I have a really old ThinkPad X61 laptop which I keep mostly for collection. Recently I decided to install Void Linux on it to try this distribution and see how it will work for me and how it will work on a such outdated hardware in general. I encountered a few difficulties not related to hardware which I would like to document here in case I will try to reproduce a similar setup somewhere in the future.

minicom in Ubuntu has several file transfer protocols preconfigured after installation and some tools implementing these protocols can be installed as a recommended package along with minicom package installation. One of preconfigured transfer protocols is kermit, but the setting in minicom for this protocol refers to nonexistent file in Ubuntu 20.04 and there are no packages with such file in this version of Ubuntu.

Raspberry Pi has become one of the most popular platforms for embedded projects both for hobbyists and professionals. There are lots of information on the web about various aspects of using these single-board computers (SBCs) and this post is merely a step-by-step description of setting up a couple of RPis for my personal projects.

fio is a command line tool for I/O benchmarking offering many advanced features for simulating different types of workloads. It can read and write test data sequentially or in random fashion. In the latter case, the program adds a header which helps to verify the integrity of each written data block.

Recently, I participated in the development of an embedded system as a software developer and my role was to develop or modify Linux device drivers to bring the system up. Network part of the system was based on Realtek’s RTL8211DN Ethernet tranceiver. I encountered several problems working with the driver for this chip which I want to share here.