Hasta La Gadget!

First, we must congratulate the entire XBMC team on reaching the tenth anniversary of one of the project’s first betas hitting the internet, when Yet Another Media Play (YAMP) and Xbox Media Player joined forces to create something beautiful. It’s outlived the original console by far, powered other projects and spinoffs (Boxee, Plex, GeeXBox — just to name a few) and is still going strong. Just to show how much progress it’s making there’s a new monthly build that adds two features most will have to wait for XBMC 12 Frodo to try out. If you like to live on the edge, the September cycle includes mainline PVR support, which pulls in TV broadcasts thanks to PVR add-ons like MythTV or MediaPortal, as well as integrated support for the Raspberry Pi. Other tweaks include performance enhancements on Android, better picture zooming and rotation on mobiles and much, much more. Hit the source links for a full changelog and details on what dangers running a build hot off the presses may entail.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

XBMC celebrates 10 years, latest build works in mainline PVR and Raspberry Pi support originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So after your brain hurts a bit and you’re tired of learning computer science on the Raspberry Pi, you might want to relax with a bit of nostalgia and exercise your thumbs with some retro gaming. Want to revisit your childhood memories of Pong? Ping away. Maybe your kids have been hounding you for a video game console but you don’t have the $300 to spring for a PS3. The Pi can help you with this and help teach your kids something, to boot. After some slight software configurations and a hardware purchase or two, you can relive the days of the almighty Atari 2600. Catch us after the break and we’ll show you how to get your Pi to play all your totally legal cartridge backups.

Continue reading How to set up your Raspberry Pi to play Atari 2600 games

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

How to set up your Raspberry Pi to play Atari 2600 games originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Giving a Raspberry Pi extra voltage is a quick way to squeeze out additional processing power and void its warranty, but the folks behind the tinker-friendly board have devised a turbo mode that boosts performance by roughly 50 percent while keeping warranties intact. After studying the effects of temperature and voltage on the hardware’s lifespan, the team found that dynamic overclocking and overvolting doesn’t affect the Pi’s health appreciably. As a result, speeds can be pushed from 700MHz to 1GHz only when additional horsepower is needed, and things are reined back in when the CPU grazes 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 degrees Celsius). Benchmarks show the extra computing oomph makes the Pi 52 percent faster on integer, 64 percent speedier on floating point and 55 percent snappier on memory tasks. The new mode is available in the latest firmware update, which also includes temperature and frequency widgets, better analog audio, improved USB performance and support for WiFi dongles out of the box. For the technical nitty-gritty and more details on the upgrade, hit the source link below.

Filed under: Misc

Raspberry Pi’s new turbo mode boosts performance by roughly 50 percent, doesn’t void warranties originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 05:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel has finalized the specs of its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) board, and announced it’ll go on sale in October for less than $400 with a case and power supply. Carrying a 4 x 4-inch form factor between a Raspberry Pi and mini-ITX board, it’ll be equipped with a Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor, HD 4000 graphics, two SoDIMM sockets, an mSATA slot for an SSD drive, three USB ports, one HDMI port and a mini-PCI slot for wireless connectivity. Two different models will be offered by the chip giant, identical except that one will be Thunderbolt equipped and the other will sport an Ethernet port for connectivity. Originally intended for the kiosk and signage markets, enthusiast interest compelled Intel to put the board on general sale, along with a case (pictured above) and power supply option. That’ll pit it against offerings from VIA and others, while offering considerably more oomph in a similar form factor — though a mini-server slaying Core i5 option originally proposed by Intel was dropped.

[Image credit: PC World]

Filed under: Desktops, Misc

Intel’s Core i3 NUC mini-boards set to hit market in October, power up hobbyists and OEMs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It all looks so simple, doesn’t it? A little board, a cute name — why, you’ll be up and robot-ing in no time, right? Well, just ask one of our techiest editors, who tried to learn a similar product, the Arduino — and failed — boards like the Pi are not cake. So, to push you in the right direction, Cambridge University is offering a free guide to creating a simple OS for the device called “Baking Pi.” It’s part of a course for new students of the institution’s computer lab (who each get a Pi as part of their tuition), but the guide and a tutorial series are free to the public, as well. Programming experience is not required “if you are smart and persistent,” but it will certainly be easier if you have some, according to the Pi website. The campus, which is the seat of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, certainly has a vested interest in getting new coders to the board — not that they need to create any more demand. Check the source and coverage below for the guide and tutorials.

[Image credit: Mark Foss]

Filed under: Misc

Cambridge University helps new Raspberry Pi users break the crust with free guide, tutorials originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Sep 2012 02:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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