OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: marx on February 17, 2005, 06:55:06 pm

Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on February 17, 2005, 06:55:06 pm
I just bought this Zaurus prototype at ebay Germany (picture attached).

Can anybody tell me details about this Zaurus?

I found this this link related to my new toy  

http://www.geek.com/pdageek/features/zaurus/ (http://www.geek.com/pdageek/features/zaurus/)

Hope somebody can give me some information.

Thanx

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: tumnus on February 17, 2005, 06:58:04 pm
First time I've seen that. Wow, they changed a lot in the design from the prototype...
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: lpotter on February 17, 2005, 09:34:39 pm
It is a phone prototype that Sharp scrapped. We have a few of these devices around the office.

EJ00 is what it says on the back. D1 is printed on the front.
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on February 18, 2005, 06:31:48 am
Thank you for your quick response!

Zaurus EJ00 or Sharp EJ00 does not bring anything usefull at google.

The D1 probably stands for the German Mobile-Provider "T-Mobile". Perhaps this prototype was developed for the German market? The keyboard at my picture and at the picture of geek.com has a german layout (QWERTZ).

Are there any info's about the operating system? Is its functionality the same as of a "normal" Zaurus? Does the buildin GSM really work?

Thanx

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on February 18, 2005, 01:59:50 pm
I did some more research (can't wait till my new toy arrives   ). Here German site with some more information:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/25817 (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/25817)

In short it says, it is a Linux smartphone by Sharp called "Iris" developed for T-Mobile. Operating system and GUI are "quiet" like the Zaurus SL-5500G.

Technical details: 206 MHz StrongARM-CPU, 64 MByte RAM, 16 MByte Flash-ROM, 16-Bit-color-touchscreen.

Start of selling should have been summer 2002. Price unknown, alltough in the related comments they say about 700,- Euro.

If it was ever really sold I don't know yet, but I have still a lot of time waiting  

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on February 19, 2005, 06:19:17 am
My "Iris" has still not arrived yet  

To shorten the waiting-time, I continued my google search. This (German) link I found is less encouraging:

http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgab.../news/news.html (http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2002/05/news/news.html)

They say the Iris is a "stripped down" version of the Zaurus running with a 70 Mhz Strongarm processor.

Confusing  

marxx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: JohnKiniston on February 19, 2005, 12:41:56 pm
Quote
I just bought this Zaurus prototype at ebay Germany (picture attached).

Can anybody tell me details about this Zaurus?

[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=67585\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

What was it listed as in eBay? a Zaurus? Can we read the auction?
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on February 19, 2005, 01:30:31 pm
I won't post the ebay-link for privacy reasons, but I can give you description of the auction.

It was listed at ebay germany as a MDA prototype.

The seller did not know what kind of device he owned. There seemed to be no serial numbers or other clues on the device. The seller also wrote, that he had no expeariance with linux and was not able to make a phonecall with this "smartphone". He supposed that there where only 10 of these prototypes build (whereever that information may came from).

Before I did my bid on that auction I did some google search. With the keywords

linux smartphone

(http://images.google.com/images?q=linux%20...lr=&sa=N&tab=wi (http://images.google.com/images?q=linux%20smartphone&hl=de&lr=&sa=N&tab=wi))

I found a picture of the offered device (linked to www.geek.com). There it said it should be the future of the zaurus. That's why I bought the "strange prototype"  

I'm still looking for more technical details to shorten my waiting time. any info is welcome.

When the smartphone arrives I can post the details I will find out.

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: lpotter on February 20, 2005, 11:48:49 pm
Quote
If it was ever really sold I don't know yet, but I have still a lot of time waiting   

marx
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=67769\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Like I said, Sharp never released this device. It was to to be sold with Qtopia on it.
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on February 24, 2005, 07:48:04 am
  It arrived! Finally  

So my first impression:

- It has one Cardslot on top (no CF)
- It starts a very strange operating system (does not look like qtopia)
- Most applications seem not to fit into the display
- Only a few applications really run
- The SIM-Card is detected, I can enter the SIM-Code, which is accepted
- The phone can't connect to it's network  
- It often crashes
- I have not found a way into the system yet
- The only way to look at the filesystem is with the "Packetplayer"
- It is very slow  

What I would like to do:

- Find a way into the system to find out the hardware details
- Backup the system on a mmc or sd card
- Try to bring a qtopia on the device
- Keep the phone functionality

So my questions:

- Does anybody knows a way to a console (there an installer in the operating system)?
- Has anybody an original qtopia operating system with support for the intergrated phone?

Thanx

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: nilch on February 24, 2005, 05:01:03 pm
too bad its not in any working condition.

Maybe if you could lay your hands on Qtopia Phone      ?

After all, lpotter says Qtopia was supposed to be on it.
Is Qtopia phone as open as Qtopia PDA ?
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on March 17, 2005, 07:40:44 am
What happend until now:

I bought a 256MB mmc card. The card is recognized well by the device. My idea was accessing the card with the "netfront" browser, start a index.html which calls a signed java applet filebrowser and then copy the systemfiles to the card.

I wrote such an applet and it works great in normal browsers. It's bewildering to see how easy you can get full file-access by a signed applet. The problem is, that the netfront browser on my prototype doesn't support java  

Next I tried was starting the buildin filemanger by the HTML functionality "input type=file". No way. Netfront does not support this feature either.

So I'm stuck now. No way to copy the files from the system. Does anybody has any ideas? In the worst case I will flash an other system on the device, but I really would like to keep the gsm-drivers.

Flashing is a problem too. The normal Zaurus-Keys won't start the flashing process.

@lpotter: Do you have a clue for me, how to start the flashing?`

Thanx

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on October 02, 2005, 01:04:43 pm
Ok, I quit  

As there was now way for me to get into the system, I decided to sell the "strange prototype".

If you interested in the device, just go to: Ebay (http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5815167491) Germany.

Foreign bidders are welcome, just contact me first for shipping details.

Silently crying

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: lpotter on October 02, 2005, 06:13:17 pm
Did you try a serial cable?
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: Da_Blitz on October 03, 2005, 06:49:26 am
i remeber that zlib had a buffer overflow problem that was recently corrected (some one correct me if i'm wrong) one thing apache can do is serve up gzip encoded webpages which netfront supports so that could have been one way to get somthing to run.
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: marx on October 04, 2005, 03:45:33 pm
Quote
Did you try a serial cable?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97917\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I tried a USB-Cable for the normal Zaurus, but the connector of the "Iris" is smaller then that of the Zaurus. As I do not want to destroy the device by "trial and error", I did not try further.

@lpotter: Any clue about the "Key combination"? That would be a great help.

Thanx

marx
Title: Strange Prototype
Post by: guylhem on October 14, 2005, 09:30:40 am
Hello

Following up. I purchased it from marx. I totally panicked when it took longer than expected to arrive :-)

Hardware
-------------

It works fine. It uses the same battery as the SL5500, but the connector is a little bit different. The phone hardware works ! I guess marx was having issues with the frequency. I'm on a 1800 Mhz network, and I could successfully call myself.

The connector is physically different when compared to a Zaurus connector, but it looks similar. 2x2 power lines at each end, like on a 5500. I'll solder it, plug it on my pc and see if there's anything on the other end.

It runs on 2.4.6-rmk1-np2 for which I could find back the old patches on:
http://adorphuye.com/files/linux-2.4.6-rmk...500-20020910.gz (http://adorphuye.com/files/linux-2.4.6-rmk1-np2-embedix-20011228-sl5500-20020910.gz)

The system type is a "LinkUp 7200". There's plenty of comments in the sourcecode - I learned the IRIS has at least one UART (accessible on the software side by ttyLU, major 204). First I'll try to find a way to know which prototype version it is (there seems to be hardware differences between them) the if magic keys are defined.

Software
------------

Yet the GUI is very unlike anything I know - certainly a very old version of qtopia. D+M at bootup brings a "filesystem not initialised" then a "ok" button and finally "initializing" that never goes away. Will try other sequences sharps uses and search in the kernel source for others.

Other ideas- Maybe having special filenames on the SD can make it boot on it/have qtopia start it, like an autoexec?

Maybe someone here knows previous version of qtopia, and how their packages where? Installing a terminal would make everything much easier.

Any help is welcome.