Getting the parts ready

What you’ll definitely need, or may need

Friday 6 May 2016, by Benoît

This set of posts being written with the French locale, some punctuation marks do display weirdly. All appologies, but I guess you’ll bypass that. Thanks! Have a good reading and enjoy!

Since we’re going to hack into an SFR M! Pc Pocket, I’ll assume that you have such one. For the sake of shortness, I’ll just speak about the M! latter on when refering to this machine. You’ll also need at some time an internet access and an other machine plugged on it to transfer files. But hey, wait. You’re reading this, aren’t you?

Definitely, you’ll need a power outlet since the next steps will take way too much time to get them done running on battery.

We’ll be installing a basic debian, from official sources - thus not optimised for the small amount of disk space available in the M!... Buying a cheap 4Go microSD will be good enough for our needs here. A 2Go one can do (even none) if you plan to wipe out the midinux system. I’d not recommend that if it’s your first attempt or don’t have a rescue key. Just go to your nearest computer shop and by one. Maybe at some time someone will provide downloadable binaries, but for the moment, we’ll need room to compile stuff.

Grab your favorite USB mouse (steal it to your neighbour if you don’t have one, he should have a dozen of such things packed somewhere, waiting to be used). A USB keyboard can do, especially if you have a USB hub and can connect both kdb, mouse and keys (next point).

You will need at least one 1Go USB key for the debian install system. Having two of such keys makes it easy to give this hack a try, fail yet get started right back on track.

That’s all you desperately need folks, so let’s move on. Plug the M! to the outlet and restore the default midinux system if not in place (this is for convenience, any linux-based boot could do with the appropriate tweaking).