Messages

1

General Discussion / Flashing power light on SL5500

« on: November 10, 2004, 04:12:57 am »

First post in ages - the only real news is that I've been tinkering around with OZ 3.5.1, but ended up going back to 3.3.5 as the latter actually works (for me, anyway). But that's as may be...

I put my 5500 on to charge last night, and noticed the power light (which usually glows when the battery is charging) was blinking steadily - about two flashes per second. Does this mean the battery itself is wearing out, or perhaps there's a problem with the power supply?

Any help gratefully received - many thanks!

Tim

2

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Bluetooth with 3.3.5

« on: August 24, 2004, 08:22:30 am »

Hi Elleomea,

Please could you tell me more about what "messing around" you did to get Bluetooth working? I'm also using OZ 3.3.5 (on a 5500), and also got problems with files missing after installing the "bluez-zaurus" package. The Z seems to recognise my BT card (a "no-name" model - ID: BT0100M - which I was sent instead of the Blue Monkey card I ordered), but doesn't appear to go any further with it.

I'm hoping my BT card is compatible with my setup, otherwise I may have to return it to where I bought it from. Any help you can give would be much appreciated

Thanks,
Tim

3

Deals and Great Z Buys / Do not buy Bluemonkey CF from Expansys

« on: August 24, 2004, 08:21:16 am »

[Edit: I wanted to delete this post of mine, but can't find an option to do so. Sorry for the interruption ]

4

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Bluetooth on OZ 3.3.5

« on: August 23, 2004, 02:58:23 pm »

I just bought what I thought would be a Blue Monkey CF Bluetooth card from eXpansys (see this thread), but got a "no-name" card instead. I understand it can be made to work with the Zaurus, so I want to try.

The ZUG HOWTO for Bluetooth is for the Sharp ROM, but I'm using OZ 3.3.5. I've read elsewhere that BlueZ doesn't support OZ, but this may have been for an earlier version of the ROM. I also found this article on an Opie WiKi, but some of the packages they refer to aren't in the OZ feeds, as far as I've seen.

Can anyone give me an idea which packages I need to install to get Bluetooth (BlueZ) running on OZ 3.3.5? Or should I go for Affix instead? (I've tried Googling for the best solution, but none of them seem to agree with each other - have any other OZ users got this working?)

Many thanks,
Tim.

5

Deals and Great Z Buys / Do not buy Bluemonkey CF from Expansys

« on: August 21, 2004, 04:53:54 am »

OK, I took the plunge and ordered the Blue Monkey Bluetooth CF card/PC Card bundle from eXpansys. I'm now looking at it (they delivered it next day), and it is...

...the new "no-name" card and not the Blue Monkey one  Not that it really matters, so long as I can get it working (of which more in a moment), but it's a bit dodgy of eXpansys to advertise one product and ship another, especially when the BT card is apparently different on the inside.

The good news (in a manner of speaking) is that the card is functioning properly, and I've managed to get it working on my WinME laptop. It now pairs the PC with my new Motorola V500, and I can use the phone as a GPRS modem, as well as do OBEX file transfers over Bluetooth (mainly to transfer photos from the phone camera to the PC).

Now for the really tough part: the Zaurus  I've read the ZUG Bluetooth HOWTO, but it was written for the Sharp ROM and I'm using OpenZaurus 3.3.5 - do I have to do anything differently?

I Googled for "openzaurus bluetooth howto" and came up with a couple of possibilities:

* http://opie-bugs.oszine.de/oldwiki/index.p...ieBluetoothGprs - comprehensive, and includes setting up the graphical utilities, but I can't find some of the packages it mentions (bluetooth-modules, mainly) in the OZ feeds
* http://linux.mikeasoft.com/zaurust610orange.php - exclusively terminal-based (not that that's such a bad thing  ); I installed the "bluez-zaurus" OZ feed package he mentions, but couldn't locate some of the files and services he mentions

Is there one good, authoritative, working HOWTO for getting Bluetooth working on OZ, or can I just follow the ZUG HOWTO (even though it's based on the Sharp ROM)?

Many thanks,
Tim

6

Deals and Great Z Buys / Do not buy Bluemonkey CF from Expansys

« on: August 18, 2004, 02:14:39 pm »

I'm just wondering about this offer at eXpansys UK, where they're bundling a Bluemonkey CF Bluetooth card with a PC Card adapter.

It's noteworthy for me because the bundle costs less than the price they're asking for the Bluemonkey card on its own, and I'd like to use the card with my laptop as well as my 5500. Does anyone think it's likely that I would end up with the non-Bluemonkey card, if I went for this bundle, or is there no way to tell?

Also, I'm a bit unclear how much more work is needed to get the black/silver card working, if indeed I do end up with one of these. Is this info going to be added to the HOWTO?

Thanks for any help - I've just upgraded my phone to a Motorola V500, and hope to get it paired with my Z before too long...

Tim

7

Security and Networking / Motorola V500 & Zaurus

« on: August 17, 2004, 08:25:30 am »

I'm seriously thinking of upgrading my mobile phone (an ageing Nokia 6310i on Orange in the UK), for a newer one which I could use with my 5500 and a Bluetooth card. (Don't have the card yet, but it's only a matter of time  )

I don't have much to spend on the upgrade, but am considering a couple of new phones. The current frontrunner is the Motorola V500, which has GPRS and BT as well as many of the usual features you'd expect from a 2004 mobile (VGA camera, colour screen, Java, etc.).

Has anyone tried using a V500 as a GPRS modem for a Zaurus, either over BT or IRDA, or are there any issues with this phone I should know about?

Many thanks,
Tim

8

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Font problems with Opera 6.x on OZ 3.3.5

« on: July 29, 2004, 05:56:37 pm »

Has anyone else had problems with fonts in Opera 6.x, running on OZ? I only get a monospace font (like Courier, but narrower), and it doesn't scale at all, only giving me one size.

Any ideas how to fix this, so I get a better-looking font?

Many thanks,
Tim

9

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Web Browser for OZ

« on: July 11, 2004, 03:10:08 pm »

I'm not sure about this, but I think Opera 7.x adds support for the media type 'handheld' in CSS.

In plain English, if a Web site has a stylesheet optimised and set up specifically for handhelds (PDAs, smartphones, etc.), and there is a link to the stylesheet with 'media="handheld"' in the tag, a capable Web browser will use this stylesheet automatically, and you won't get the "tiny corner of the page" problem you usually get with Web sites.

Sadly, very few sites have "handheld" stylesheets associated with them, but it's a neat feature to have access to. Unfortunately, the Konqueror Embedded browser doesn't support "handheld" CSS, and neither does Opera 6. (This really surprised me, as Opera provides some useful docs on their site for creating specialised "handheld" stylesheets - here's one).

If Opera 7 does support this feature, that's enough of a reason for me to try it... though if it won't work on my Z, at least Opera 6 allows me to use Small Screen Rendering. Not quite what I wanted, but it's the next best thing  

Might try it, anyway - thanks for the idea,

Tim

10

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / XMMS/OX3.3.5 won't play Oggs from Grip

« on: July 08, 2004, 06:08:16 pm »

Schwach: I'm using exactly the same combination as you (SL5500, OZ 3.3.5, XMMS), although I don't think the problem that I'm having is due to NFS. (see my earlier post). "Your mileage may vary", as they say

Lardman said:

grip uses oggenc AFAIK to encode oggs. So maybe it can be passed an option to encode with an older version of the spec or you could find a slightly older oggenc.

Grip does use oggenc, which is why I'm puzzled at what I've just found. I'm a keen home recording musician, and I tried playing back a couple of Ogg files of my own home recordings, encoded using oggenc.

To my surprise, they played back perfectly on XMMS/Zaurus, unlike the Grip-ped tracks... which were also passed through oggenc. Maybe Grip does something strange to the Oggs, though I can't think what.

Personally I use the AudioCD IO slave in KDE and that works fine with the Sharp player and vorbis plugin.

I'm a GNOME user myself... not to start any arguments or anything  

HTH,
Tim

11

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Web Browser for OZ

« on: July 08, 2004, 04:13:20 pm »

I'm trying to get Opera 7 (downloaded from the ZUG site) running on my 5500 with OZ 3.3.5, but whether I install it to the RAM disk or SD card, it segfaults (SIGSEGV) immediately after loading. Has anyone else encountered/fixed this? (I searched the ZUG forums, but didn't come up with much that helped.)

Thanks,
Tim

12

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / XMMS/OX3.3.5 won't play Oggs from Grip

« on: July 05, 2004, 05:15:50 pm »

My word, that was quick

I really hope someone can think of a fix - I'm ripping my way through my CD collection, and don't want to use tkcOggRipper if I don't have to (I like the results from Grip much more).

Well, if anyone can come up with a workaround, it's you folks here  

Thanks so far,
Tim

13

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / XMMS/OX3.3.5 won't play Oggs from Grip

« on: July 05, 2004, 05:05:00 pm »

This evening, I was setting up an NFS mount on my 5500 (running OZ3.3.5), so I can listen to my Ogg file collection over my WLAN. I'm running XMMS on the Zaurus for multimedia playback.

Mounting the NFS share works perfectly, as does playing the Oggs, except for one big complication:

When I started ripping my CD collection to OGG format, I used tkcOggRipper running on our WinME laptop. After only a few CDs, I switched to Grip on my main Linux box, and Oggs created from Grip play back with no problems via XMMS on the Linux PC.

Problem is, they don't play back at all on XMMS/Zaurus. The most I get, if I'm 'lucky', is a split-second of garbled noise; most of the time, the file won't play, full stop.

I thought it might possibly be an NFS problem (despite the tkcOggRipper files playing fine), so I SFTPed one of the Grip Oggs over to the Z and tried playing that. No luck.

Has anyone else encountered problems with Grip-ped Ogg files on XMMS, and/or know a solution?

Many thanks,
Tim

14

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Multiple programs suddenly developed segfaults in OZ 3.3.5

« on: June 05, 2004, 04:42:13 am »

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Tim

15

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Network settings

« on: June 05, 2004, 04:41:53 am »

I asked the same question in this post a few weeks ago. Try dino\'s suggestion there - it works, although around the same time I started getting problems with a number of apps which would not start (see here).

Hopefully it is a coincidence - see what happens for you!

Hope this helps,
Tim