Stew’s Spot

I ordered 3 TI MSP430 LaunchPad development kits last month and they finally arrived, there was a huge demand for the boards (they cost $4.30 each) so the delay is understandable.  Two are mine and the third is for a friend.

Opening the box there is a Getting started booklet, the Dev board, a second MSP430 microprocessor, some Headers, a 32KHz crystal and a USB cable. I like the little touches on the packaging, like the “Happy Coding, MSP430 MSU Team” message.

I’ve tested it in Arch Linux and everything seems to work fine.  By the way, if you are using MSPDebug (version 0.9 or higher) to interface to the LaunchPad you’ll need to use the “rf2500″ driver and it should connect straight away.

mspdebug rf2500

For more information try the following websites:

• Official MSP430 LaunchPad Wiki.
• msp430-gcc on Arch Linux tutorial by Broken Code.

Now I’ve just got to find something to use them for…

Just to recap from Part 1. My Dad and I bought an old Myford Super 7 Lathe (Serial number SK68133) at an auction. At first glances it looked terrible but after cleaning off the dirt, grime and rust, there was hope.

Below is what we ended up with after completely dismantling everything to parts, cleaning, painting and finally reassembly. But thats not the whole story…

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