What Was Your Favorite Zaurus Line

[HoloVector]

The 5x00 and 6000 had the tablet form factor with the slide out keyboard.  The 6000 was also the only Zaurus to have built-in WiFi and Bluetooth.  

The Cxx0 and Cxx00 had that wonderful swivel CG silicon screen.  The Cxx0 had battery flexibility that allowed you to decide how thick a Zaurus that you wanted and an ATi dedicated video chip.  The Cxx00 had USB on the go and built-in micro drives in most models.  So which one was your favorite?

[Varti]

SL-Cxx00 is the best form factor, without any doubt. Bigger keys, a landscape screen, plus I don't like the double cover on the bottom, at least on the c860, it looks like an afterthought addition. If Sharp will ever release a new Zaurus, I hope they'll keep this form factor, maybe with a secondary screen on the back of the cover instead of the swivel, which I must say I never use.

Speaking of the Cxx0's graphics chip, how does it compare with the Cxx00's one?

Varti

[HoloVector]

[/li]

SL-Cxx00 is the best form factor, without any doubt. Bigger keys, a landscape screen, plus I don't like the double cover on the bottom, at least on the c860, it looks like an afterthought addition. If Sharp will ever release a new Zaurus, I hope they'll keep this form factor, maybe with a secondary screen on the back of the cover instead of the swivel, which I must say I never use.

Speaking of the Cxx0's graphics chip, how does it compare with the Cxx00's one?

Varti

The ATi Imageon 100 (referred to as w100 in the Zaurus community) was a 2d graphics accelerator.  It could do on the fly MPEG decoding on it's own without using the main processor.  It also had dedicated SRAM but the amount wasn't enough for the 640x480 screen on the Zaurii so some of the main RAM was used as well.  On the factory Sharp ROM it was faster than the px270 built-in graphics in the Cxx00.  Which was why Tetsu kernels were so popular because they unlocked the advanced accelerated features in the Cxx00 machines so they were faster than w100 in video decodes.

Personally, I find the Cxx00 case a bit too chunky and prefer the sleeker Cxx0 case instead.  However I agree the keyboards on the Cxx00 is much better.

[Varti]

The ATi Imageon 100 (referred to as w100 in the Zaurus community) was a 2d graphics accelerator. It could do on the fly MPEG decoding on it's own without using the main processor. It also had dedicated SRAM but the amount wasn't enough for the 640x480 screen on the Zaurii so some of the main RAM was used as well. On the factory Sharp ROM it was faster than the px270 built-in graphics in the Cxx00. Which was why Tetsu kernels were so popular because they unlocked the advanced accelerated features in the Cxx00 machines so they were faster than w100 in video decodes.

Thanks for the info, I didn't know about that GPU. I guess the use of both the GPU's and main RAM simultaneously for display introduced some speed slowdowns, compared to using only one contiguous block of memory. Weren't there ATi chips with bigger SRAM back at the time, or they were too expensive?

Personally, I find the Cxx00 case a bit too chunky and prefer the sleeker Cxx0 case instead. However I agree the keyboards on the Cxx00 is much better.

Indeed, my SL-C1000 with the PDAir case is quite bulky to carry around...

Varti

[HoloVector]

Thanks for the info, I didn't know about that GPU. I guess the use of both the GPU's and main RAM simultaneously for display introduced some speed slowdowns, compared to using only one contiguous block of memory. Weren't there ATi chips with bigger SRAM back at the time, or they were too expensive?

The ATi Imageon 100 was the first in a long line of mobile graphics accelerators.  They are now called Adreno and Qualcomm now owns them.  The SRAM size was based on a 320x240 display.  When Sharp was designing the C700 in back in 2002 it was the only choice to pair with their 640x480 CG Silicon LCD. The SRAM to System RAM in theory should be faster than the px270 complete dependence on System RAM.  The Cxx00 series cheats by using the Tetsu kernel which enables the advanced features including overclocking.  

Indeed, my SL-C1000 with the PDAir case is quite bulky to carry around...

I stopped using my cases with them to keep the thickness down and store them in my cargo pants pocket these days.

[slaanesh]

Back when I had a Palm PDA, I would have loved to have an SL-5600 instead! I never realized they even existed! Pity!

But now, my preference is the SL-C1000 style - even though I have an SL-C860 as well.

I like the idea the 860 has a graphics chip - how much support is there for it, in say SDL?

What kind of capabilities does the 1000/3000 have in terms of graphics? Are they simple framebuffers?
Do they have "lo-res" modes ie. 320x240 or are they purely 640x480 framebuffers (or 480x640 if rotated in memory).

[greguu]

C1000/C3x00 have just a framebuffer and no hardware graphics.

Native resolution is 480x640 and you can do a overlay down to 240x320.

If you set up fbdev.conf correctly you can switch to overlay for console mode or start Xorg in overlay too.

All rotation is done in software and quite slow.

There was some experimenting done with ArchLinux and a patched DirectFB and patched SDL to get overlay framebuffer rotated to 320x240 a few years ago.

SDL apps ran pretty smooth then without the need for Xorg. There is a thread here somewhere about this.

Unfortunately DirectFB is not maintained anymore and I am not sure this still works with newer kernels, last tried was 4.2.3 I think.

Back when I had a Palm PDA, I would have loved to have an SL-5600 instead! I never realized they even existed! Pity!

But now, my preference is the SL-C1000 style - even though I have an SL-C860 as well.

I like the idea the 860 has a graphics chip - how much support is there for it, in say SDL?

What kind of capabilities does the 1000/3000 have in terms of graphics? Are they simple framebuffers?
Do they have "lo-res" modes ie. 320x240 or are they purely 640x480 framebuffers (or 480x640 if rotated in memory).

[Varti]

All rotation is done in software and quite slow.

Do you know how much is the overhead caused by the rotation? I remember some old threads where it was advised to reencode and rotate videos, in order to be able to view them at 640x480 at full speed. Funny thing is that there are still problems with screen rotation nowadays, on devices such as the GPD Win. I believe the BIOS is still shown unrotated there.

Varti