, weather, news stories, pictures, and other stuff.... Still debating how to do it exactly, I was just gonna put it on an internal web server and make it an autorefreshing webpage... 02-28-2002 20:25:09

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) DGMage Profile | Email I just realized I didn't give the *ACTUAL* reasons I use my IA-1 in my last post. :) Right now, it's the "couch computer". We use it to look up what's on TV, hit a quick URL if we remember to look at something while in the other room, things like that. It's a picture frame too, I serve images off a CF card because this is also our NAT and firewall box now. :) It's not horridly secure, but it blocks the ports I need it to, and shares well to the rest of the network. I'd like to have a disk based system to do that, but I really don't have room to leave an extra 486 sittin' around the apartment. Kyle 02-28-2002 20:55:34

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) ameyerstein Profile Though I hacked mine and put them through the paces, they are now sitting in the box awaiting the completion (or start, for that matter) of my massive audio/video/data wiring project in the house. I hope to use them as (1) terminals to my desktop for all kinds of applications, and (2) units to access a full home automation interface (via Homeseer; the main controllers for this will be Audreys b/c of the touchscreen). I'm designing my interface in a graphics application first, and hope to code it accordingly second (hopefully this approach will be successful). Ultimately, the goal is to be able to control lights, audio/video equipment and programming in all rooms, climate control, security, etc. I would like to be able to watch streaming video on the things, too. 02-28-2002 23:21:16

What I'd LIKE to use my ia-1/eMacs for (modified 0 times) MercenaryForHire Profile DGMage - how true. :) I'm trying to hack these damned eMacs (eMachines, not evil Apple clones) and I'm not getting too far. Mind you, I've had them for less than 24 hours now. :P Hopefully my IA-1 can become a decent PC - a K6-2+ and a Microdrive oughta do it (anyone got some price tips on those two parts?). As for the eMacs - I got them solely to see what I can do with them, for the pure joy of hacking. And if I happen to get them to be useful ... :D I think 16MB is good enough for a simple mostly-text web page (on how to crack the little buggers, just for irony's sake.) And if all else fails, put Linux on them and add two more members to my number-cruching team. Merc Currently hacking: - Compaq IA-1 - eMachines EZNET200 - Gameboy Advance - Gamecube - Divx 03-01-2002 09:25:55

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) radarman Profile Watch out with the microdrives. I have a 340MB microdrive that I run Windows98 from. It works, but every great once in a while, I get a BIOS warning that drive is about to die (hard disk reports imminent failure). The trick is, the disk isn't really going bad. I put it in my CF-IDE slot and check it out under Win2k - and it reports that all is peachy. The SMART function on my BIOS reports no problems at all - even when it is warm from heavy access. I personally think it just doesn't like the 3.3V CF slot. The other thing is that it has a large latency. Sometimes the music will skip in WinAMP when Windows tries to swap to disk. Of course, I do have the Iomega drive, but the label reports that it was manufactured by IBM for Iomega - so they are very likely identical electrically. 03-05-2002 11:20:25

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) thinker Profile I use mine as a MP3 player, webbrowser, and AIM/ICQ client with NFS mounted partitions. The NFS server is a Slackware Linux 7.2 box. I specifically used 7.2 because it uses the same glibc as Jailbait, making it easy to compile applications on the slackware box, and run them over the NFS link. I have an osciliscope and hope to map out the serial header one of these days, and hook it up to a line driver and make a useful serial port. Once I have a useful serial port, I can use lirc and a standard remote control. 03-05-2002 13:31:32

RE:What do you use your ia-1 for? (modified 0 times) majormojo Profile I use mine for playing MP3s (w/ a PCWorks speaker system) and as a digital picture frame. It sits on a shelving unit in the living room. Doesn't take up much room and it's quiet. I have Midori Linux on it (wildwildwes's first Midori image). Netscape and XMMS are all it needs. For serving MP3s, I use mod_mp3 for Apache on a FreeBSD 4.5 server. The FBSD server has a CIFS mount of my music dir on my W2K desktop system. mod_mp3 creates lists of files, playlists, etc. and streams them to the client. The digital photo app is likewise served from the FBSD box. It's just a PHP script that serves up pages with images and meta refresh tags. It works well for what it does, with a few minor annoyances. 1) I can't get the screen to turn off in any way and 2) using the keyboard is a pain. I've tried getting a programmable IR remote to work, but no go. The IA-1 is about to be replaced with an Audrey when I get finished setting it set up with the apps I want(almost done). The Audrey looks cooler <g>, and has a touch screen so no fiddling with balancing a keyboard on my knee to use it. After that, I'm not sure. I'm thinking maybe put it in the kitchen (accessing a web-based recipe db or shopping list app?) or bedroom just to have some web access, or perhaps use it for music again. 03-05-2002 22:30:15

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