Messages

1

Zaurus - Hardware discussion / USB/serial cable for debugging?

« on: October 17, 2017, 03:57:43 pm »

I most probably have one lying in a drawer somewhere, PM or email me.

2

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: January 11, 2016, 10:58:36 am »

Greetings,

Zgrom was a long time ago. Unfortunately, i have never uploaded the source tarballs even though i meant to. And i doubt i'll find any copies on my old hard drives. I can't exactly remember if i've done any Z specific modifications to the SDL libraries. I did write iWMMXt optimised fb rotation routines that i used in Xfbdev and in most of the emulators included with ZGrom. But i think i never got them to work properly with SDL for some reason.

The framebuffer driver in ZGrom kernels was also modified. It used the internal SRAM and SDRAM for framebuffer storage. So at QVGA resolutions the entire framebuffer would fit into the internal sram. The result is a very noticeable increase in fps on most emulators. At VGA resolution, the framebuffer was split between internal SRAM and SDRAM since it wouldn't fit into internal SRAM.

3

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: January 22, 2013, 07:22:40 am »

I wrote the launchers manually.

I'm not sure if all MAME4ALL scaling options will work. I suspect some of them expect a real GP2X hardware scaler.
I will gladly include Caprice and Stella if someone would properly test them.  Then again, i might take a completely
different approach and turn all the emulators into proper .ipk packages. Zgrom does come with full packaging support.
That way users can easily install/remove emulator and apps. Of course, this also implies a repository...

4

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: January 21, 2013, 07:30:47 am »

Gmenu2x sections are in /usr/share/gmenu2x/sections. So your caprice launcher should probably be in /usr/share/gmenu2x/sections/emulators.

As for how to access the launcher menu for "add link in", please read this:

http://code.google.com/p/zgrom/wiki/Gmenu2X

In a nutshell, you can enter/exit the launcher menu with the "Menu" key on your Zaurus.
Please note that new launchers created with the "add link in" feature will not be placed in  /usr/share/gmenu2x/sections/. They will be placed somewhere under $HOME/.gmenu2x/sections.

Yes, i'm aware of the DrPocketSnes typo, it will be fixed in v0.2. Thanks anyway!

5

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: January 17, 2013, 07:06:27 am »

Thank you, that is great news! The alignment fix conflicts with anything else? And, does it hold until the next system reboot? If so, maybe adding that line in one of the initialization scripts might be a good idea, and I might just do that.

I remember a lot of discussions about MAME. There were a lot attempts to port MAME to the Zaurus and nobody was successful. Which is strange, since the architecture is nothing esoteric.

I personally am happy if your rom can run MAME games like anything up to circa 1986 with near full speed. I'm talking stuff like Galaxian, Pacman, X-Rally, etc.

The kernel that comes with ZGrom will by default fix unaligned accesses and warn the user through dmesg that such an access happened. So no, the alignment fixup has to be manually turned off each time you reboot.
I suggest you write a gmenu2x launcher for caprice. You can also wrap caprice invocation in a shell script, that way you can disable alignment fixup just for caprice. Certain emulators that come with
ZGrom do just that, take a look at DrPocketSnes for example.

I have also started a native zaurus port of MAME but i have abandoned it due to a lack of motivation. There are very few people who use Zaurus machines these days and even fewer people who use ZGrom. But you should be fine with GP2X MAME that comes with ZGrom. Games that you mentioned should work fullspeed with sound.

6

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: January 15, 2013, 03:02:23 pm »

Yes, you can run GP2X binaries with GINGE. However, not all of them will work. Unfortunately, MAME4ALL runs a bit slow. It works quite well if you disable sound.

I'll install Zgrom this weekend. Can't wait for it. The fact that Mame is useable at all is great, as, so far, there wasn't a useable Mame for the Akita.

Is there any chance to run Amstrad games in Zgrom through the CapriceGP2X emulator? That was my first computer.

I never tried running CapriceGP2X before.  I tried it just now and it seems to work. There's just one important thing you have to do before you run it:

echo 0 > /proc/cpu/alignment

Certain GP2X binaries will cause a lot of alignment faults that can slow your system to a crawl if they are not ignored. On the GP2X, alignment faults are ignored by default. The above line will do the same on your Z.

MAME4ALL would be a lot faster if it were a native Zaurus port. Probably close to full speed.

7

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: January 14, 2013, 06:06:41 am »

What a pleasant surprise. I just found this post, promptly went to your site, and I couldn't believe it. We can run GP2X binaries now? So how is the MAME4All emulator running? I'll be installing this soon. Thank you for your efforts!

Yes, you can run GP2X binaries with GINGE. However, not all of them will work. Unfortunately, MAME4ALL runs a bit slow. It works quite well if you disable sound.

8

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Announcing Zgrom 0.1

« on: October 22, 2012, 09:36:30 am »

ZGrom is a gaming oriented distribution for Sharp Zaurus C1000/C3x00 devices.
It's a console based distribution built around the Gmenu2X SDL GUI.
ZGrom has a wide selection of quality emulators, game engines and apps.

More information and downloads can be found on the ZGrom project site:

http://code.google.com/p/zgrom/

9

For Sale / Wanted / [wtb] Sharp Zaurus 3200

« on: March 07, 2012, 11:04:52 am »

I ended up buying a SL3000 off eBay. I'm sorted for now

--Rarez

Yes, it's a bit more than what I'm willing to part with but I'm still going to try obtain one. Thanks nonetheless I knew about that site.

I'm looking to buy a Zaurus 3200 to pass my spare time again with.
I guess tell me if you're willing to sell and what price you want for it and we can go from there.
Oh and also if it comes with anything like cf card or wifi card.

Im located in Australia too so a postage cost rough estimate would be handy


Thanks
Rarez

You can still get a new one at www.pulster.de. Although the price is a bit high given the age of the device...

How much did you pay for it?

10

General Discussion / Openmoko Freerunner - The Saga Continuums

« on: February 11, 2012, 07:56:43 am »

This might be a bit naive of a question... But how is GTA04 any better than an average android or WinMo phone with similar specs and an unlocked bootloader?

11

For Sale / Wanted / [wtb] Sharp Zaurus 3200

« on: February 04, 2012, 07:40:13 am »

I'm looking to buy a Zaurus 3200 to pass my spare time again with.
I guess tell me if you're willing to sell and what price you want for it and we can go from there.
Oh and also if it comes with anything like cf card or wifi card.

Im located in Australia too so a postage cost rough estimate would be handy


Thanks
Rarez

You can still get a new one at www.pulster.de. Although the price is a bit high given the age of the device...

12

Software / Opera Mini

« on: November 23, 2011, 12:04:53 pm »

Microemulator might be a better way of running J2ME apps.

http://www.microemu.org/
http://my.opera.com/ariesptn/blog/2008/11/...-run-opera-mini

13

Sharp ROMs / Prism 2.5 Firmware Trouble

« on: October 21, 2011, 07:11:29 am »

You don't have make (and probably gcc) installed. You need to find an sdk package for sharp/roms. I think it was called zgcc or something like that. You will probably have a hard time finding that, maybe it would be easier if you compiled hostap-utils on your desktop. You will need a cross compiler.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distri...0.12.05.tar.bz2

here's some info on cross compiling:

https://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Pdaxro...oss_Compilation

Hostap-utils should be trivial to cross compile as it probably depends only on libc.

14

Ubuntu / Zubuntu From Flash Attempt 2

« on: June 18, 2010, 06:21:40 am »

I stand corrected. Thanks for the info!

15

Ubuntu / Zubuntu From Flash Attempt 2

« on: June 10, 2010, 12:20:24 pm »

MTD partitions can be hardcoded into the kernel or defined through the kernel command line. kexecboot kernels provided by openembedded default to partitions hardcoded into the kernel. the partitions are defined in "/drivers/mtd/nand/sharpsl.c". Now, i presume you want one partition of maximum size (121Mib i believe). This is a problem since the zubuntu flash installer assumes two partitions as defined by the sharp rom and it's derivatives (or maybe early 2.4 kernel based pdaxrom builds, i can't remember) while the kexecboot kernel also assumes two (or three?)  partitions but of different sizes. I think that's your problem.

What i think you should do:

1). use pdaxrom R198 to run zubuntu flash installer and change the script to install to /dev/mtdblock2. R198 defines by default a 121Mib nand partition (mtdblock2).
2). You need to change the nand partitioning in the kexecboot kernel. Either change the definitions in sharpsl.c or provide partition definitions via the kernel command line.
     (add "mtdparts=sharpsl-nand:7168k(System),-(Rootfs)" to the kernel command line).

This _should_ work but i can't give you any guarantees.

But be warned. If this works, zubuntu will still need the SD card inserted at all times. The biggest part of the rootfs tree is still on the SD card, namely the whole "/usr" tree. The zubuntu rootfs will simply not fit inside the nand chip. As for speed improvements, i dont think you will see a big difference.