the Acer AspireOne

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by gmbfilter

Just purchased 1 off Acer Aspireone nice
BUT

Can't get starry night pro 6 to drive my heq5pro

I'm using the same serial to usb that worked on my big computer
on the Acer I cant find where to assign a coms port (ie there is no listing of coms ports in device manager

Any help will be appreciated
Thanks

You may need to load the drivers for the USB>Serial adapter.

To get my Belkin to work on my old laptop after I reformatted it I had to go to the Belkin website and download the drivers before I could use it since I didn't have the install CD's handy at the time.

[gmbfilter (Geoff)]

Acer aces

Thanks for reply Andrew.
I needed it

Apparently, you have to find a usb-rs232 adapter that has drivers that allows Starrynights to find it as a com (#?) port

I have apparently managed to do this!

Its a Targus.

The whole thing beyond my comfort zone
I'm going to have half a bottle of wild turkey and a good throw up
Stuff work

[h0ughy (David)]

did andrews advice help Geoff? have you got it working?

[gmbfilter (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

did andrews advice help Geoff? have you got it working?

Yes sure did. Absolutely fabulous

At the time I was probably a little fed up, in the end everything went very smoothly

It's really great, loaded everything up OK
It drives the mount, I can run live view through Canon EOS utilities
Now I'm a happy camper.

[h0ughy (David)]

the Acerone windows XP home version with 120Gig drive is now 598 dollars at officeworks - together with that price and the 99 dollar ACER cashback that is only available until next week (30 September 2008) makes this only 498 dollars. i am impressed with this little machine!!!

[rider]

yeh, thats great news, ...unless you bought one a month ago.

#$@$#%^*!

[rasimus]

Hi,

I have been looking at threads for a while now and have not chipped in as yet - so this is my first post.

I have just bought an inspiron 910 from Dell online. After a week with it I am pretty happy. I have removed a lot of bloatware and now it runs pretty well with xp. Open office is reasonably fast. I use mysql/navicat for databases and that requires little processor speed. I have just installed sky charts 3 and it runs fine. I also have tweaked firefox (autohide and increased the text size on the address bar) for a smaller screen.

The keyboard is small but you soon get used to it - I saw an aspire today and the keyboard is a lot more familiar (90% against 80% size). I have bought Dell computers before and were happy with their service and quality. The inspiron is certainly well made.

I have looked at a few forums and many are bemoaning the fact there is not a linux incarnation in Australia. The xp version runs fine once you get rid of google toolbar, McAfee etc. Everything including power management works fine - can be a problem with linux.

Just thought I would feed back my experience - certainly look at as many versions as you can. Happy netbooking!

rasimus

[cfranks (Charles)]

I've just finished upgrading my Aspire one to 1.5Gb RAM. There must be a hardware limit on this as I tried to go to 2.5Gb annd it wouldn't even power on. I had to remove 18 screws but it was straight forward.

Charles

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by cfranks

I've just finished upgrading my Aspire one to 1.5Gb RAM. There must be a hardware limit on this as I tried to go to 2.5Gb annd it wouldn't even power on. I had to remove 18 screws but it was straight forward.

Charles

i dont suppose you took any pictures of the motherboard and memory area?

[cfranks (Charles)]

Try this link. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index....mg;8164;ssid;1

Mine has a 2.5" HDD and the link refers to an SSD but it is easily worked out.

Charles

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by cfranks

https://mail.a1computing.com.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;613470003;img;8164;ssid;1

Mine has a 2.5" Hard drive and the above description only mentions a SSD but it is easily worked out.

Charles

there is a major problem with the link Charles

[h0ughy (David)]

ahh i see the new link

[rider]

Originally Posted by cfranks

I've just finished upgrading my Aspire one to 1.5Gb RAM. There must be a hardware limit on this as I tried to go to 2.5Gb annd it wouldn't even power on. I had to remove 18 screws but it was straight forward.

Charles

I asked about this when I bought mine, youre right about the 1.5 limit.

also I was told doing this voids the warranty, so put the old RAM back if it breaks.

(I havent yet found anything it has trouble with using the standard RAM, but I'm tempted anyway, cos I love hotting things up.)

rider

[Calibos (Keith)]

Originally Posted by gmbfilter

Just purchased 1 off Acer Aspireone nice
BUT

Can't get starry night pro 6 to drive my heq5pro

I'm using the same serial to usb that worked on my big computer
on the Acer I cant find where to assign a coms port (ie there is no listing of coms ports in device manager

Any help will be appreciated
Thanks

Geoff,

Now that you have the Acer Aspireone for a month and have probably had a chance to fully put it through its paces with Starry Night Pro 6 and other astrosoftware. Can you tell us how well it is working out.

I have a future project planned with an LB16/Servocat/ARgo and one of the ideas I had was building in/mounting a PC to the base.

I found this..... tinyurl.com/5ap2xb

Basically the same internals as the acer aspireone with the added advantage of a touchscreen built in. I was going to use one of those red laser virtual keyboards as the input device.

This device would be perfect assuming it has the power to Run SNP 6.23 and maybe some image capture and even giuiding software at the same time. I'd transfer the captures and do the processing at home on a powerful desktop of course.

Also, I don't suppose anyone knows whether SNP 6 can be controlled with a touch screen interface. It would be pretty cool just to be able to select buttons with the touchscreen, Guides and slews and gotos of the servocat for instance. but how cool would it be to be able to tap on the screen and drag the FOV around with your finger ala I-Phones. Not sure whether a standard touchscreen interface could work like that with SNP though?

I'd build this into the base in such a way that it pivoted down out of the way when not in use and protected by 4 hinged flaps/covers. In use it would pivot up in front of the alt bearing area and the protective flaps would open out to form a light/dew shield with the bottom flap having the virtual laser keyboard projected onto it.

[Calibos (Keith)]

Just found a video of someone scrolling a browser window with their finger. So if touchscreen can mimic the action of holding the left mouse button on a scroll bar and moving it with the mouse then the fact that the method of panning the view in SNP is holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse could mean that it is indeed possible to use the touchscreen to fully interact with SNP.

How cool would that be!! For SNP actions where a keyboard is preferable I'll have the virtual keyboard. While those things were no replacement for a real keyboard for touch typing. They were not responsive enough to keep up with a fast typist. It doesn't matter in our application. In astro software the keyboard controls are just discrete controls, ie more like a control pad with lots of buttons, that we just need to tap once or twice. The Virtual keyboard can cope with this no problem......and means brightness adjustable red lit keys...and takes up the space of a credit card...How cool and more importantly, functional and space saving would that be!!

Guess who is going to have the longest queues of kids at next years outreach events!!

Add a mallincam and this....http://tinyurl.com/4pnmey

Eh, I'll have to start working work out my appearance fee's. LOL no I'll do it for free of course, will just need petrol money and guesthouse bed and board from the regional astronomy socs request my attendance at their outreach events.