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A comment on Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit Info. Parent comment

Re:Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit... by crazygringo on Thursday October 24, 2024 @04:02PM (#41939167)
I didn't seem to be last I checked -- the older Kindles require the sequence:

  ;debugOn
  ~disableScreensaver
  ;debugOff
while newer ones only require:

  ~ds
I know that for some ad-supported Kindles it doesn't work unless you pay to remove the ads (for obvious reasons), but if you pay then it will.

But last I checked was a couple of years ago. I'd be very curious if anyone can report it not working. (Also note the command doesn't survive reboot, you have to re-disable after rebooting.)

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Re:Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit... by laserlight on Thursday October 24, 2024 @04:32PM (#41939452)
Unfortunately, ~ds was disabled by a firmware update a few years ago.
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Re:Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit... by crazygringo on Thursday October 24, 2024 @05:26PM (#41939972)
Ugh, that sucks. Any idea how to determine which ones are affected? I.e. what firmware version, or which models it started affecting?

Older models still support ~disableScreensaver -- at some point Amazon just stopped issuing firmware updates for them, I have to assume.

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Re:Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit... by laserlight on Friday October 25, 2024 @12:54AM (#41942340)
How ironic that not having firmware updates is good... I found the following April 2022 Reddit thread [0] that I remember visiting back in the day.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/u8u7up/disable_auto...

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Re:Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit... by bambax on Friday October 25, 2024 @02:53AM (#41942871)
> How ironic that not having firmware updates is good

That's often the case, things going from good to worse. Cf. the removal of Manifest 2 on Chrome for instance.

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Re:Using Rust and an Old Kindle to Display Real-Time Transit... by devilbunny on Friday October 25, 2024 @07:09AM (#41944108)
I don’t follow the space closely, but if you find a Kindle Keyboard (third generation of the product) or earlier, they stopped getting updates ages ago and in fact can no longer use the store (though USB sideloading still works fine). They are all jailbreakable.

As a kiosk-like display, though, they do have that keyboard taking up space.

I only use my Kindle to read outside (at the beach or pool); in the house, my iPad is faster and has a bigger screen. But in the sun, it’s useless. eInk is far superior for that. For the week or two a year that I need one, my 15-ish-year-old Kindle is fine. I travel with a laptop and tons of cables anyway; sideloading just means a few minutes of work after dinner to make sure there’s enough on there to read tomorrow and isn’t much slower than using the internal interface to get books was.

I do miss the free 3G. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/548/

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