Good bye, Tumbler

Friday, April 11, 2025 · Permalink

Inevitably, it came the day where no matter how many times I tried, Tumbler refuses to bootstrap. It powers on, some of the LEDs light up but never reaches POST. I suspect it’s the mainboard. I tried disconnecting everything within reach, with no results.

This is a great machine, I love its compact form factor and its superb keyboard and the sharp and crisp screen. It served me well even well past its prime. From time to time a glimpse of hope ignites in me and I give it one more try. Perhaps disconnecting the CMOS. Perhaps leaving it overnight. Perhaps it’s a faulty RAM. But no.

And then I dream, what if it powers on? What would I use it for? Why, lots of things! Writing! Drawing with its integrated Wacom tablet! Reading comics! Retro gaming! Making music with Renoise! I could SSH or VNC into my desktop machine if I’d need to do heavy stuff! But it won’t boot anymore. And I can’t justify spending any money on it. So, it’s official.

Good bye, Tumbler, and thanks for all these years of service!

(Here she is at Nodos Digital, a decade ago (2015), my daily driver at the time)

And here’s Tumbler

Tuesday, February 7, 2023 · Permalink

I’ve written so much about Tumbler without a single picture. Let me rectify that. Here it is in tablet mode, while I was testing my rotation script. The photo doesn’t do the screen justice, it really looks a lot better.

Trying the Wacom Graphire3 on Tumbler

Thursday, January 26, 2023 · Permalink

Tried the Wacom Graphire3 on Tumbler and worked right out-of-the-box, except for the eraser tip. Ok, it seemed to work, but then it didn’t? Honestly, didn’t care that much to look into it.

I’ve adjusted the main pressure curve in Krita. It’s miles better than the integrated Wacom tablet. I might setup the tablet for the kids on Jupiter (our desktop family PC)… but I’m not sure the cable will be long enough (CPU’s on an upper shelf).

Actually, drawing on Tumbler with the Graphire3 is a lot more fun than I expected. I have much better pressure control and I find myself to be more precise with the tablet to click controls and move around sliders. Figures. One would think working directly on the screen would be better, but it’s not because of one reason: the screen is actually below the screen’s glass, so there’s parallax.

How many levels do Tumbler’s integrated tablet have? 32? Haha. The Graphire3 has 256, I know that for a fact.

Look at this. I have these two old things, my Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet and my old Wacom Graphire3 drawing tablet, working together flawlessly. How cool is that?

Reading comics on Tumbler

Wednesday, January 25, 2023 · Permalink

Configured the Epson printer, installed Eye of Gnome and Geeqie on Tumbler.

Copied over a couple comics to read with mcomix. I found that having it open as a book provides a good reading experience, albeit a heavy, mildly hot and corded one, heh. Man, I do wish to get my hands on a working battery.

But this is the biggest portable screen I have where a comic page is full-sized, even a tad bigger than a real paper comic page. I’ve left it rsync’ing all the comics I have.

Tumbler is growing usable as a secondary leisure machine. I’ll cry a lot the day it breaks.

More drawing on Tumbler

Tuesday, January 24, 2023 · Permalink

Declan came into my office while I was trying Krita on Tumbler, and I handed him the stylus. He had to keep pushing hard on the screen, confirming to me that, yeah, it really needs a harder pressure than one would intuitively think. I drew a dinosaur and he colored it.

And then he asked to have it printed.

I thought about using my old Wacom Graphire3 graphics tablet, but it kinda defeats the purpose, right? It’s got a Wacom graphics tablet built-in already! Anyway, it will never compete and it’s unrealistic to expect Tumbler to match my professional-level (albeit old) Wacom Intuos3.

So, this is what I have and, if I get used to drawing on it, I could potentially have a separate device for drawing Journal Comics, with its own workflow.

So Tumbler will become something more than a Music Computer. Pretty cool.

A rotating Tumbler

Sunday, January 22, 2023 · Permalink

Resuming work on Tumbler, configuring all those little things I never got to set up properly. Like the automatic rotation triggered you swivel the screen to tablet mode. Or toggle the screen orientation with the screen button.

I also setup Onboard, on-screen keyboard that looks pretty cool! So Tumbler is cool to use now.

I wish I had an SSD disk, no matter if it’s small, to make it really fly.

Hibernation shortcut works!

Saturday, January 21, 2023 · Permalink

Tumbler’s hibernation shortcut is now working! Turns out the event was being catched by XFCE’s Power Manager. It was set to «Do Nothing» so there was a conflict there. That explains why it worked intermitently. Now it works, yay!

Opened Tumbler, I cleaned it a bit and was curious to see if I had the WWAN radio installed. A SIM port is there and I see connections in place, but no, there’s no radio adapter inside. Oh well. What would I do with it, anyway? I can’t even use Tumbler on the road, its battery is completely dead. Also, Tycho has a WWAN card and I’ve never used it.

Gave a look at Tumbler’s Bluetooth adapter, maybe I can put it on Tycho? Nope, they’re different models. Oh well.