Pdaxrom For 5500?, Any word on a release Options

[victorhooi]

Hi,

I was just wondering if anybody had any word on progress on pdaXrom for the Zaurus 5500? Is there any chance of a RC/beta release, or something similar?

thanks,
Victor

[Mickeyl]

If you're just after the X server, there is an X based ROM for the 5500 - it's called OpenZaurus / GPE.

[victorhooi]

Hi,

thanks, but yeah I've tried that (actually, I'm trying the 3.5.3 pre-release right now...*fingers crossed*)

but no, I'm looking specifically for pdaxrom...with quake *gasp* hehe

any word from developers or anybody in the know?

bye,
Victor

[lardman]

but no, I'm looking specifically for pdaxrom...with quake *gasp* hehe

Does Quake not run on GPE?

Si

[mmoralls]

Looking at the screenshots, does this ROM come with extras like ABI word? I have an SL5500 with OZ 3.5.2 right now and am having to alter some programs (Hancom) to make them install correctly. I don't have a Liunx box right now and can't seem to locate a public one to do this. If this pdaxROM comes with some software loaded or if the ROM package manager loads other software without any hitches I'm willing to wait. Or are they going to concentrate on developing for the later models of the Zaurus?

Thx

[omega]

There was a post from laze that there will be some effort put towards making pdaxrom run on the 5000, 6000 and 3000 series...

[auauhiro]

I have made a hd-image of ext2 file system of pdaXrom for SL-C3000 which can be used by chroot command from native console mode and Qt console mode. This image can be also used on SL-C700 and SL-C760. But, using on SL-5500, an error "Illegural Instructions" occurs when I attept to chroot to pdaXrom. Some applications wriiten for japanese SL-serises shows same error on SL-5500. I consider that these are due to the machine codes which are optimized for Xscale processors. Thus, almost all of the pdaXrom should be recompiled for SL-5500.

[victorhooi]

Hi,

Still no word on anything, huh? Well, fingers crossed, but I've heard absolutely nothing on any new developments...

To the poster above, who asked why I might want to run pdaXrom, it's for the X server...lol. And I've tried GPE 3.5.2 and 3.5.3 (pre-release), but they're both a bit unpolished and laggy (at least for me).

cya,
Victor

[Mickeyl]

How about joining the crew to polish and improve GPE ?

[technojunkie]

Just my 2 cents but I think that a 5500 running GPE can't help but be a bit laggy. Consider this: You're running an X server on a device with a 266Mhz ARM processor, which by nature is a bit limited in capability. Not to mention you really only have 32-64MB of RAM to work with.(If you count swap you introduce even more speed reduction)

On top of that any extra 'polish' is going to place that much more load on the processor.

[victorhooi]

Hi,

Mickeyl: I'd be more than happy to join up and help the pdaXrom project. I assume you're associated with the project, right? If so, please contact me (PM or email is fine - victorhooi (at) yahoo (dot) com), and tell me what areas I can help out with. I'm definitely not a brilliant programmer - bit of C/C++, some Java etc - but I wouldn't mind doc-writing, testing betas, bug-quashing etc.

technojunkie: I don't think it's some kind of inherent limitation of either the GTK+ toolkit, or or X that somehow makes the Zaurus "laggy". X runs fine on a 100Mhz processor with 16Mb of ram (my secondary system), so I don't see why it has to be laggy on a Zaurus (100Mhz on x86 doesn't convert into 100Mhz on ARM, obviously, but you get the idea).

The recent reductions in the memory footprint of Matchbox are a good example. I doubt we've reached the end of the road to optimising all the stuff in GPE (note: I'm not a programmer) - hopefully, we'll be able to push it further, and bring it up to par with say, the Qtopia releases. Speaking of which - does anybody know why the (very spartan) unofficial pdaXrom QTopia 2.1 releases were so damn fast? I mean seriously seriously fast. I'd be willing to put up with quite a drop in functionality if I could get something like that kind of speed = .

bye,
Victor

[Jinidog]

What about the SL5600?
It has a 400 MHz CPU and it's a XScale. (so is the CPU of the SL5500, why should there be illegal instructions then?)

[kahm]

What about the SL5600?
It has a 400 MHz CPU and it's a XScale. (so is the CPU of the SL5500, why should there be illegal instructions then?)

The 5000D/5500 are Strongarm SA-1110 processors running at 206mhz.

The 5600 and up run on XScale PXA250, PXA255, or PXA270 processors at 400 and 416 mhz.

They are *definitely* different. The XScale's include a Strongarm compatibility instruction set, but there are additional native instructions as well.

[Jinidog]

So the image should be at least binary-compatible with the SL5600?

[odubtaig]

I'd like to point out that I have gpe-collie running on a 5000d with absolutely no lag whatsoever (rosetta works and everything!). I'd also like to point out that many of the X11 compiled apps ( here ) also run (having shifted /usr to the SD card) including Abiword and Gaim.

That said, most of these apps have not been compiled with the miniscule 320x240 resolution in mind so running Abiword and ScummVM is technically possible but not very practical (I still haven't figured out how I'd change the font and when you close only the 'cancel' and 'save' buttons are visible on the quit dialog, the only way to quit without saving is to use the program manager).

Asides from this I also have got minimo up and running (usability to be tested when my WiFI bridge arrives) but Inkscape doesn't seem to work (I've yet to figure out why).

All in all, I'm glad to ditch Opie.

regards, Paul