Its... power level... it's over 9000!

I have a new toy! Unfortuantly iRobot don't actually make models with a jet engine, though at least its power level is OVER NINE THOUSAND. Now all I need to do is charge it overnight, feed it a suitable offering in the form of a dust bunny, and then let it loose on my flat. I'm not sure what I'll do with the old Roomba - the battery puts out a pitiful amount of current, one of the rubber strips on the vacumn entrance is peeling away from the case, and iRobot don't stock replacement filters for it anymore (any of those on its own wouldn't be an issue, but given that it's end-of-life it makes sense to replace rather than try and scrounge replacement parts).

On a less silly note, it's interesting to see how they've changed the design. The new Roomba (third generation) has the battery buried inside rather than clipped in, much smaller gaps around the bumper, a rubber strip above the brush deck, and the cliff sensors are now on the main body rather than the bumper. It loks like they've made an effort to stop up all the gaps where dust would get in on the previous model, which can only be a good thing given the number of times I've had to open up the last one to clean the bumper touch sensors. They also appear to have tweaked the programming - at first glance it's a lot more competent at docking with the charging base than the old Roomba was.

Also, contrary to what iRobot tech support said, at least the infra-red remote from my previous Roomba is compatible with the new one.

Warning: much rantage about GCC and Linux linking

So after the epic fail that was the last attempt to build GCC, I did a bit of research into the whole mess. It looks like that to have a reasonable chance of success I *do* need the exact version of GCC that was used.

( Warning: much rantage about GCC and Linux linking )