OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: pdayoda on July 21, 2006, 03:39:40 pm

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: pdayoda on July 21, 2006, 03:39:40 pm

Can anyone provide direction on how to reflash an MI-E21 (Japanese Zuarus) to an English ROM/OS
?
I'm interested in loading this with either Opie or another exiperimental operating system.  I've searched Hi and Lo for any supporing docs for the MI-E21 and have had zero luck.  The only thing I've found is that the MI-E21 and SL5500 are incompatible (regardless of the fact that they look identical).  Is this true?  Will it not support Linux?  What english language OS's are available for this device?  Any and all responses greatly appreciated.  

thanks in advance

Terry

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: bam on July 21, 2006, 03:46:17 pm

I thinks thats the one with the custom os, ie not-reflashable

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: pdayoda on July 21, 2006, 04:58:31 pm

Quote

I thinks thats the one with the custom os, ie not-reflashable
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Ughh!  I noticed that there's no reset port like the 5500 that should've been a clue.  I'm still going to try and find a way tho    Anyone else want to confirm or conflict Bam?

thanks Bam for the quick response.

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: Da_Blitz on July 22, 2006, 05:11:56 am

can you give me a quick rundown of the hardware in the thing (ie make and model of the chipsets)

perhaps a link or two and a picture of the mother board will be helpful in your quest. i shoud be able to tell you how compatible linux is with it and might be able to offer some advice

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: pdayoda on July 22, 2006, 01:33:45 pm

How dangerous is it to crack the case?  I've never done that before so I'm a bit hesitant.  Do you think there's a way to perform a reset  while I have the case off (no reset button avail like the 5500)?  Not having a reset button is the real hold up for me.  I'm not sure how to flash the beastie w/o having the blasted reset port.  Otherwise, I'd just give it shot and flash away.

Stay tuned for some pics.

Terry

Quote

can you give me a quick rundown of the hardware in the thing (ie make and model of the chipsets)

perhaps a link or two and a picture of the mother board will be helpful in your quest. i shoud be able to tell you how compatible linux is with it and might be able to offer some advice
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=136080\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: pdayoda on July 22, 2006, 03:02:59 pm

Here's a pic of the chipset - what a pain getting this thing apart.  Needless to say, I now have another project, putting it back together    

thanks for any support.

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: Da_Blitz on July 22, 2006, 10:37:46 pm

anyone have a pic of the 5500? we just need to work out whats diffrent

for reseting the device cant you just pull the battery or does the flash prcodure require holding down of the reset button for a set period of time

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: Stubear on July 23, 2006, 07:23:04 am

The MI series of Zaurus only were available in Japanese - they didn't use qtopia, just a proprietory OS made by Sharp Japan.

You can't flash it with anything else

Sorry

Stu

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: iamasmith on July 23, 2006, 07:27:53 am

Have you actually been able to identify even the processor from that diagram? there are a lot of non-catalog Sharp components on there.

NEC does produce ARM7 and ARM9 processors but I don't think that component shown is one of them (may be wrong) - I can't find that particular NEC part but it doesn't seem to have a component ID anything like the ones used for the ARM processors.

-Andy

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: pdayoda on July 23, 2006, 11:12:46 am

I tried googling the components as well and didn't come up with much.  When compared to the 5500, you can see a world of difference.  So I want to say thanks to everyone that responded  

I've now got some good spares  

BTW:  anyone know if the sharp ce-vrc1 can be made to work under gpe?  I scored this little video recording cf card with the MI.  I'd like to get it to work under gpe (sorta like a consolation prize   )

Thanks again!

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: Da_Blitz on July 24, 2006, 01:06:10 am

Googleing for IC numbers is an art in itself. i recomoend doing it on a specilised ic search engine as google is fairly bad for that type of stuff.

i can make out the flash chips and some of the other parts but havent id,d the processor (havent gotten aroud to it yet, do you know the clock speed?

are you still intreseted in porting linux to this device?

with the stock roms i belive thier shourd be software out there whover on some of the newer ones (2.6 bassed) i doght you will get it working, i have seen some developers state that they will not work on it

try your luck with google for "sharp ce1 camera ipkg" or somthing simmilar

Title: Hacking An Mi-e21
Post by: pdayoda on July 25, 2006, 11:39:06 am

I'm not a real hardcore hacker (weak programmer - I quit my Cobol job after 6mos because I sucked that bad), but I enjoy doing flashes and the like.  So, to answer your question, yea I'm still interested in getting Linux to run on this.  However, I can't find a blasted support doc in English (plenty in Japanese, Taiwanese and the like).

I kinda impulsively bought this unit off ebay thinking I could just flash it over to OZ.  What a doofus I was. Anyways, it was fun to pull the thing apart and put back together.

I believe in time someone will get an english OS running on this.  in the meanwhile, it's my spare parts kit

thanks for all of the responses.