Raspberry PI – First experiments

I received my Raspberry Pi on 22nd June and now, on 24th June I finally have time to play around with it.
My first experiment will be simply to get a Linux distro up and running and displaying on my downstairs television (which is a Toshiba Regza).

1. Unboxing
Just a few pics of unboxing the RPi. This shows the box it came in and the contents – the Pi itself, the Safety information/Regulations sheet and the Quick Start guide. I’m sort-of following the quick start guide (I will explain in a minute). I apologise for the length of this page… the Blogger HTML editor isn’t helping!


As you can see from where my little finger is pointing, SD card slot is visible.

2. Downloading
I downloaded the 2012-06-18-wheezy-beta distro from here. This isn’t the one they recommend (which is the April Debian 6 release) but I felt adventurous… well, as adventurous as a geek gets! I also downloaded the Win32 Disk Imager from here.

3. SD Card time
I have this SD card from MobyMemory:

It’s a bit old and battered, but good enough for now.
This is what it looks like when inserted into the Pi. I’m not all that keen on the way it sticks out, but heigh-ho.

I ran the tool and chose my Wheezy image, then wrote it to the SD card. This took about 4-5 minutes.

4. Peripherals
There’s a list of recommended equipment on the quick start guide.
This is what I’m hooking up:
A keyboard

A USB mouse.
My Toshiba Regza TV via HDMI cable.
Eventually, I’ll add a network cable, or a wifi dongle, which I need to research.
I was very disappointed that it didn’t come with a mains cable. Not everyone will have a mains-to-micro-USB charger… I have a Samsung phone, though, so I do have one of these fortunately. If you ask me, there’s no excuse for not offering one of these at point-of-purchase.
Soapbox mode off!
So… let’s see what we get when we just put the SD card in and hook everything up…
See next post!

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