I want to have a bootloader like rEFInd, but my computer has BIOS and not UEFI because it is a bit old (+7 years). Is there a graphical bootloader like rEFInd for BIOS?
I have found that for my personal interests, I can install a Grub theme and go with it, because there are some really good themes that have nothing to envy from rEFInd themes.
Apart from BURG which hasn't been updated since 2014 or so, I haven't found any other options to have a graphical bootloader, so I will stick to Grub for now.
Related
I've wanted to install docker on my windows. I'm getting an error. Hardware assisted virtualization and data execution protection must be enabled in the BIOS. See . I can't go to my bios, after pressing f2 i have just a black screen, i tried to restart my computer manually and from windows in advanced settings from tutorials. In task manager my virtualization is off, I checked my Cpu supports virtualization on Intel Processor Identification Utility and it is. My Cpu is i7 4770k 3,5Ghz. I downloaded bios update for my motherboard but I know, I have to put it on my Pendrive and open it from my bios, couldn't install it straight from my pc with .CAP extension. My motherboard is Asus Z97M-PLUS. I tried to set my virtualization without bios with tutorials, PowerShell commands, changing settings, avast, hyperV. Can't describe exactly what I was doing and which commands I was putting in because I tried everything I found.
It is difficult to help you in this case as this is a very case-specific problem, especially hardware specific. The fact that you can't enter your bios will make enabling virtualization very difficult, as this switch must be switched there, and only there. I suppose you could try resetting your BIOS by shorting two pins / pressing a button on your motherboard, to see if that makes it want to open again.
Try this motherboard manual document at section 1.2.6 and 1.2.7 depending on your use case.
Furthermore, this website probably is not the best place to ask these sort of questions, and tech forums would probably be better able to help you further.
Is it possible to work at Raspberry Pi Pico using Windows 10? My question specified is: do I have to install any Linux distro, for example Raspbian, to be able to work at it? Do I also need to use SD card to work with it?
Just want to receive feedback, cause I'm confused and also kinda new to embedded systems
I may share my experience so far, I'm not an expert and this list does not claim to be complete at all.
The pi pico can be programmed by using
Picomite Basic (found here: https://geoffg.net/picomite.html) which doesnt need anything installed on the PC except a terminal program (I am using Tera Term)
MicroPython (never used it myself, afaik Thonny - found here: https://thonny.org/ is the preferred IDE )
C/C++/ASM This is what I am using, the SDK is available for Windows, Linux and Raspbian (MacOS maybe too?), an excellent guide on how to install it and how to use it is found here: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/getting-started-with-pico.pdf
Arduino The Pico can even be used as an arduino device too, a good point to start is here: https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico
Keep in mind, that the interpreted languages (basic and python) are easier to handle (no big SDK or framework need to be installed on the PC, copying code to the pico is a relative easy step) but at a cost of speed. If you need a lot of cpu power, compiled languages are by far the better choice
To answer your questions, yes, no, and no. You should be able to get going on Windows 10 with just the raspberry pi pico and a micro USB to USB cable.
I got started with mine this weekend - seeing the on-board LED blink finally made me so happy.
The official getting started guide pointed me at this script for getting started on Windows.
It set up docs, examples, visual studio code, and more for me. Between its README and chapter 9 of the getting started guide ("Building on MS Windows"), I was able to get my little light blinking :)
Good luck to you on your embedded journey!
As an alternative, an in addition to #Tommylee2k's helpful insights, you can develop and run Python software for a Pico with absolutely no software needing to be installed on a Windows PC.
At its most basic level, you press the BOOTSEL switch and insert the Pico's USB cable into your PC, and the few MB of space on the Pico appear in your Windows File Explorer as a USB disk drive.
You then write your microPython software using any text editor you prefer. All these general purpose modules are available. And all these Pico-specific modules are available.
You then copy (drag and drop) your Python script to the Pico disk drive and save it as main.py.
The Pico will then run that script on every subsequent power-up. Of course you can re-attach the Pico to your PC and edit the file at a later date.
That is adequate and simple enough. If you want a REPL and friendly editor and console logging and other developer-friendly features, you can install Thonny for free and code more effectively but it is not actually absolutely necessary. It's a bit like driving a car without ABS, without an automatic gearbox and without aircon - it can get you from A to B without problems but there are easier and more comfortable methods.
I have two computers; one MacBook Pro and one desktop PC running Windows. For various reasons I prefer writing code on the MacBook, while I keep the desktop PC mostly for gaming and entertainment purposes.
Since I've gotten so used to programming on an OSX keyboard layout, I often find it cumbersome to start working on something while I'm on my Windows computer. And since I'm ridiculously lazy I also find it cumbersome to get my laptop out of my bag so I can switch to using that instead. This usually results in me not bothering to do much work while I'm on my desktop (which depressingly enough is most of my evenings).
I guess I'm looking for a way to quickly enable an OSX keyboard layout in Windows. I'd also like to run Ubuntu in a VM on Windows, and use the OSX keyboard there as well.
Possible?
You can use Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to create a custom keyboard layout on Windows that mirrors the Mac OS one.
Ubuntu has an infinitely flexible and impossibly complicated keyboard layout system called XKB, which has limited documentation. Ubuntu probably already has all the data for the Mac keyboard layout you want stored among the hundreds of files in /usr/share/X11/xkb/, but figuring out how to load it will drive you crazy. You might have luck asking about this on Ask Ubuntu or the Unix stack exchange.
You could have a look at Synergy, using your Mac keyboard on both the PC and Mac.
My ultimate goal is to do some programming for the Angstrom Linux (or Debian or other Linux distros), on QEMU emulating ARM processor board s.a. Versatile board. I am happy to experiement, but if someone has attempted something similar, and can give little guidance, it might hasten progress.
My understanding of the steps needed are:-
1. Build QEMU from source (although I am not sure if a prebuilt binary won't do). I found QEMuManager on Windows (XP being my Desktop OS on which I intend to run QEMU).
2. Install ARM tool chain (e.g. Yagarto / GNU-ARM for Cygwin?)
3. Download an Angstrom Linux tarball and build it
4. Create a QEMU image with Angstrom Linux.
However I am missing on the details, as I believe there are choices to be made at each of those steps.
IMHO you should use a linux distribution as host machine for your QEmu instead of trying to compile/install all the QEmu stuff in a cygwin based system, it will remove some futur headaches. You can use a VMWare player with an ubuntu image.
I used to play with this tutorial for Debian on QEMU.
The beagleboard, hawkboard, open-rd sites all tend to lead to their distros being built on qemu (arm), and from there there is no reason why you cannot just continue to keep running on the simulation instead of heading for hardware.
This is an example of how to do it with ubuntu.
https://wiki.edubuntu.org/ARM/RootfsFromScratch
Yes it is also possible to cross compile everything as well, I would start with wiki pages that hand hold you through all of the steps. Or as with the hawkboard or beagleboard get a pre-built binary (kernel and root file system) and just boot it and run on that environment and not mess with building everything.
Is there any way to programmatically disable Turbo Boost on a Core i7 mac running Mac OS X ? I need to be able to do this for benchmarking purposes during code optimisation etc. Failing that, any kind of utility which can disable/enable Turbo Boost, even if it requires a reboot, would be useful.
There is a related question (not Mac-specific) on SO: How to turn off Turbo Boost temporarily? but even for PCs it seems that there may be no way to do this programatically/on-the-fly ?
I wrote kernel extension that let's you disable TB, have fun:
https://github.com/nanoant/DisableTurboBoost.kext
If you want to disable TB on Linux here another recipe: http://luisjdominguezp.tumblr.com/post/19610447111/disabling-turbo-boost-in-linux
I've just coded an app that allows to load / unload the kernel extension mentioned before, helping to track the system behaviour displaying CPU Temp & current fan speed.
You can check it out here https://github.com/rugarciap/Turbo-Boost-Switcher
Here is an screenshot of how it looks like http://i.stack.imgur.com/tsKaG.png
You can't. Certain stuff needs to be configured from the BIOS, such as TurboBoost or Vt.
In particular, this is done with the IA32_FEATURE_CONTROL MSR. On a PC, at boot time the MSR is unlocked and the BIOS sets the correct bits to enable or disable features. Once configuration is complete, the BIOS locks the MSR for the changes to take effect and prevent future modification.
I don't know if it's possible to unlock the MSR again before the PC is brought into protected mode, and I don't know how this works on a MacBook where EFI is used instead of BIOS. You'll probably be able to pull it off with an EFI extension of sorts.
CPUID.com's Tmonitor utility can disable/enable Turbo Boost on-the-fly from within Windows, not at boot! There must be a way to do the same thing from within OSX.
Finally there seems to be a good solution for this problem which I have tested with Mac OS X Lion on a Core i7 MacBook Pro today and it appears to work well. Adam Strzelecki, a researcher in parallel computing at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland has written DisableTurboBoost.kext - this is a small kext which can be loaded and unloaded at will (via the command line) to disable/enable TurbBoost.