1
For Sale / Wanted / For Sale: Sl-c1000
« on: July 03, 2007, 07:39:24 pm »
Looks like it is sold, assuming my buyer comes through. Thanks all for your interest.
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2
For Sale / Wanted / For Sale: Sl-c1000
« on: June 30, 2007, 12:46:32 am »
Selling my SL-C1000, about 1 1/2 yrs old (but sat in a box for a year). Condition is close to new but some of the silver paint near the sdio port has worn off. Includes the following:
1) SL-C1000 with stylus
2) Two EA-72 power supplies (maybe 3 if I can find the other one)
3) 256MB sd card
4) Cacko 1.23 installed
5) USB mini A cable
6) USB mini B cable
7) Box with Japanese manual and CDROM
Prefer to ship within USA and Canada, however others are possible I suppose (but if it's too much of a pain, forget it). I live in USA.
Price $250 (US) but you can offer less and I may take it if you can document it is the going price. Payment by whatever means is not too onerous for me; personal check OK but I will clear check before shipping. You pay shipping costs.
PM me or respond to this post. Reason for sale? I'm moving on to something else (Puppy Linux).
1) SL-C1000 with stylus
2) Two EA-72 power supplies (maybe 3 if I can find the other one)
3) 256MB sd card
4) Cacko 1.23 installed
5) USB mini A cable
6) USB mini B cable
7) Box with Japanese manual and CDROM
Prefer to ship within USA and Canada, however others are possible I suppose (but if it's too much of a pain, forget it). I live in USA.
Price $250 (US) but you can offer less and I may take it if you can document it is the going price. Payment by whatever means is not too onerous for me; personal check OK but I will clear check before shipping. You pay shipping costs.
PM me or respond to this post. Reason for sale? I'm moving on to something else (Puppy Linux).
3
Sharp ROMs / Ok, Really New To This...
« on: April 11, 2006, 09:51:43 pm »
One other thing, maybe others can explain it better, but some of the Windows download programs (Firefox is the one I was using) add stuff to the ipk or otherwise modify it in a way that the Zaurus software does not like. I installed "flashget" to take over my downloading chores, I think others have used "wget" if I'm not mistaken, and there might be others. Anyway that cleared up many issues I was having trouble with.
4
General Discussion / Should I Get A Zaurus?
« on: April 11, 2006, 09:36:22 pm »
I'd say it depends on what you want to get done with it. It is fussy to set up, X applications are ridiculously slow, and you'd better have good eyes to read the websites you surf to (or put up with magnifying and scrolling). On the other hand, it is something you can have no matter where you go, no small thing.
The 100v adapter works in the US, although a few people might dispute that. But it appears to be settled. The English conversion I don't know about, mine was already done. It does not run warm that I can tell, and (without the hard drive or keeping the internet connection going, so I hear), the battery lasts very long.
Right now mine is sitting on the shelf, because I grew frustrated with trying to get it to do what I want it to (run a spreadsheet). But I'll probably take a crack at it again in a while. Bottom line, if you have to depend on it for time-critical work, don't. The investment of time to get it set up is substantial, unless perhaps you are a true linux guru.
The 100v adapter works in the US, although a few people might dispute that. But it appears to be settled. The English conversion I don't know about, mine was already done. It does not run warm that I can tell, and (without the hard drive or keeping the internet connection going, so I hear), the battery lasts very long.
Right now mine is sitting on the shelf, because I grew frustrated with trying to get it to do what I want it to (run a spreadsheet). But I'll probably take a crack at it again in a while. Bottom line, if you have to depend on it for time-critical work, don't. The investment of time to get it set up is substantial, unless perhaps you are a true linux guru.
5
Accessories / Pqi Cf/microdrive Card Usb Reader & Writer
« on: April 01, 2006, 10:27:02 am »
Anyone tried one of these?
http://www.memorysuppliers.com/danusbcomfla.html
It's a device that lets you put a CF Microdrive on the USB port. The idea is to have a USB drive without the need for a powered hub to provide power. Only $14 too!
The power requirements are:
DC 5V +/-5%, through USB port, Suspend:<500μA Active:85mA+/-5%
http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?TT=1&ca...129&PROID=161#1
I assume that is the reader itself; the CF drive would go on top of that? I found that the microdrives run around 250 mA, at least this Hitachi 1GB drive does. That adds up to 335 ma. Can the Z drive that much?
The PQI site says they have dropped the product, so get 'em while they are available!
This might be nice for us C1000 owners who don't want to be constantly pulling their CF Wireless cards to get a hard drive (along with some nondestructive swap!) to run those big X applications.
I'm just wondering about drivers...
<later> Woops, now I'm just noticing the USB drive topic has been beat to death around here already.
http://www.memorysuppliers.com/danusbcomfla.html
It's a device that lets you put a CF Microdrive on the USB port. The idea is to have a USB drive without the need for a powered hub to provide power. Only $14 too!
The power requirements are:
DC 5V +/-5%, through USB port, Suspend:<500μA Active:85mA+/-5%
http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?TT=1&ca...129&PROID=161#1
I assume that is the reader itself; the CF drive would go on top of that? I found that the microdrives run around 250 mA, at least this Hitachi 1GB drive does. That adds up to 335 ma. Can the Z drive that much?
The PQI site says they have dropped the product, so get 'em while they are available!
This might be nice for us C1000 owners who don't want to be constantly pulling their CF Wireless cards to get a hard drive (along with some nondestructive swap!) to run those big X applications.
I'm just wondering about drivers...
<later> Woops, now I'm just noticing the USB drive topic has been beat to death around here already.
6
Sharp ROMs / Umount The Sd Card Before Removing?
« on: March 31, 2006, 02:39:14 pm »Quote
both sharp and cacko distro mount the cf and sd card automatically when they are inserted (and if they are fat). they also unmount them if you use the card applet to do so.
Ah, you still have to manually (with the applet) unmount first? Hmmm, good to know.
I was thinking there might be some way for the O/S to know you were removing the card, e.g. a signal that goes true when pushing the card in to release it, before it actually came out, thus giving it time to unmount things first. This would be consistent with the need to make consumer devices idiot-proof. But I guess there could be no such thing with CF cards, since they just pull out? (I have none at the moment so don't know.)
But you are telling me it is not idiot-proof, so I will have to stop acting like an idiot. Darn!
It would be good to know if swap file and loop devices get taken care of by Cacko using the applet, too. But then if I figured out how to get automounter going I wouldn't care...
<later>
I tried "ejecting" the sd card with the applet, and it told me the eject failed. I then did a umount of /dev/loop1 (X/Qt cramfs) and tried the applet again, and it worked. So it looks like it is all manual, you have to go to a console and clean up loop and probably swap first, then eject. <sigh> Oh, well, looks like I have even more incentive to get automounter working.
7
C1000/3x00 Hardware / Nevermind. It's Been Fixed.
« on: March 31, 2006, 01:37:56 pm »
I found this interesting thread when poking around. On the controversy between neuroshock and cybersphinx, I have to say I come down mostly in the latter's camp.
I have spent a lot of time working on things like disk I/O. The last thing I did before retiring, was working as a system engineer for Sequent (which IBM swallowed), testing and troubleshooting fiberchannel storage area networks. Sequent was always at the top of the charts for benchmarking on really big systems, so we had to spend a plenty of time worrying about performance. So we did do a lot of benchmarks, and worked constantly with disk manufacturers. I spent many an hour sitting in front of a fibrerchannel analyzer looking at I/Os and figuring out why they were not working, or working too slow. Fiberchannel of course implements a scsi-based protocol for disk storage, so what I say may not apply completely to IDE, but a lot of it will.
The line neuroshock was taking actually was more true in the old days when systems and storage was simple, when people could understand the whole picture and when they had the tools to lay things out so that performance could be enhanced (and they needed to, because those systems were slowwww). But those days are long gone. I/O is extremely complex now, the systems and drives and I/O controllers all do so much optimization and reworking of the command stream that there is very little control over what can be done or how it can be optimized.
Just to give an example, this notion of putting stuff inside or outside of a drive platter, having an effect on performance. First, it is laughable because of all the remapping that goes on in the disk controller. You never really know where stuff is physically going on the platter any more; only the firmware writer knows that. And even if there were no remapping, you still couldn't know for sure! I remember way back, when testing a system where there was no remapping, where the performance was better with data coming off the slow part of the disk, or maybe it was with a slower disk compared to a faster one, can't remember exactly. Here's how that happened:
Those old drives had simple, smallish memory buffers interposed between the platter and the cable. When the DMA speed on the cable is closely matched to the data speed coming off the platter, the transfer proceeds at top rate. However when the data comes off the platter faster, what happens? The transfer goes slower! It does this because the data fills up the buffer, and then has to stop entirely, losing a rotation before starting again. So your transfer is full of lost rotations by the platter, which ends up being slower overall than if the two speeds were matched. If I could have slowed that platter rotation speed down, I could have sped up the transfer rate!
Now, who knows if this holds any more (probably not - buffers might be big enough to swallow the whole file in one gulp - many read requests never actually go to the platter because the file is still in the buffer). But the point here is that there are SO MANY FACTORS affecting I/O performance, it is virtually impossible (outside of a few very simple things like preferring a 10x sd card to a 4x one) to predict with any assurance that the machinations you are going through are going to do any good.
So just use your hardware and don't get yourself too torqued about extracting the last bit of performance out of it. The firmware and OS writers have taken care of that. "Don't worry, be happy!"
I have spent a lot of time working on things like disk I/O. The last thing I did before retiring, was working as a system engineer for Sequent (which IBM swallowed), testing and troubleshooting fiberchannel storage area networks. Sequent was always at the top of the charts for benchmarking on really big systems, so we had to spend a plenty of time worrying about performance. So we did do a lot of benchmarks, and worked constantly with disk manufacturers. I spent many an hour sitting in front of a fibrerchannel analyzer looking at I/Os and figuring out why they were not working, or working too slow. Fiberchannel of course implements a scsi-based protocol for disk storage, so what I say may not apply completely to IDE, but a lot of it will.
The line neuroshock was taking actually was more true in the old days when systems and storage was simple, when people could understand the whole picture and when they had the tools to lay things out so that performance could be enhanced (and they needed to, because those systems were slowwww). But those days are long gone. I/O is extremely complex now, the systems and drives and I/O controllers all do so much optimization and reworking of the command stream that there is very little control over what can be done or how it can be optimized.
Just to give an example, this notion of putting stuff inside or outside of a drive platter, having an effect on performance. First, it is laughable because of all the remapping that goes on in the disk controller. You never really know where stuff is physically going on the platter any more; only the firmware writer knows that. And even if there were no remapping, you still couldn't know for sure! I remember way back, when testing a system where there was no remapping, where the performance was better with data coming off the slow part of the disk, or maybe it was with a slower disk compared to a faster one, can't remember exactly. Here's how that happened:
Those old drives had simple, smallish memory buffers interposed between the platter and the cable. When the DMA speed on the cable is closely matched to the data speed coming off the platter, the transfer proceeds at top rate. However when the data comes off the platter faster, what happens? The transfer goes slower! It does this because the data fills up the buffer, and then has to stop entirely, losing a rotation before starting again. So your transfer is full of lost rotations by the platter, which ends up being slower overall than if the two speeds were matched. If I could have slowed that platter rotation speed down, I could have sped up the transfer rate!
Now, who knows if this holds any more (probably not - buffers might be big enough to swallow the whole file in one gulp - many read requests never actually go to the platter because the file is still in the buffer). But the point here is that there are SO MANY FACTORS affecting I/O performance, it is virtually impossible (outside of a few very simple things like preferring a 10x sd card to a 4x one) to predict with any assurance that the machinations you are going through are going to do any good.
So just use your hardware and don't get yourself too torqued about extracting the last bit of performance out of it. The firmware and OS writers have taken care of that. "Don't worry, be happy!"
8
X/Qt / Memory Shortage When Compiling Inside X/qt
« on: March 31, 2006, 10:09:02 am »Quote
So I believe that such warning shows up whenever memory usage approachs 64MB limit (i.e.the physical RAM). It's ok if swap speed can catch up with the memory demand at the verge of overflow. Otherwise, X/Qt will crash.
I'm hardly the expert, but I wonder if you reduce the priority of the compile task very low, the system might be able to keep up? That's the "nice" command, right?
Also, do you think it matters where you keep your source and output files? Might be worth moving them around; the different I/O rates could have an effect.
Try compiling something smaller?
Still, these sound like band-aid approaches. The OS should suspend applications automatically while it is keeping the swap situation and memory allocation correct, seems to me. I'm no kernel hacker, though.
9
X/Qt / 2 Problems With Xqt
« on: March 30, 2006, 05:31:04 pm »
fn+o is supposed to be a "{" and fn+p a "}". At least that's what I get. Your last sentence didn't read right, as you mention fn+p twice.
Maybe keyhelper would help? I've never used it though.
Cresho, what does this mean? I push the fn button and click the screen with the stylus but nothing happens. Am I supposed to be in a certain application or something? Also, fn+a does nothing for me.
Maybe keyhelper would help? I've never used it though.
Quote
fn+ stylus opens right click menus.
Cresho, what does this mean? I push the fn button and click the screen with the stylus but nothing happens. Am I supposed to be in a certain application or something? Also, fn+a does nothing for me.
10
X/Qt / X/qt Burns A Lot Of Cpu Cycles
« on: March 30, 2006, 05:17:09 pm »
I was looking at the "System Info" applet in Cacko, the third tab labelled "CPU", which is the graph of CPU cycles being used. With nothing going on it sits around 20%. When I start up X/Qt it goes up to around 75% and sits there. Not much left for running apps!
I went and turned all the fast load off on the Cacko apps, but it didn't help that I can see. Might have helped memory usage though.
I didn't find any discussion of this in the forum with a search. I wonder what could be eating all the CPU in X/Qt? Maybe something that can be configured to be a bit more miserly?
I went and turned all the fast load off on the Cacko apps, but it didn't help that I can see. Might have helped memory usage though.
I didn't find any discussion of this in the forum with a search. I wonder what could be eating all the CPU in X/Qt? Maybe something that can be configured to be a bit more miserly?
11
Sharp ROMs / Umount The Sd Card Before Removing?
« on: March 30, 2006, 04:08:59 pm »
In my current primitive understanding, if I have Meanie's automounter I can pop the sd in and out with abandon. However it is less clear to me if Cacko handles that task too, by itself. It does print an "eject" message when I pull it out. But is that telling me, "Stupid, you should have done umount first, your card contents are not guaranteed now?"
Just wondering if I'm courting disaster. Oh, I used Mazlovsky's mem app to make a swap on the card too. I imagine I ought to turn that off as well <sigh>
Just wondering if I'm courting disaster. Oh, I used Mazlovsky's mem app to make a swap on the card too. I imagine I ought to turn that off as well <sigh>
12
X/Qt / X/qt Installed, Sort Of
« on: March 30, 2006, 02:45:13 pm »
Hi Meanie. I have the 0.4.6 automounter. The cramfs is listed in my /etc/fstab.
My sd card is FAT formatted, that's not an issue, when I install off it, is it? Or when I put a swap file on it?
I found the mntloop script in /etc/rc.d/init.d. I didn't find the usbstorage script; it's weird, the Cacko file search application doesn't seem to reliably find things I know are there. Where would that be located?
Can you tell me where the automounter link should be located? Maybe I need to remove automounter and re-install it, but I'm nervous about that after all the problems Jon_J ran into. Should I need to remove it, or can I just reinstall again on top of what's there?
It's funny, I was trying to get more info about the automounter package, and did "ipkg files" etc. and got nothing from that. When I tried "ipkg depends", it complained: "ipkg_depends: ERROR: Package name automounter-c3000_0.4.6_arm.ipk contains illegal characters (should be [a-zA-Z0-9.+-])" Looks like it's complaining about the underscores, which are not unknown in file names.
Do you mean, it does not need to do this on Cacko, because Cacko handles it already? Or do you mean we have to get in and modify the sd and cf scripts ourself to handle this? If so, where are they, and do you have any hints how to?
On another issue, do I need zlib, or is that only for sharp rom users? I don't know how to tell if Cacko has it or not. I got a copy from here to use if I need it, hope that's a good place to get it:
http://club.h14m.org/kenji/zaurus/
My sd card is FAT formatted, that's not an issue, when I install off it, is it? Or when I put a swap file on it?
I found the mntloop script in /etc/rc.d/init.d. I didn't find the usbstorage script; it's weird, the Cacko file search application doesn't seem to reliably find things I know are there. Where would that be located?
Can you tell me where the automounter link should be located? Maybe I need to remove automounter and re-install it, but I'm nervous about that after all the problems Jon_J ran into. Should I need to remove it, or can I just reinstall again on top of what's there?
It's funny, I was trying to get more info about the automounter package, and did "ipkg files" etc. and got nothing from that. When I tried "ipkg depends", it complained: "ipkg_depends: ERROR: Package name automounter-c3000_0.4.6_arm.ipk contains illegal characters (should be [a-zA-Z0-9.+-])" Looks like it's complaining about the underscores, which are not unknown in file names.
Quote
On Sharp ROM, I also modified the sd and cf control scripts to enable/disable the swapfile when the card is inserted/ejected and it also automatically unmounts any loop devices mounted on the card. It does not do this on Cacko.
Do you mean, it does not need to do this on Cacko, because Cacko handles it already? Or do you mean we have to get in and modify the sd and cf scripts ourself to handle this? If so, where are they, and do you have any hints how to?
On another issue, do I need zlib, or is that only for sharp rom users? I don't know how to tell if Cacko has it or not. I got a copy from here to use if I need it, hope that's a good place to get it:
http://club.h14m.org/kenji/zaurus/
13
X/Qt / X/qt Installed, Sort Of
« on: March 29, 2006, 11:02:35 am »Quote
I started having problems immediatly after I uninstalled automounter-c3000_0.4.5This was what had me worried, that automounter would somehow interfere with the native Cacko automount facility, or they would trip over each other. Looks like that's the case. Glad I have a backup...
...
Another problem I noticed just after uninstalling the automounter is,
My external USB hard drive was no longer mounted by Cacko like it should be, when I plugged it in.
BTW, I don't notice my Cacko stuff running any slower so far. Jon-J, note Meanie's warning about uninstalling X/Qt on this page (in a section that is for some reason separate from his other notes about installing X/Qt):
Quote
Installing X/Qthttp://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom.html#essential
This can be a quite simple and straightforward task or a messy and frustrating experience. If you are lucky, everything just installs and you got X/Qt up and running in no time at all. However, if you are unlucky, then troubleshooting a broken installation can be a challenging and frustrating process. I've sucessfully installed the latest version of X/QT, but I have noticed that some X/Qt packages do not uninstall cleanly and will confuse reinstalls or other packages that have dependancies on them.
I don't know if the warning also applies to the Jumbo-packaged X/Qt.
Quote
*you do not need automounter with cacko, I am running the squashfs just finebam, I decided to put it in because the cramfs was not being mounted by the Cacko automount facility in my case. Seeing the troubles Jon-J ran into with automounter, maybe I should have tried working with Cacko's first!
BTW Cresho, you might modify your notes that sudo and automounter are not required or maybe even not recommended with Cacko users. At least at the moment.
Looks like automounter is useful enough generally that it should be installed by the xqt-install script if it is not already there, and (optionally) cleaned up by the xqt-cleanup - after the snafu with Cacko is sorted out. Why? To make the X/Qt install more idiot-proof for noobs like me.
Where does "automounter" get defined? I have the automounter scripts, but the definition apparently does not exist yet for me.
14
X/Qt / X/qt Installed, Sort Of
« on: March 29, 2006, 03:39:22 am »
I decided to go ahead and try a cramfs install on my C1000 even though I'm not sure of some issues. It works in some respects (I can get the xwindow running), however:
1) Cacko 1.23 seemed to have some sort of automount facility already before starting this. At least, when I took the SD card out or put it in, it automatically mounted it. I tried installing X/QT without Meanies automounter, thinking this other one might work. No. Then I tried installing automounter. Now I don't know which is working, but I still don't get the cramfs automatically mounted, my guess is automounter still is not working (if I type "automounter" it says "command not found"). I have to do the mount manually (e.g. after boot) to get it up. No swap either. <later> This appears to be a problem of definition (link?) of "automounter" because if I go to /etc/rc.d/init.d I find mntloop and if I invoke it with "status" it shows me the loop devices including xqt.
2) Not sure what the swap situation for X/Qt is supposed to be on a C1000 anyway. My sd card is 256MB...
3) I get lots of error messages on boot. First is "cramfs: wrong magic" and then "FAT: bogus logical sector size 381". Then a whole pile of complaints like:
pxa_sd_wait_id_response: responce time out (cmd=01 MMC_STAT=0x2142)
4) I neglected to do a "tee" or whatever one does to capture the output when running xqt-install.sh; is there any log lying around to look at?
5) Oh, I unzipped these packages on my windoze box, where I had downloaded them; was that a mistake? I noticed the script handled unzipping. I guess I needed to unzip the script if nothing else.
6) I noticed in one thread Cresho had a recipe for this install:
sudo is there but I don't know if zlib is, or how to tell. I'm just using the regular QKonsole that came with Cacko.
My efforts to search for answers to these on the forum were not fruitful.
1) Cacko 1.23 seemed to have some sort of automount facility already before starting this. At least, when I took the SD card out or put it in, it automatically mounted it. I tried installing X/QT without Meanies automounter, thinking this other one might work. No. Then I tried installing automounter. Now I don't know which is working, but I still don't get the cramfs automatically mounted, my guess is automounter still is not working (if I type "automounter" it says "command not found"). I have to do the mount manually (e.g. after boot) to get it up. No swap either. <later> This appears to be a problem of definition (link?) of "automounter" because if I go to /etc/rc.d/init.d I find mntloop and if I invoke it with "status" it shows me the loop devices including xqt.
2) Not sure what the swap situation for X/Qt is supposed to be on a C1000 anyway. My sd card is 256MB...
3) I get lots of error messages on boot. First is "cramfs: wrong magic" and then "FAT: bogus logical sector size 381". Then a whole pile of complaints like:
pxa_sd_wait_id_response: responce time out (cmd=01 MMC_STAT=0x2142)
4) I neglected to do a "tee" or whatever one does to capture the output when running xqt-install.sh; is there any log lying around to look at?
5) Oh, I unzipped these packages on my windoze box, where I had downloaded them; was that a mistake? I noticed the script handled unzipping. I guess I needed to unzip the script if nothing else.
6) I noticed in one thread Cresho had a recipe for this install:
Quote
install--needed files or it will not workhttps://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=13011&st=390
----------------------------------------
automounter-c3000_0.4.5_arm.ipk
sudo_0.1_arm.ipk
zlib_1.2.3-1_arm.ipk
qconsole(disable magnifyby holding down with stylus and removing check)
...
sudo is there but I don't know if zlib is, or how to tell. I'm just using the regular QKonsole that came with Cacko.
My efforts to search for answers to these on the forum were not fruitful.
15
Sharp ROMs / What's Tmpfs For?
« on: March 27, 2006, 11:05:55 am »
I just have the Kernel v2.4.20 that came with Cacko 1.23. Apparently it is static.
Sounds like good advice, I will leave it unmolested for now.
Thanks for the clarifications, guys!
Quote
If you are concerned about the amount of space used by tmpfs you could reduce it but unless you fully understand the reason that it's set to 10Mb don't change it.
Sounds like good advice, I will leave it unmolested for now.
Thanks for the clarifications, guys!