Messages

1

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Things I've Learned From A Bricked C3000

« on: June 06, 2005, 04:52:51 am »

I can't help but give you a big five here.  I believe the learning path of playing Zaurus can be quite long (or no end point??), but we can find it rewarding and enjoyable along the way.

-- duhbert (yet another dumb newbie)

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / A Question About The Built-in Keyboard

« on: June 05, 2005, 05:48:16 am »

Got the solution!

After reseting my C1000 to the original Japanese rom, I installed a few packages, plus the Cyrillic input method files (the .so and the .cf, plus the symbolic links) found in Cacko rom.  It seemed something was missing and I could only the call up a blank virtual keyboard without letters on it.  Then the hardware keyboard began to behave strangely as mentioned in the first post.  This morning I removed those Cyrillic keyboard files and reboot.  The built-in keyboard is back to normal then.

An interesting incident to me, despite the fuss.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / A Question About The Built-in Keyboard

« on: June 04, 2005, 05:45:20 am »

Hi there,

While I am still being excited about the revival of my C1000, I discovered an issue with the built-in keyboard: It seems there is no way for me to type many characters printed in blue above the keys, including

<,  ?,  ^ , =

And also these (can't type the symbols directly here):

Fn+D, Fn+U,  Fn+I,  Fn+L  

And perhaps a few more, but I can't recall them for now.    

Also many symbols seem to map wrongly on the usb keyboard.

What would be the cause of this?  Is there any way to fix it?

Thanks for your help in advance!

N.B. I have reset the ROM to the original Japanese one (from TRIsoft's english rom).  

duhbert (a brand new newbie)

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Amazing! My C1000 Is Un-bricked!

« on: June 03, 2005, 07:11:39 am »

Oh, I forgot to add that the problem and confusions are all due to my ignorance of zaurus, and nothing wrong with C1000 inherently.  

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Amazing! My C1000 Is Un-bricked!

« on: June 03, 2005, 06:46:21 am »

Hi there!

I am so happy to tell you all that my C1000, which was previously suspected to be bricked/fried/killed by an absolute newbie/linux dummy (= me) in this thread, has been revived by TRIsoft just within a very short time (for some money, of course, but just a small amount.   ).

In the desperation of the tragic accident of my C1000, I contacted TRIsoft to find out the possibility of having it repaired by them, despite the fact that I didn't get my Zaurus from them.  To my big surprise, they responded within an hour to ask me to go ahead with sending them the device with no fee for inspection, unless it's in need of repair.  They even offered to arrange  to send it back to Japan if necessary.  Even more surprisingly,  in fact TRIsoft had sent me a pm before I sent them the first mail.    

So I sent my vegetarian C1000 to them last Thursday.  It was delivered Tuesday morning, and, they fixed it in the SAME morning.  Then they informed me of the revival of the device right after that and asked me how I charged the device.  I told them I used to use a step-down transformer to convert the voltage in Europe into the Japanese 100v.  Actually I was just thinking of buying the original EA-70 because I will soon be working in the States for two months.  TRIsoft kindly offered to send me an additional US cable FREE OF CHARGE!    

Everything was packed and sent back to me later in the afternoon in the same day.  Finally, my living Akita was home again the next day afternoon!  I do feel being treated as a real customer rather than a sheer order/invoice number.  

I used the EA-70 to charge it up, and pressed the power button when it was fully fed.  I greeted it with a satisfied smile and after a few seconds it gave me a 'bow-wow' in return.    

This is the best online shopping experience and service I  have ever had.  And what a pleasant beginning of my zaurus journey!   Again many thanks to TRIsoft and those who have offered kind advice along the way.

The lesson I learn from this story is: Never try out any unfamiliar scripts/commands (especially those that have to do with something deep in the system) if you are a newbie, unless they are fully tested and discussed by the experienced users.  Rushing ahead often means putting the buddy's life at stake.  Be patient to search, to ask, to wait.  Also I have discovered the big difference between palm and zaurus.  They are just of two distinct species.  My Akita will deserve the best from me.  

6

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 27, 2005, 11:48:37 am »

Many thanks to all for your insights and remarks.  

Obviously I have messed up the precious and the problem I created is already far beyond my poor knowledge.    

I have just sent it away for repair and hopefully I am lucky enough to see it again.

BTW thanks maxg for your interesting proposal.  But I don't think tweaking the internal hardwares will do any good to me as an absolute newbie.

7

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Might Want To Avoid The C1000

« on: May 27, 2005, 11:41:09 am »

I must admit that the problem now is apparently my mis-formatting of the 'updater partition' (although I can only cry silently in my head "what the heck is this??").  But still the 'booting lockup' thing is unexplained and totally unexpected to me as a beginner.

So it's a truly PEBKAC and please don't go overboard when looking at my thread.  I am just caught in a very desperate situation and am asking for help.  To start any bashing or flamming here is never my intention.  That's that.

Then again, i hope the zaurus expert users can understand my situation: as an absolute zaurus/linux beginner, I don't even know what partition is inside the system, let alone updater partition, root partition, jff2, ext2, etc.  I am not sure whether such info exists or it is accessible to newbies.   And after days of trying and found no answer here (about failing to boot beyond the "Sharp" startup screen -- I am afraid I put it in a terrbile and laughable way but I can't do anything more), I googled for quite some hours and finally ran into that website saying how to revive a dead zaurus with almost the same symptom by entering his commands.  I really can't tell what he and his page are up to, but i tried that out thinking (very foolishly) that: 1) many posts here say that zaurus is so robust that it's hard to kill it completely, and 2) this is the only solution I could find on the web so why not give it a go.

Yes, the zaurus/linux experts can just call me a problematic user and the main source of technical support nightmares.  That's quite true from their perspective; but I can still tell a CD-Rom tray from a coffer holder.  But I don't care.  I am sincerely grateful to those offering detailed help and advice, and my zaurus learning process has just begun.  

I would say playing zaurii outside Japan years ago must be limited to those who know a great deal of linux .  But it seems things have changed over the years.  Now the zaurus has become increasingly popular and there are more and more dummy users (lusers?) like me.  As a palm users for years I can only say the zaurus is much more sophisticated (and imtimidating to me) than palm.  

I have just sent away my zaurus to someone who have the expertise to investigate and hopefully fix the problem.  If it will be certified to be dead, I would say this is also going to be the end of my zaurus experience.  Why I bought C1000 is mainly because of its functionality, compact size and decent casing.    If it turns out to be a luxurious permanent paperweight I'd say zaurus is not suitable for a particular type of idiots and I can only look for something else...

And I may try to keep away from linux as possible as well.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 25, 2005, 12:28:05 pm »

@duhbert:

On stock C1K with Sharp rom, the nand flash chip has the following partitions:

0x00000000-0x00700000 : "smf"
0x00700000-0x04100000 : "root"
0x04100000-0x08000000 : "home"

So, it looks like you trashed your root fs by formating it as ext2 fs. To get it back, you'll need to restore whole nand image. But unless you did something else too, updater should not be affected, since it lives on first nand partition. So, it doesn't really explain why you can't boot it into updater's mode.
Did you try to hook up a serial cable to your C1K's I/O port and see if it spits any messages?
-albertr
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=81454\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Thanks for your information!  So it seems it may have to do with my wrong settings.  But I remember that ext2 fs thing is the last thing I did to it before the blackout, so neither do I understand why it can't get into the service menu.  I have repeated the suggested procedures carefully for several days but still no results.  

Does C1k have any port other than the USB (and the IR) one?  How can I access that I/O port and see any messages?

What worries me most is it seems my C1k can't power up any more, either with AC or a full battery.

BTW i notice one (slightly) strange thing about my C1k: the On/Off button is a bit hard to use.  Sometimes I need to press it more than one time to get it to work.  Today I read another thread here also talking about the switch on C3k.  Would that be the same problem?

Thanks again!  Your help is much appreciated!

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 25, 2005, 04:59:39 am »

Bad news: absolutely nothing ever happened whatever suggested methods I tried on the C1000.

It's dead.

... Even worse I've been trying to contact my friend in Japan for a week but he didn't respond to me...  

Shall I just throw it in the trash bin and choose not to use zaurus anymore?  I just can't imagine how come such a device is so fragile and vulnerable.

As I am in Europe, I just wonder if companies other than Sharp can help me repair it at a cost.  I can't send it to Sharp Japan if i can't provide a vaild japanese address, as the warranty card says the warranty service is limited in Japan only...

This is my very first zaurus.  But it went dead in less than one week.  I am sure that I did take extra care of the hardware and no physical abuse at all.  Actually I just installed a few app, bluetooth (a newer one for the new kernel) and that's it.

Maybe zaurii are not suitable at all for non-linux gurus?  

10

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 24, 2005, 09:43:02 am »

I remember before the disaster happend to the C1000, I followed the info here to attempt to get out of the reboot lockup:

http://www.dushka.co.uk/icewing/articles/?Article=7

And I keyed this in:

Code: [Select]

mkfs.ext2 /dev/mtdblock1

mount -t ext2 -o sync /dev/mtdblock1 /home
cd /
tar xf /root/.home_default.tar
cd /home/system
tar xf /root/.var_default.tar
oncheck -clear

reboot
Did I do something awful here?  Thanks for your wisdom again.

11

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 24, 2005, 05:35:29 am »

Thank you very much indeed, benito and Jacknife.

I am leaving the C1000 completely detached from power supply for the whole day, and then I'll be trying the suggested CPR technique on my beloved-but-unfortunate vegetable Akita.

Certainly I will let you know the result, be it good (pray to Tux?) or bad (oh dun zuck me like this....)

12

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 22, 2005, 06:45:49 pm »

Thanks again....

I am really surprised to see your story -- ALMOST the same here.  I goy my C1000 about a week ago.  I charged it for about 10 hours before the first use.  Then I tried to install the packages and ... (long story short) the booting was locked up at the Sharp screen with a floating # cursor below.  I logged in as root and reboot, but rebooting simply stopped at the same spot.  After spending a whole day reading thru the posts here, I found I am not alone to have experienced this problem on Cxk.  

Anyway, today I was also away from my C1000 with AC plugged in for about 10 hours, hoping to see the orange light come back (that's exactly the same thing you did).  BUT, I got no luck in it.  Still total blackout.  No charging light.  No DM menu or Flashmenu.  I could do nothing but stare at the dark screen which looks like a black hole to me now...

I have also taken out the battery to test its voltage again.  It does has a decent amont of power left (I guess 80% as far as I can tell from my friend's voltage meter), let alone empty or discharged.

So more and more evidence goes for the theory that my precious C1000 was bricked/toasted/fried.  And the most probable cause of death would be a dead circuit inside the body.  Looks like a major surgery at its Japan home is inevitable...  

Consider myself unlucky and an utterly victim of my ignorance of linux/zaurus knowledge.   Completely demoralized...

13

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 22, 2005, 06:02:25 am »

I've tried to get into DM more than a dozen times, but to no avail.

Supposedly to get into the DM menu at least there must be power supply, but the charging light has never come back again since the Z fell into coma.

I begin to suspect this is some hardware failure.  Now trying to contact my Japanese friend and arranging to send it to him and to ask him to do me a favor to contact the shop/Sharp.   Poor me.  

14

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

« on: May 21, 2005, 12:55:23 pm »

Hi....

My C1000 is really short-lived.  Today when it was booting up it was locked in the Sharp screen, after a numerous reboots and trials, I open the battery cover, set the switch to 'in use' and then prick the recessed reset button.   Then it was a total blackout.  I plugged in the charger and there was not even charging light.  I referred to Trisoft's startup guide and tried to access the DM mode, but nothing happened.  My C1000 just went dead.  Even afte charging it for an hour, there was still no charging light.  I tested the battery and it was not empty.
What happened to my precious?  Was the circuit fried?  What do I do about that?  I know the last resort is to send it back to Japan for repair (my Japanese bought it for me from Hyperfactory in Tokyo and it came with a one-year warranty).   But before sending it away, does anyone know any method to wake it up from coma?  Thanks!

(SIGH....)

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C1000/3x00 Hardware / Usb Devices Working On C1000/3000

« on: May 19, 2005, 04:49:21 am »

Hey,

I finally can lay my hands on a C1000.  The finishing is just darn gorgeous and has a serious metal build appearance.  I am so glad that the usb host capability makes it a genuine laptop replacement.

For testing usb things, my very first attempt is to connect a usb optical mouse.  I used a Logitech M-BJ58 and it just takes less than one minute to get it to work.  But there is a problem.  It seems the screen cannot refresh quickly enough to catch up with the mouse cursor.  As a result a lot of after images are left along  the cursor path.  Here is a screenshot of what happened when I flick the mouse over the clock face.  Actually the problem is more serious in Hancom Word, in which the program responds veyr slowly with many rapid cursor movements.

What would give rise to this: Z's screen?  The usb cable?  Or the mouse?  Does it happen to other mice as well (only got one mouse to test)?  Thanks!