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Documentation, Objects, and Other? — Parallax Forums

Documentation, Objects, and Other?

I am preparing to go without internet for a few months or more, do to a change in progress. As such I would ask if any level of documentation to download that I may not have and could be of aid. Also any Propeller Objects I should download for whatever projects may happen in the down time (trying to get any I may need, though I may miss something)? Anything else that could be of use?

Comments

  • I suppose you could look through the parallax GitHub account and start downloading any projects that look interesting
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-03-14 14:01
    That is quite a challenge.

    I think it is basically impossible unless you have a clear plan for what project(s) you may want to complete while disconnected. Then you can download any objects and tools you need. Plus documentation, data sheets etc.

    If you don't have a clear objective it is almost certain that whatever random thing you decide to do will come to a halt because some crucial piece of code or documentation is missing from you local machines.

    Unless, you can download all of OBEX, all of the Parallax github repos, all of this forum, and a good chunk of the internet! :)
  • Heater. wrote: »
    good junk of the internet! :)

    I can't decide if "junk" was a typo for "chunk" or not...
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-03-14 14:07
    Ha! Well spotted.

    I have caught myself making that mistake a lot recently. No idea why. My fingers just seem to type whatever they like now a days.

    But, yes, in this case it does not make much difference.
  • Heater. wrote: »
    Ha! Well spotted.

    I have caught myself making that mistake a lot recently. No idea why. My fingers just seem to type whatever they like now a days.

    But, yes, in this case it does not make much difference.



    I have a spell checker that learns by my example.

    Sometimes you just cant write this stuff, you need a little help.
  • Heater. wrote: »
    That is quite a challenge.

    I think it is basically impossible unless you have a clear plan for what project(s) you may want to complete while disconnected. Then you can download any objects and tools you need. Plus documentation, data sheets etc.

    If you don't have a clear objective it is almost certain that whatever random thing you decide to do will come to a halt because some crucial piece of code or documentation is missing from you local machines.

    Unless, you can download all of OBEX, all of the Parallax github repos, all of this forum, and a good chunk of the internet! :)

    Well I have the datasheets for everything I have, and am likely to get, that part was easy.

    As for the rest, there are limits to what I do, though it is still a lot. I did go through and download every single PDF and accompanying code where existant from the entire parallax library that relates to the Propeller or is for something that is not MCU specific.

    Now the chalenge of OBEX. Is there a way to download all of the items in the OBEX, and how much storage space would that take?

    Also looking at other sources of documentation to attempt to get as much useful information as possible. This is going to be like how we did things before the www was added to the internet (use the docs and samples you have), though without the aid of talking to others on NNTP or IRC.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Meh, in my day if what you wanted to know was not in that stack of electronics and computing magazines piled up in the corner. Or the few books and data books on the shelf then it was not going to happen. Or once a month I got to hook up with some ham radio types at the local club meeting.

    Today, there is so much interesting information coming in, and so many new shiny things everyday I'm paralysed for choice and cannot get anything finished!

    Perhaps a self enforced internet outage for a few weeks is a good idea....

  • Heater. wrote: »
    Meh, in my day if what you wanted to know was not in that stack of electronics and computing magazines piled up in the corner. Or the few books and data books on the shelf then it was not going to happen. Or once a month I got to hook up with some ham radio types at the local club meeting.

    Today, there is so much interesting information coming in, and so many new shiny things everyday I'm paralysed for choice and cannot get anything finished!

    Perhaps a self enforced internet outage for a few weeks is a good idea....
    Ah you go further back than I then. My electronics days only go back to the early 1980's and we already had the internet, just did not yet have http and all that goes with that. So IRC and NNTP were the secondary sources of information, as well as a bit of what happened to be on GOPHER and a few other internet archives.

  • Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    How big would that download be?
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-03-14 16:44
    Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    How big would that download be?

    I would guess OBEX isn't even a gig, but the load of a description page is time consuming tedious work.

    Not sure you can do anything but go with the format.
  • MikeDYur wrote: »
    Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    How big would that download be?

    I would guess OBEX isn't even a gig, but the load of description page is time consuming tedious work.

    Not sure you can do anything but go with the format.

    Ok thank you.

    Only having a few days anything to save time would be helpfull, and downloading the OBEX one item at a time is a slow process.

    I still need to clone the Parallax github as well.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Yep, built myself a calculator in 1971 http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/advance_wireless_world.html after reading an article in Wireless Wold magazine. Built a TTL digital clock with Nixie tubes soon after, using a circuit adapted from a few magazine articles on the new fangled digital logic! Then there were the Philips Electronic Engineer kits in 1967....

    No idea about the size of OBEX or how to fetch it all. Always wished it would all be in github so as to make that sort of thing easy.
  • Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    Sure. Write a Perl script to scrape it and all of its subdirectories.

    -Phil
  • Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    Sure. Write a Perl script to scrape it and all of its subdirectories.

    -Phil

    LOL, that would be a bit overkill, especially now that I am about 40% of the way through it manually. And I do not use perl.
  • davidsaundersdavidsaunders Posts: 1,559
    edited 2017-03-14 18:17
    Heater. wrote: »
    Yep, built myself a calculator in 1971 http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/advance_wireless_world.html after reading an article in Wireless Wold magazine. Built a TTL digital clock with Nixie tubes soon after, using a circuit adapted from a few magazine articles on the new fangled digital logic! Then there were the Philips Electronic Engineer kits in 1967....

    No idea about the size of OBEX or how to fetch it all. Always wished it would all be in github so as to make that sort of thing easy.

    WOW, I think that actually predates the internet, back to the time of ARPANet.

  • where you are going, that you will not have access to the internet?

    Isn't there always some internet-café, cell-phone or friend you can visit?

    confused,

    Mike
  • davidsaundersdavidsaunders Posts: 1,559
    edited 2017-03-14 19:34
    msrobots wrote: »
    where you are going, that you will not have access to the internet?

    Isn't there always some internet-café, cell-phone or friend you can visit?

    confused,

    Mike
    Claim site, out of range of anything (no cell, no radio, no signal of any kind), do to be surounded by mountains and down in a narrow valley. The internet is NOT everywhere.
  • MikeDYur wrote: »
    Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    How big would that download be?

    I would guess OBEX isn't even a gig, but the load of a description page is time consuming tedious work.

    Not sure you can do anything but go with the format.

    Well I just passed 1.2GB of OBEX downloads, about half way through, and I am skipping a few that are definitely never going to be used by me.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    davidsaunders,
    WOW, I think that actually predates the internet
    Sure it does. At least as far as I am concerned. I had no internet connection at home till 1995. Before that was some semblance of an email system from our VAX machines at work.

    Now I can go to the furthest depths of the Finnish forest, and get an internet connection via 3G. Or northern Sweden or Norway.

  • MikeDYur wrote: »
    Is there a way to download all of OBEX?
    How big would that download be?

    I would guess OBEX isn't even a gig, but the load of a description page is time consuming tedious work.

    Not sure you can do anything but go with the format.

    Well I just passed 1.2GB of OBEX downloads, about half way through, and I am skipping a few that are definitely never going to be used by me.
    I had measured the wrong directory size, oops. I had looked at the Raspberry Pi documents and samples directory that I am also getting today.

    I have finished getting aproximately 95% of what is in OBEX, with a size of 320.1MB. So it is quite a bit less than 1GB.

    Now to see about cloning the Parallax GitHub repo.

  • davidsaundersdavidsaunders Posts: 1,559
    edited 2017-03-15 01:55
    Well I believe I finally got every bit of documentation and code freely available to run on the Propeller (excepting a few things that I would never put to use). That was a lot of work, and the better part of a day when combined with doing a similar activity for the Raspberry Pi (that I still have a long way to go on).

    And tomorrow I must do it for the Game Boy Color :) .
  • Well I believe I finally got every bit of documentation and code freely available to run on the Propeller (excepting a few things that I would never put to use). That was a lot of work, and the better part of a day when combined with doing a similar activity for the Raspberry Pi (that I still have a long way to go on).

    And tomorrow I must do it for the Game Boy Color :) .



    If you make some breakthrough in Propeller designs, we may never know.

  • Have you thought about compile dependencies for the tools that are hosted in GitHub, or are you only worried about the Propeller source code?
  • MikeDYur wrote: »
    Well I believe I finally got every bit of documentation and code freely available to run on the Propeller (excepting a few things that I would never put to use). That was a lot of work, and the better part of a day when combined with doing a similar activity for the Raspberry Pi (that I still have a long way to go on).

    And tomorrow I must do it for the Game Boy Color :) .



    If you make some breakthrough in Propeller designs, we may never know.
    Ah I will be back someday.

  • DavidZemon wrote: »
    Have you thought about compile dependencies for the tools that are hosted in GitHub, or are you only worried about the Propeller source code?

    The only host system tools I will be using are OpenSpin and PropLoader, both on a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. I have been told that both are written in C++ with no dependencies beyond what the C++ language provides. Though I do need to get Heaters modified version of PropLoader to use the GPIO serial port on the RPi.
  • Thank you all for the pointers.

    Today is the day, later today I will be offline, continuing for a few months. I have a few hours left online, so any extra pointers to any docs/code that could be of use would be appreciated.
  • Download Python. Knowing it could be quite useful. Doesn't run on the Propeller but it should run on your laptop. Since you undoubtedly have a browser you probably also have JavaScript. That's another useful language to learn.
  • David Betz wrote: »
    Download Python. Knowing it could be quite useful. Doesn't run on the Propeller but it should run on your laptop. Since you undoubtedly have a browser you probably also have JavaScript. That's another useful language to learn.

    Comes with Raspbian Linux, the secondary Operating system I use on my desktop computers (Raspberry Pi's).

    While I do not particularly care for either of those two languages I do have a little experience with both, I prefer C, FreeBASIC, BBC BASIC v (aka ARM BASIC), ARM Assembly Language, PASM, Spin, and a few others.
  • I'm not that crazy about some of the Python syntax either but it is a very powerful language. I like JavaScript a lot better although it also has its warts as does any language.
  • One last thank you to all, I hope to see everyone here in a few months time when I can get back online.
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