I had a SL-5000D around 2002 and upgraded to SL-C-850 in 2003. Got busy with school and life and sold them in 2005. I kind of regret that. Anyway, I bought meself a SL-5500 for xmas on eBay and it came with (completely unusable) OZ 3.5.4.I know that feeling... I have decided for that reason to keep all the devices I buy even if I don't use them anymore... I still have my original C1000 In case you're thinking of getting another Zaurus, I recommend buying them from the japanese Yahoo Auction site, there's always plenty of them on sale for dirt cheap. I have recently won an auction for a working and boxed B500 (that's what was called the SL-5600 in Japan) for 26 euros, shipping to Europe included. You can use proxy services like Buyee or FromJapan to have your bids shipped to outside Japan.
I found some feeds at https://feed-zaurus.dahwa.fr (https://feed-zaurus.dahwa.fr) and decided that cacko crow was probably best all around, given Collie's limitations. It seems like the libSDL_1.2.5-slzaurus20041025-j in the cacko feed is pretty good:May I ask you if you could paste here the URLs of suhami's site on the Wayback machine and the FTP site you found? I'm making local copies of older sites for preservation purposes, especially the ones on archive.org, before they disappear from there too (like http://www.oesf.org/repository/websites/cacko-crow/ (http://www.oesf.org/repository/websites/cacko-crow/)). Thanks!
znester, zgnuboy (directly from the cacko feed)
snes9x (had to mine the wayback machine and find suhami's binary, all others fail with "illegal instruction")
zstella (buried in some FTP site)
zmamefull works a little slow, but tolerably, keys all perfect in portrait orientation
all seem to work with decent speed and the key mappings are tolerable (directions correct, cancel exits) if not perfect.
dgen117, however, is very slow and it seems like suhami only released v1.23 for pdaxrom? Can't find it for Sharp-based ROM. Is there some trick to speed it up? Turning off sound and autoframe skip (settings in ~/.dgen/dgenrc) don't help.That version might have been too slow for the Collie from the beginning, and would run well only on later models. I guess the only solution would be to compile the latest version for Collie's CPU (ARMv4 based).
zcpe and sms_sdl (in cacko feed ) do not run at all. The binary gives the "Illegal instruction" error. Perhaps they only work on clamshell C-XXXX devices?Yes, that's probably the reason, it might have been compiled for Armv5.
visualboy advance 1.6a is very slow and nothing seems to help.Again, a compile of the latest version (or of an older, less demanding one) might help here.
v1.7 (from suhami) gives a strange error about a bad elf header?Yes, unfortunately in general there's no way to tell from the package's name in any feed what's the target OS and device (except for the armv5tel and bvdd tags which help a bit).
Maybe it is for a different distro? pdaxrom?
Is gpsp only for clamshell bvdd devices?Depends, usually all the packages using that driver have the "bvdd" string in the filename.
No version of SCUMMVM newer than 0.4.1 will work for me; after hunting down all the missing libs, I got some strange Qtopia error about not being able to create a Qpaint_something without first creating a Qsomething_else. (I don't have the Zaurus handy at the moment.)Can this post be of any help? https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...ost&p=61478 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=9563&view=findpost&p=61478) In the post above that a program called KeyHelper is mentioned, that might be helpful too.
I'm using zemufe and its associated scripts to launch the emulators. I guess zemefe assumes a clamshell device because the most emulators have horrid button mappings: A,B, X,Y, Start, Select are all mapped to strange keyboard keys. Since all the (usable) emulators run sideways with D-pad on left, wouldn't it make the most sense to map A,B,X,Y, Start, Sel, to the (big and obvious) PIM buttons on the SL-5500?
What are the key numbers for those 5 buttons above the D-pad and the centre button?
Is there a mirror of Zaurus Software Index (killefiz.de) ? Wayback has it, but it is just a collection of broken links. I'm surprised it seems to be completely gone, as there wasn't that much software; it would probably all fit in one person's Mega or dropbox. At least all the sharp/cacko stuff that works well on SL-5x00 would.....Not that I'm aware of, though I wonder if all the files were stored locally or if it only stored links to them. We had here the ELSI (http://www.elsix.org/ (http://www.elsix.org/)), which was a similar portal for Zaurus stuff, though it is now offline and we're still trying to get access to the account, our host has unfortunately not responded yet to our password reset request. There was also a ZSI-like portal called the Handheld Linux Zaurus Software Index, you might try if any link under archive.org still works: http://www.handheld-linux.com/swi/index.php (http://www.handheld-linux.com/swi/index.php)
The most frustrating thing I remember about the zaurus back in 2003-2005 was that you often couldn't tell which ZAURUS people are talking about when they document how something works. Is there any archive/feed of apps/games JUST FOR SL-5x00, no clamshells, no bvdd?Have you already checked Quickening's feed for the 5500? http://quickening.zapto.org/ZaurusFeed/ (http://quickening.zapto.org/ZaurusFeed/)
What about cross compiling for Sharp/Cacko? Is there a particular antique linux distribution I should use in VirtualBox to host the tools?Not long ago I have managed to crosscompile a test QT application for Cacko on my 64bit Linux Mint distro, no virtualization was required: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...st&p=283057 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=34544&view=findpost&p=283057) and https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...st&p=283062 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=34544&view=findpost&p=283062). Also, a Docker image has been released with a crosscompiler: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=34572 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=34572)
May I ask you if you could paste here the URLs of suhami's site on the Wayback machine and the FTP site you found? I'm making local copies of older sites for preservation purposes, especially the ones on archive.org, before they disappear from there too (like http://www.oesf.org/repository/websites/cacko-crow/) (http://www.oesf.org/repository/websites/cacko-crow/)). Thanks!
Sumhami is here:Thanks for the link. I have attempted a local dump of all the pages with httrack, using a custom Wayback Machine command line, I'll check if the dump is complete, remove all the WM headers and put it online. I'll try the emu on one of my clamshells, thanks for sharing it!
https://web.archive.org/web/20060614142338/...x.cgi?FrontPage (https://web.archive.org/web/20060614142338/http://www.suhami.net/zaurus/index.cgi?FrontPage)
It was a while ago and I can't find the ftp now. However, all it had was zstella.
I'll attach the binary because that's all there was. This binary works on my SL-5500 with cacko and it is not too hard to make a zemufeex launcher shell script. Thing is, most Atari2600 games end in .bin, so I renamed them to a26 to make them distinct. Maybe try and see if it works on newer Zaurus systems. I'm using it with the cacko default(?)
btw, are there any roguelikes besides nethack for the Zaurus? Seems like the ideal handheld for it since it has a keyboard. Has anyone ported powder?ZDevil has ported a while ago a few roguelikes on pdaXrom (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showto...95&p=152539 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=18415&st=195&p=152539)) and used to maintain a list of all the available roguelikes: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=22353 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=22353) . I'm not aware of any port of powder, it would be a good porting candidate
I'm also curious about how things finished up with all the ROMs on the clamshells? Is pdaxrom as fast/usable as cacko 1.23? Back in 2003, I got frustrated with pdaxrom because it was slow and awkward to move (always too big) windows around and brightness/suspend problems. Seems like there was a lot of improvement in speed and usability, based on how much people were talking about it well beyond 2004. I'm still catching up on archived forums....On my C1000, pdaxrom was quite fast and snappy, I liked it more than the stock ROM/Cacko, though I remember having issues with suspend/resume, I don't know if later releases fixed that. As for the current status of the ROMs: Pdaxrom was eventually discontinued, as many other ROMs too, though its author was recently toying with the idea of resuming its development, although he has later stated that the interest for a new version was too low. Angstrom was still supporting the Zs until a couple of years ago when they stopped releasing nightly builds, I read it was because of a lack of testers. OpenBSD AFAIK still supports Zauruses. Kexecboot was in active development until last year, too. Then we have the recent releases for Cx000 of Arch Linux ARM and Void Linux and the release of the Linux kernel 5.0. Both Arch and Void are shell-only distros.
Just for fun, I got suhami's wonderswan working with zemufe on the SL-C1000 with zemufe in Cacko.
This is still using the same libSDL_1.2.5-slzaurus20041025-j included in the cacko feed.
Content of zemufeex_ws.sh
export SDL_QT_FB_SIZE=320x480
export SDL_QT_INVERT_ROTATION=1
cd $1
wonderswan -E 0 "$2"
exit 0
Wonderswan will also run on SL-5500, but there is no way to exit presumably because the "Cancel" button does not send the same key code as the one on the SL-C1000. I only tested out Chocobo no fushigi (Chocobo's mystery dungeon(?) ) and while a little slow, it is playable. Assuming, that is, you only need 2 buttons to finish the game:
Suhami also says that buttons A, B are x,c and enter is Start on the zaurus keyboard. Obviously, he never owned a Wonderswan handheld: it has 12 buttons and there is no mention of where the other 9 are on the Z.
If only the source code to the zaurus port of oswan were available somewhere. It would probably be easy to at least change the cancel key for the SL-5500.
...I got some cheap "junk" SL-C700 and SL-C3100 Zaurus clamshells to play with from FromJapan. Thanks for the great suggestion, as I probably would not have thought of using a proxy site. Anyway, after a huge long wait--order placed in Jan., arrived end of March--I've got more Zaurus than I know what to do with.
On my C1000, pdaxrom was quite fast and snappy, I liked it more than the stock ROM/Cacko, though I remember having issues with suspend/resume, I don't know if later releases fixed that. As for the current status of the ROMs: Pdaxrom was eventually discontinued, as many other ROMs too, though its author was recently toying with the idea of resuming its development, although he has later stated that the interest for a new version was too low. Angstrom was still supporting the Zs until a couple of years ago when they stopped releasing nightly builds, I read it was because of a lack of testers. OpenBSD AFAIK still supports Zauruses. Kexecboot was in active development until last year, too. Then we have the recent releases for Cx000 of Arch Linux ARM and Void Linux and the release of the Linux kernel 5.0. Both Arch and Void are shell-only distros.
I forgot to mention that the old wiki is still up, quite messy but still with a lot of useful information, though I have seen that some sections cannot be loaded anymore: http://www.oesf.org/old_wiki/index.php/Main_Page (http://www.oesf.org/old_wiki/index.php/Main_Page) (note that it cannot be accessed via https).
Varti
...
...slightly off topic as not for the SL-5500, but zgrom is still a good ROM for emulation and gaming on Sharp Zaurus Cxx00 series. https://code.google.com/archive/p/zgrom/ (https://code.google.com/archive/p/zgrom/)
it uses a modified SDL version that uses iwmmxt optimized rotation and blitting directly to the framebuffer.
sadly the source was lost...
Quote from: greguu...
...slightly off topic as not for the SL-5500, but zgrom is still a good ROM for emulation and gaming on Sharp Zaurus Cxx00 series. https://code.google.com/archive/p/zgrom/ (https://code.google.com/archive/p/zgrom/)
it uses a modified SDL version that uses iwmmxt optimized rotation and blitting directly to the framebuffer.
sadly the source was lost...
I can't find a version of kexecboot which will boot zgrom. The zgrom root filesystem has kernel 3.2.30 zImage, so I'm guessing I need a kexecboot kernel close to that version for it to work? Could someone who has zgrom working upload the kexecboot "installkit". By installkit, I mean the file containing gnu-tar, updater.sh, zImage. It might also be interesting to see what is in your boot.cfg.
I tried 3.2.18 and a few other versions from https://github.com/LinuxPDA/linux-kexecboot...e/master/zaurus (https://github.com/LinuxPDA/linux-kexecboot/tree/master/zaurus) but it is always a black screen. The zgrom rootfs is on the first 4GB partition of an SD card in SL-C3100.
I tried downgrading to the Omegamoon kexecboot 2.6.? (found in Wayback Machine) and it still gives a black screen when I try to boot zgrom.
I tried zubuntu jaunty in the second partition and it boots fine using that kexecboot. The speed is amazing. Too bad you can't find any packages for it anymore.....Maybe a mirror of the package repo is someplace in the Wayback Machine?
Quote from: ceratophyllumQuote from: greguu...
...slightly off topic as not for the SL-5500, but zgrom is still a good ROM for emulation and gaming on Sharp Zaurus Cxx00 series. https://code.google.com/archive/p/zgrom/ (https://code.google.com/archive/p/zgrom/)
it uses a modified SDL version that uses iwmmxt optimized rotation and blitting directly to the framebuffer.
sadly the source was lost...
I can't find a version of kexecboot which will boot zgrom. The zgrom root filesystem has kernel 3.2.30 zImage, so I'm guessing I need a kexecboot kernel close to that version for it to work? Could someone who has zgrom working upload the kexecboot "installkit". By installkit, I mean the file containing gnu-tar, updater.sh, zImage. It might also be interesting to see what is in your boot.cfg.
I tried 3.2.18 and a few other versions from https://github.com/LinuxPDA/linux-kexecboot...e/master/zaurus (https://github.com/LinuxPDA/linux-kexecboot/tree/master/zaurus) but it is always a black screen. The zgrom rootfs is on the first 4GB partition of an SD card in SL-C3100.
I tried downgrading to the Omegamoon kexecboot 2.6.? (found in Wayback Machine) and it still gives a black screen when I try to boot zgrom.
I tried zubuntu jaunty in the second partition and it boots fine using that kexecboot. The speed is amazing. Too bad you can't find any packages for it anymore.....Maybe a mirror of the package repo is someplace in the Wayback Machine?
zgrom should boot on most kexecboot kernels, but you need to place the kernel into /boot manually and format your sdcard with ext2 I think. zgrom is expecting to be booted of sdcard afaik.
wiki was lost. but maybe archive.org or wayback machine can help to find zgrom how-to
zgrom should boot on most kexecboot kernels, but you need to place the kernel into /boot manually and format your sdcard with ext2 I think. zgrom is expecting to be booted of sdcard afaik.Isn't this the zgrom wiki, or wast there more documentation than this page?
wiki was lost. but maybe archive.org or wayback machine can help to find zgrom how-to
Just had a thought, the boot.cfg syntax had changed with newer kexecboot kernels. so best to check the boot.cfg included with zgrom and adjust to syntax present in newer kexecboot kernel (voidz, alarmz or oe)
# First kernel stanza. # Show this label in kexecboot menu.
LABEL=ZGrom-0.1
# Specify full kernel path on target.
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
#
# Append this tags to the kernel cmdline.
APPEND=console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 fbcon=rotate:1/etc/fstab says:# stock fstab - you probably want to override this with a machine specific one
#rootfs / auto defaults 1 1
/dev/mmcblk0p1 / auto rw,noatime 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs noauto 0 0
tmpfs /var/volatile tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /media/ram tmpfs defaults 0 0
# uncomment this if your device has a SD/MMC/Transflash slot
#/dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/card auto defaults,sync,noauto 0 0
zubuntu is mmcblk0p2. There is no /boot/boot.cfg, but /boot/kernel-cmdline.
kernel-cmdline says:Code: [Select]console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 noinitrd rootfstype=ext2 fbcon=rotate:1 dyntick=enable debug psplash=true quiet
Void is mmcblk0p3, and it is ext4.
/boot/boot.cfg says:
Code: [Select] LABEL=VoidLinux
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
APPEND=root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rootfstype=ext4 fbcon=rotate:1 noinitrd quietI use the same syntax with Void in mmcblk0p3, so I don't understand what is wrong with zgrom.
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Title: games and emulators on the SL-5500
Post by: greguu on April 13, 2020, 10:37:18 pm
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Quote from: ceratophyllum
Quote from: greguuJust had a thought, the boot.cfg syntax had changed with newer kexecboot kernels. so best to check the boot.cfg included with zgrom and adjust to syntax present in newer kexecboot kernel (voidz, alarmz or oe)
ok, I'm using the arch 3.10 kexecboot linked in the Void Linux install thread. It works fine with void and zubuntu, but I still get a messed up screen after some text scrolls by too quickly to read with zgrom. zgrom makes it to the login: prompt but I get errors saying something about deleted inode and ext2fs_lookup. fsck.ext2 finds nothing wrong with /deb/mmcblk0p1. It mounts and seems normal with the card in my PC. You can type, but nothing happens when you press enter.
zgrom and zubuntu partitions are formatted ext2.
mmcblk0p1 is zgrom
/boot/zImage is the spitz zImage. (I'm using SL-3100.)
/boot/boot.cfg says this:Code: [Select]# First kernel stanza. # Show this label in kexecboot menu.
LABEL=ZGrom-0.1
# Specify full kernel path on target.
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
#
# Append this tags to the kernel cmdline.
APPEND=console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 fbcon=rotate:1/etc/fstab says:Code: [Select]# stock fstab - you probably want to override this with a machine specific one
#rootfs / auto defaults 1 1
/dev/mmcblk0p1 / auto rw,noatime 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs noauto 0 0
tmpfs /var/volatile tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /media/ram tmpfs defaults 0 0
# uncomment this if your device has a SD/MMC/Transflash slot
#/dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/card auto defaults,sync,noauto 0 0
zubuntu is mmcblk0p2. There is no /boot/boot.cfg, but /boot/kernel-cmdline.
kernel-cmdline says:Code: [Select]console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 noinitrd rootfstype=ext2 fbcon=rotate:1 dyntick=enable debug psplash=true quiet
Void is mmcblk0p3, and it is ext4.
/boot/boot.cfg says:
Code: [Select] LABEL=VoidLinux
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
APPEND=root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rootfstype=ext4 fbcon=rotate:1 noinitrd quietI use the same syntax with Void in mmcblk0p3, so I don't understand what is wrong with zgrom.
try to add Code: [Select]root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rootfstype=ext2 to the zgrom boot.cfg and also try to load zgrom from a single partitioned ext2 sdcard with size of <=4GB