MINDSTORMS RCX Educational Kit

[jxu]

I went to a summer camp around 2011ish and they had an old MINDSTORMS RCX kit, maybe as an educational kit, which I remember having lots of long yellow technic bricks with holes (I may be misremembering the color), light gray motors, storage bins, and technic gear racks (3743). Does anyone know which set this might've been? Probably a mix of a bunch of sets. I'm looking through the RCX kits on Bricklink and it could've been any one of the USB compatible kits (no computer had serial ports by this point).

I'd like to buy a kit again but most are hard to find so I thought about just getting a bunch of old RCX era building pieces. Also does anyone know if I can program the Programmable Brick on Linux?

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, jxu said:

maybe as an educational kit

I think so too - this pretty much sounds like Dacta sets; did you check here? https://www.toysperiod.com/lego-set-reference/educational-dacta/mindstorms/rcx/

"Storage bins" is another hint at Dacta sets - you may want to look for sets that don't have the RCX/tower combo, as the large yellow beams come frequently in Dacta building "experience" sets. Cranes and such.

Windows idiot here, so I don't know about Linux.

Best,
Thorsten

[jxu]

I don't think I'll ever know the exact set, but 9723 Mindstorms Cities and Transportation Set is the closest in spirit. Plus, it's available for about $100 on Bricklink. Back then I and a friend built a yellow forklift, only for it to drive off the edge of the table on video because of a programming error I made

Now that I think about it, 4094 Motor Movers may have been included as well. I vaguely remember some clear gearboxes (46220c01) which only appeared in that set. That would also be the source of the long yellow bricks with holes.

Edited December 23, 2022 by jxu

[dr_spock]

You could install and run Windoze 95/98 in a VM using the Linux version of Oracle VM VirtualBox. 

 

[jxu]

37 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

You could install and run Windoze 95/98 in a VM using the Linux version of Oracle VM VirtualBox. 

 

I read online that there are already linux drivers for the infrared device, so I just need to find a program to upload and a C-like compiler. Online I found a subset called Not Quite C (NQC) which matches what I've also thought about creating (a subset of C without a lot of the historical weirdness).

Edited December 24, 2022 by jxu

[dr_spock]

Cool,  sudo apt install ncq 

[JopieK]

15 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Cool,  sudo apt install ncq 

Indeed: see here: https://minordiscoveries.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/using-nqc-on-a-raspberry-pi-to-program-a-lego-mindstorms-rcx-brick/