Messages

1

General Discussion / Sl-c Charging Jack Won't Fit (solved)

« on: March 13, 2012, 10:04:07 am »

I've got 3 chargers for my SL-C860 - the original world voltage one from Dynamism plus two others I've picked up on the way. I use one at work, one at home and the diddy little original for travel. A few days ago my two recent chargers refused to charge my Z. The jacks would go part way in but not snugly home - and not far enough to charge.

Nil desperandum! The original charger still worked fine. But what could be wrong with the other two??? It must be some mechanical fault in the Z's jack socket. Squinting in with a magnifying glass I couldn't spot any foriegn objects and the central contact was straight. Perhaps the side contact "leaf" has been bent out of position?

So, out with the watchmaker's screwdriver and strip off the back of the Zaurus. The DC jack socket has a slot down the side (to make its profile as low as possible) and it's easy to look through the magnifying glass at the side contact - perfectly OK. So what's the problem?

Then I noticed a yellow "collar" at the base of the central contact. It's almost 2mm thick and stops my charging connectors from going right home. Funny - it doesn't seem to belong there. I can slide it out with the tip of a scalpel. Once out, I see that it's the insulating tip/ring from the jack of my original charger, broken off whilst in the socket. Obscure or what? Anyway, problode solved - charging can resume at all locations!

Richard

2

Cxx0 Hardware / Probably Fried The Charging Circuit

« on: September 21, 2011, 07:11:15 am »

Excellent! Which hub dynamo do you have and what value capacitor did you use? Do you measure 5V now, instead of the 4.7V you had before?

For headlamp operation, LED headlamps are *very* good at low speed. One of these may give you enough light when your Z is charging - no guarantees. But, as they give much more light than a halogen (x2 light over x2 area - I've measured my B&M IQ Fly) you may consider it a useful upgrade, even if Z-charging doesn't work

Richard

3

Cxx0 Hardware / Probably Fried The Charging Circuit

« on: September 13, 2011, 05:23:53 am »

Bad luck having to go through all this grief. At least you tried but, as gromituk says, a bike dynamo is a complex source of power. You would most definitely have needed a smoothing capacitor, quite a large value, to supplement your rectifier pack as the frequency would be quite low at low speeds. Especially so as you have a hub dynamo!

The fact that you measured up to 4.7V on your DVM is consistent with the regulated 5V being periodically "interrupted" as the rectified, un-smoothed voltage fell to zero every half-cycle. I should think it was this that confused the charging circuit and brought about the failure.

I seem to recall that the Z needs a 1-amp power supply - perhaps someone can confirm this. Even so, all bike dynamos I have ever seen only produce 0.5-amps. (Even the 6-watt hub dynamo my Nearest & Dearest has on her bike is 12V @ 0.5A) You *could* make a suitable power supply using a switch-mode regulator to translate (in excess of) 10V @ 0.5A down to 5V @ 1A when you're pedaling fast enough, but I suspect this is quite a challenging project.

Richard

4

Off Topic forum / I Don't Get It, No Body Posts But Ussually About 20 Users Online?

« on: August 08, 2011, 05:40:27 am »

I check once or twice a week for new posts. The rest of the time I just use my Z - mostly just as a diary & address book. [sigh] What a waste of technology!

Richard

5

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Compact Flash Card Applet

« on: November 10, 2010, 06:27:21 am »

DaveL

Sorry, the one crucial piece of information I missed is that I'm running Cacko 1.23 but I had assumed it would be similar enough to Sharp that it was worth a go.

Install stdout and stderr capture (had to learn how to do this!!!):-

Code: [Select]

Unpacking hbzcard...Done.
Configuring hbzcard...Display size = 480x640
Done.
Similarly, uninstall:-

Code: [Select]

ipkg_remove: Removing hbzcard...
Display size = 480x640
Done.
So the screen full of repeated output must be to do with reboot. Just looked again and it's a screen full of modprobes then a line or 2 or 3 of something different at the bottom. Interestingly, ipkg remove *doesn't* force a reboot (although the centre of screen cursor briefly appears) whereas "Remove Software" program still does (similar screenful of modprobes, etc.)

Yes, my memory card gives D, not M - poor short-term memory - also can't remember if Cacko gave a taskbar icon for inserted cards. They seem to mount automatically.

I'm happy to try a debug version and send you the output. Please don't feel obliged if you don't want to open a new can of Cacko-flavoured worms!!!! But if you do, put a "secret" file on your web site and PM the location to me.

Cheers,

Richard

6

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Compact Flash Card Applet

« on: November 09, 2010, 09:49:08 am »

DaveL - very interested in this as I stopped using my RTM-8000 card due to the clunky mount/unmount of the Sharp applet - and card sticks out too far to be left in! Yes, I know your app's written around SL-C3100 but thought I'd give it a spin on my SL-C860 anyway. Here's what happened:-

Installs but gives a repeated error about (USB??? - not quick enough to read) - reboots as expected.

"L" in taskbar.

L becomes M as it recognises my CF memory (actually an Olympus XD adaptor) - Photo app. can see photos OK.

Doesn't seem to notice when my Trendnet Ethernet card is inserted. L remains L :¬(

Sees my Audiovox card and briefly shows M, followed by hourglass while amber LED flashes as it tries to ... (find network???) Problem could well be an expired/out-of-date SIM card or my laziness not setting up network in /etc/ppp/peers & options.

Uninstall gives possibly similar error as install but reboots fine. Cards recognised (did there used to be a memory icon? - can't remember)

Cheers anyway!

Richard

7

General Discussion / Larger Sdhc Cards On Sharp Rom

« on: June 02, 2010, 08:36:51 am »

I've been quiet for a while - I haven't lost interest but things are complicated.

Xamindar - I had FAT16 fixed in my mind for compatibility with flashing, but I've now tried FAT32 and Ext2. I don't know how I managed 32G with FAT16 either!!! Yes, I rebooted after applying the changes - good suggestion though.

There's definitely a problem but it might be:-

• Finger trouble on my part (most likely!),
• I broke the SDHC card by formatting it,
• The disc utilities on our Linux laptop (the only thing I have which is SDHC compatible) are ... errr? ... unpredictable, buggy, or amplify my finger trouble,
• I don't entirely understand how to manage discs,
• Or ... I bought a dodgy ebay-special SDHC :¬(

I don't currently have any other SDHC cards to try. The SD slot is still working because my old card is fine. I'm not giving this 100% attention at the moment but I spent last night trying to verify whether my SDHC was genuine using H2testw and I didn't entirely understand the errors I was getting. They didn't seem to be saying "you've got a fake". Re-formating the device changed things somewhat, but it takes an age to run the test.

This isn't a cry for help; just to let you all know I haven't vanished.

Richard

8

General Discussion / Larger Sdhc Cards On Sharp Rom

« on: May 22, 2010, 04:33:05 pm »

Folks, thanks for your suggestions. I found that:-
/lib/modules/2.4.18-rmk7-pxa3-embedix/kernel/drivers/block/sharp_mmcsd_m.o
(without .rom in the path) also gave a Read-only file system error.

So I tried the remount,rw and then copied the file to:-
/lib/modules.rom/2.4.18-rmk7-pxa3-embedix/kernel/drivers/block/sharp_mmcsd_m.o
which gave no errors. Then ran the SDHC IPK which also ran without errors (I was lazy and used the GUI package manager) so presumably I had chosen the correct file location.

The old 256MB SD is still recognised seemingly without any problems, but the 32GB card is giving me a headache. After fun & games trying to backup the old card onto the new and the new 32GB card not being recognised, I suddenly realised it was formatted to FAT32. Nil desperandum, I thought! I just went to the OESF SD And CF FAQ and formatted it. No, this doesn't seem to work - gives an error about the size of the card! OK, I'll do it on my PC - eventually (finger &/or brain trouble!) However, now it's FAT16 but still not working correctly. Sometimes it sits there saying "Updating Information", sometimes it doesn't. But it always seems to lock up the Zaurus.

Of course, I may have a duff SD card - it is an Ebay special after all! Also, I note the comment in the FAQ that SD cards work fine so long as the filesystem is left alone.  I'm not beaten yet but I've got other stuff to do. I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again. All for now,

Richard

9

General Discussion / Larger Sdhc Cards On Sharp Rom

« on: May 20, 2010, 09:16:22 am »

I see ... it's not IPKG throwing up the MD5 error to complain it's got a duff IPK, it's the SDHC package itself (wisely) checking the file it's about to patch.

Right, grabbed the original Sharp file (thanks klaxon & xamindar). Made backup of Cacko package to *internal* memory and copied Sharp file and SDHC IPK, again, to internal memory.

su   root
cd    /destination_directory
cp    /path_to/new_Sharp_file    sharp_mmcsd_m.o
... gives me an error ...
cp: unable to open "sharp_mmcsd_m.o" : Read-only file system

Any ideas what blindingly obvious thing it is I've missed - apart from "average-or-better brains" when they were being handed out, that is.

Thanks,

Richard

10

Sharp ROMs / New Member - Just Blown Cacko Into My Sl-c860

« on: May 20, 2010, 08:52:41 am »

Greetings! Thanks for the reply Xamindar. It wasn't my intention to duplicate the SDHC thread elsewhere on the forum, just do my best to show I was a real person on the new member topic area. I'll continue the SDHC stuff on the other thread.

I see members don't get to see the new member applications. Probably a good thing as, sadly, it's about 99.99% spammers :¬(

Richard

11

Sharp ROMs / New Member - Just Blown Cacko Into My Sl-c860

« on: May 14, 2010, 04:17:29 am »

Good to see you guys have lives outside Zaurus!

Seeing the post about SDHC cards, I tried downloading the 860 file and I get an MD5 error when running IPKG from the command line, just like Keef. I tried downloading with Opera, Netfront and also on my big Linux (Ubuntu) box. I believe I'm right in saying that IPK files are modified DEBs and effectively a GZIP archive. When I try and look at the file on my Linux box with Gnome File Roller, it opens OK but try and extract and I get "an Error occurred while extracting".

All for now,

Richard

12

Sharp ROMs / New Member - Just Blown Cacko Into My Sl-c860

« on: May 12, 2010, 02:53:02 am »

I've had my SL-C860 since ... 2003 (I think) but only pressed it into service when my Psion 3C failed in 2005. I've run the standard Sharp ROM all this time, occasionally thinking of trying one of the alternatives. I've just taken the plunge and blown Cacko 1.23 - brilliant!

Also got 512MB SD, Audiovox GPRS, Symbol Spectrum WiFi, Ethernet ... and some other stuff I've forgotten.

All for now,

Richard