Zaurus Utilities
26-Aug-10
Here are a few scripts and apps I compiled or wrote to do various tasks on my
SL-5500 (Collie) Zaurus. They're quite simple but might be of use to someone
(I'm constantly amazed at what these little devices are capable of!).
Some of these binaries require other packages. The system is OpenZaurus 3.5.4.
↑ This picture is full-size!
UAE requires libsdl-x11 -
'control' file edited to avoid a conflict with the libsdl Opie package - and
libasound2_1.0.10-r0_arm.ipk).
See my E-UAE page for further information. I used this .uaerc file (please edit it, and rename it to .uaerc).
That .uaerc is for the Collie/SL-5500; for Pocket Workstation on the SL-C860 (see below) I am using a different .uaerc.
I followed this configuration.txt file. This version of UAE runs
quite well (about half the speed of a real A500) on my SL-C860 (Sharp ROM,
with FastFPE kernel), though am running it
in a somewhat-complex way: it is running in the Debian chroot environment of
Pocket Workstation, displaying
on the VNC server screen. I exit QTopia, start the Pocket Workstation Fbvnc
viewer, launch E-UAE - which can left running while you restart QTopia - and
then zoom in and pan around the screen a bit, and there it is. I could just
resize it to the full 640x480, but I think that performance might suffer at
that resolution. There is an issue with the mouse pointer, where it goes
zooming off across the screen at a very fast rate, and then suddenly slows;
I found it easier to control UAE remotely, using x2x.
Frame rate: some games - Virus being one - don't like a high gfx_frameskip
rate, so you may have to set it to <3. Also, if using Pocket Workstation,
you might like to enable the SHM mode for the server, which is disabled by
default. Edit /usr/local/bin/Vncserver - it's a shell script - and add this
line before 'exec Crd 'zvncserver'':
export EXTRA_SERVER_ARGS="-shm"
Klaus Weidner tells me that the SHM feature was enabled for later versions of
the server.
More E-UAE: I haven't tried enabling sound, though I'd guess that it's unusable on a Zaurus
(it requires serious CPU). To test the emulator, I booted Workbench 1.3 and
started a clock ('run <nil: >nil: sys:utilities/clock digital1 seconds')
and Notepad.
