Messages

1

General Discussion / scratched screen repair

« on: September 24, 2004, 05:41:21 am »

I've never tried to do anything with Zaurus screen inself but I've had problem with power so I've opened my Zaurus already. TFT screen and touch screen are SEPARATE beasts (that's why you need to calibrate your Z in first place!) so forget about TFT: unless you'll totally destroy touchscreen TFT itself is quite safe.

2

Cxx0 General discussions / Problems with C760/860s?

« on: September 01, 2004, 08:56:41 am »

the possibility of bricking a zaurus are the same on any other top-pda.

If we are talking about Cxx then it's not 100% true: you need right type of power supply (you can not use native Japanese one). Usually if you buy "adopted" version or just borrow power from US versions of Zaurii you sghould be fine but I've seen quite a few bricked Zaurii when someone tried to use power adapted from Dell or some other not-quite-compatible device (Dell uses the same connector but other voltage).

As for mechnical stability - it's very good: my SL-C860 was in water three times, it was dropped on the stone floor and so on - and it still here and still work just fine. I've heard quite a few tales about how all this additional connectors and so on make it unreliable but in reality most other PDA's I've seen were unable to keep working even after one trip to lake...

3

User Request for Applications / Zaurus: A "Complete OS" with "Incomplete Apps

« on: May 22, 2004, 11:59:51 am »

I think, OpenOffice needs too much RAM.

I\'ve used OpenOffice on Pentium-200 system with 48MB RAM. Is was usable. Slow, but usable. Even latest version. Zaurus is actually faster and has bigger HDD (ok, my Zaurus has bigger HDD).

But I do not like to reflash everything every time I switch from laptop mode (pdaXrom) to PDA mode - that\'s my current problem!

4

Cxx0 General discussions / c860 original sharp software CD

« on: May 21, 2004, 09:07:12 am »

Its on the CD, not on the C860. Most non-Japanese apps won\'t get past the subdirectory names but a Wind-hozed app named ISO-buster was able to read the ISO image & extract the contents renamed.

Argh. Yes, most non-Japanese apps won\'t get past subdirectory names but one little known and hard to find Windows application named \"Windows Explorer\" works with Japanese names just fine - open \"My Computer\" and drag-and-drop files from CD!!!

P.S. I\'m assuming you are using Windows XP with Japanse support here (included in all versions of Windows XP on CD except embedded ones!)

5

General Discussion / Sotware Compatibility in ZAURUS

« on: March 13, 2004, 05:42:09 pm »

Sometimes I need to open a Spreadsheet of 10MB. I tried to open it in Pocket PC before but fail, even in a 128MB model. I guess it should not be memory problem, but system ability (Pocket Windows or Pocket Office).

It is memory problem. 128Mb is full size of memory available to device. If you are trying to compare power of modern PDA with power of PC then compare it with something like 8Mb RAM, 160MB HDD, 200MHz Pentium processor (quite powerfull system of 5-6 years ago). If you\'ll try to open 10Mb spreadsheet on such a system you\'ll expirience major problems. Just like with PDA today. Now, you can add 4Gb HDD to Zaurus, install X system there (C7xx models) and treat it as more-or-less powerfull supermininotebook. No problems with 10-20Mb spreadsheets. Is it possible ? Absolutely. Is it supported \"out of the box\" ? Absolutely not!

6

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Moving to SD... again.

« on: March 13, 2004, 04:41:08 pm »

Perhaps that mount option could be unknown, until know...

I\'d rather read \"you can you use this xpto option, it works without the need for that kind of kung-foo\" than that \"why don\'t you use that option? are you ignorant?\"...

Oops. Sorry if I offended someone. It\'s well-known feature of Linux kernel 2.4.x (Al Viro was really proud three years ago when he finally was able to make it work) and it\'s documented (it\'s used to pull parts of devfs, procfs or just any partition trees in chroot jail, for example), it\'s not some undocumented trick so I just assumed it was tried and rejected. Why was it rejected ? I was confused: I never had any problem with bind mounts for last few years but I\'ve read a lot about \"symlink horrors\" on Z so I assumed something prevent you from bind mount on Z...

7

General Discussion / Is the 5600 the best PDA for the price?

« on: March 01, 2004, 05:29:21 pm »

The C760 was replaced by the C860 and is REALLY expensive. I couldn\'t justify the amount personally no matter how much I would like a VGA screen.

Huh ? Is there such a big difference ? To me it looks more like $100 difference or so - more then Ok for VGA resolution and clamshell design. Compare for yourself: B500 and C860.

8

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Moving to SD... again.

« on: February 29, 2004, 06:32:05 pm »

Ok. I admit I do not yet have Zaurus, I\'m only thinking about it. But still...

Why do you feel any need to split you card at all To avoid symlinks ? I do it with bind option on my server system.

Here is /etc/fstab :
...
/dev/md3                                /mnt/RAID-A     reiserfs        defaults,usrquota,grpquota      1       1
/dev/md4                                /mnt/RAID-B     reiserfs        defaults,usrquota,grpquota      1       1
/dev/md5                                /mnt/RAID-C     reiserfs        defaults,usrquota,grpquota      1       1
/mnt/RAID-A/home                        /home           -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-C/systems                     /var/systems    -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-A/ftp                         /var/lib/ftp    -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-C/www                         /var/www        -               bind            0       0
/mnt/RAID-B/squid-cache                 /var/cache/squid        -       bind            0       0
...

/home and /var/ftp are directories as some programs like but both are in fact from /dev/md3 ... This way I can move any part of system to any RAID and still programs will not be confused (if you\'ll simplink /home to /mnt/RAID-A/home then /home/.. will not be equal to / and this confuses some scripts but when bind mount is used everythin works as expected). Why it does not work on Z ? Why play with symplinks or split puny card in half when bind mount can solve all problems ? What I\'m missing here ?