Installing Open VMS 9.2-1 on QEMU

Since Open VMS 9.2-1 field test installation media and licences are now available to community members I decided it might be time to upgrade my old MicroVAX and switch to VMS on x86_64.

Translating a DECnet address to a MAC address

There are several web sites that will do this for you, but I decided to put together a python script to do the job for me.

QEMU unable to start virtual machine after upgrade

After a routine upgrade I was unable to start any virtual machines that were configured to use a bridge network interface. This did cause a bit of a panic as these days I use a virtual machine when browsing the internet!

Lisp

I’ve known about the existence of Lisp for a while but until now I’ve never been tempted to investigate further.

Installing MATE on SuSE Leap 15.4

Using the command line you need just six commands to install a (very) minimal MATE desktop environment.

A minimum install using SuSE Leap 15.4

I’m not switching distributions, but I thought I’d see if I could come up with a lightweight installation based on the latest SuSE release as has been a long time since I last used it and I wanted an excuse to see that the current release was like.

Set the screen resolution with KDE on QEMU

When setting up the KDE desktop on a virtual machine using QEMU I noticed that I couldn’t use the system settings tool to increase the default screen resolution.

Installing KDE on Debian bullseye

Until now I’ve never got around to documenting the installation of a ‘minimal’ KDE desktop, it isn’t that it is difficult, I just never felt like using it.

A Python class for the MCP9801 Temperature Sensor

Having brought a couple of Temperature Sensors based on the Microchip Technology MCP9801 to use with my Rasperyy Pi. I decided to see if I could write a simple class to encapsulate the code needed to control them.

MATE Window Manager not starting

A problem that turned out to be a simple case of user error!