Messages

1

Software / Rise of the Triad for Zaurus

« on: August 31, 2004, 06:52:23 pm »

Hi Corona_B,

Good luck with your Rise of the Triads compile. Would be interested in an ipk if you manage to finish it. Been sniffing around on www.liberatedgames.com and spotted Star Control 2 has been liberated. Now "that" is a game which is worthy of a Zaurus recompile.

Any takers?

Regards,
Edo.

Zaurus SL-C860, 256Mb sd card, Ambicom wlan cf, Rikaline GPS cf, Socket Bluetooth cf
Zaurus SL-5500, 256Mb sd card, Linksys WCF12 wlan cf

2

UK / Hi From Bonnie Scotland

« on: August 22, 2004, 04:12:11 pm »

Hi JP,

Sorry, but I'm not from/in Bonny Scotland (I'm a Londoner), but I will contribute that I am a UK SL-C860 user, and I love it! Before I bought an SL-C860 I had the typical SL-5500 and loved that too... but the 860 is so much better. Faster, lots of application memory, absolutely beautiful screen, nicer build quality, the  keyboard is a lot nicer, the battery lasts a lot longer, the on-board speaker is cool, the jog dial and side-mounted enter/cancel buttons make it into a veritable mp3 player.

After moving on to the 860, the 5500 has been relegated. I advise the Cacko ROM 1.21 for the C860. This ROM works well for me.

Enjoy,
Edo.

Zaurus SL-C860, Lexar 256Mb SD card, Socket Bluetooth CF, Ambicom Wlan WL1100C CF, Sandisk CF 512Mb, Rikaline GPS-6021-X6 CF

Zaurus SL-5500, PNY 256Mb SD card, Linksys WCF12 wlan CF

3

Cxx0 General discussions / C860 keyboard stops responding problem

« on: August 03, 2004, 10:13:44 am »

Hi,

Similar to you, I have problems with my SL-C860 keyboard not responding. I have Cacko Rom 1.21b (I recently installed the 1.21b hotfix, after uninstalling the 1.21a hotfix).

Before I installed the hotfix b, I noticed a few times that the keyboard would die, normally after unsuspending the Zaurus. This was fixed every time by rebooting.

I thought I'd address this by installing the b hotfix. Now I've done that, I've only had the keyboard behave itself once. Now, every time I boot up the box (reboot it or shutdown -r now it) the hardware keyboard doesn't work.

You'd think this might be a hardware problem, but I'm pressing the Home key to unsuspend it/boot it up, so that indicates the home key is working fine. Also note that the jogdial and cancel/enter buttons on the case-side all function fine.

I uninstalled keyhelper, thinking that that might help fix the problem, it didn't. I've rebooted the Zaurus multiple times, and still the problem is there. Is this a problem with Cacko 1.21b and the 860?

Does anyone have suggestions for investigating this (I didn't notice anything in /var/logs/dmesg), or advice for reinitialising the keyboard? Please pass your help on, before I am forced to nand restore my last backup.

Regards,
Edo.

4

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 15, 2004, 02:09:02 pm »

Hi Wirawan,

My experience is:

PNY 256Mb SD Card (bought May 2003) gives almost faultless performance as a mixed ext2 and fat16 card. Infrequently I have needed to e2fsck it, because an application has crashed and then I\'ve powered it down to reset it. Note that /mnt/card is ext2, on /dev/mmcda1 and that /mnt/card2 is fat16, on /dev/mmcda2.

Sandisk 512Mb SD Card (bought May 2004) worked okay-ish, for about a week. Then I noticed problems accessing certain files. A reboot later, and e2fsck-ing gave lots of errors. I ended up fdisk-ing and mke2fs-ing the card. Many trials and tests later and I gave up on the Sandisk card... It was sold to a digital photographer friend of mine.

OEM-branded MMC 128Mb card - formatted as Ext2. Installed applications on it (/mnt/card). Worked fine. Has worked fine for 10 months.

By the way, the polling mechanism only let me cast one vote, despite the fact I have 3 cards (across 2 Zaurii).

Regards,
Edo.

5

Accessories / Prefered SD card

« on: June 13, 2004, 05:23:30 pm »

I\'ve had a fair amount of experience of Sandisk and PNY cards. Sandisk seem to be okay if you leave them as FAT16 file-systems. I\'ve had a Sandisk CF 512Mb card that I\'ve juggled from Zaurus SL-5500 Sharp Rom 3.10 to digital camera to usb card reader, and never had any problems.

My Sandisk 512Mb Secure Digital (SD) card, bought recently (May 2004) has needed multiple fdisk-ing, mke2fs-ing, and e2fsck-ing, and I\'ve decided it is not up to the job. My PNY 256Mb SD card has worked fabulously for the past year, and is now back in service, as I return the Sandisk card back to the vendor. Thinking of getting a Toshiba 512Mb SD card to replace the Sandisk.

Regards,
Edo

________________
Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 with Sharp Rom 3.10
PNY 256Mb SD card (formatted mmcda1 = ext2 and mmcda2 = fat16)
Linksys WCF12 wireless compactflash card
Rikaline GPS-6021-X6 gps receiver compactflash card
Sandisk 512Mb compactflash card (formatted fat16)

6

6000 - Tosa / USB HD attached to Z!

« on: June 13, 2004, 11:43:35 am »

Hey lwong,

Zaurus --] USB Hard Drive = nice!

Regarding your Sandisk SD card errors.....  I have had similar errors with my Zaurus SL5500 and Sandisk 512Mb SD card. After many tests and trials I\'ve decided my Sandisk drive suffers incompatibilities with the Zaurus, and I\'ve returned to using my well-behaved PNY 256Mb SD card. I\'ll be changing the Sandisk card for something else \'that works!\'

Regards,
Edo

____________________
SL-5500, Sharp 3.10 ROM
256Mb PNY SD card (ext2 + fat16 format)
Linksys WCF12 Wireless card,
Rikaline GPS-6021-X6 compactflash card

SL-5500, OpenZaurus 3.2 ROM
Ambicom WL1100C-CF 802.11b wireless card
OEM-branded 128Mb MMC card (ext2 format)

512Mb Sandisk CF card (fat16 format)

7

5x00 General discussions / recommended wlan cf card for a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500?

« on: April 14, 2004, 08:39:44 am »

rahn,

There are plenty of wlan compactflash cards you could use. I advise you to search the various pages here and note
what other people are using. Personally, I\'m using a Linksys WCF12, and find it has a good range (200m max from my home), works fine with Kismet, and isn\'t too power-hungry. It is also cheap, bought mine from www.ebuyer.co.uk 10 months ago. It worked with my Sharp SL5500 (ROM flashed to Sharp 3.10 US ROM) straight out of the box.

Regards,
Edo  (UK)

8

General Discussion / Windows Shares

« on: March 20, 2004, 09:06:42 pm »

Hello Guest,

Although this is more a Linux question than a Zaurus question, I\'ll answer it. You obviously need the right components (samba ipk\'s or your own compiled arm binaries) to do this on a Zaurus system.

1. Search through the network for Windows or Samba file-sharing devices.

nmap -port 139 192.168.1.1-254

2. Once you have the IP addresses of the devices running Windows shares, you need to find the Netbios names of these computers.

nmblookup -A 192.168.1.10

3. Now you have a valid name, time to check for shares on it.

smbclient -N -L win_pc_name

4. Finally you can use smbmount to mount the file share.

smbmount //win_pc_name/share_name /mnt/samba

5. Use standard Linux console commands or File Explorer to browse through the files on the share.
Note that password-protected shares will need you to enter username and password at appropriate stages.

Regards,
Edo. :idea:

9

General Discussion / 1 Gig SD Card

« on: February 13, 2004, 09:06:49 pm »

Yup, very interesting. The larger the SD card in my Zaurus SL-5500, the better.

I store a lot of maps (png files) for use with qpeGPS navigation software on my current 256mb SD card. Storing mp3s, films, photos, ebooks, etc on a pda increases its usefulness. If I had a 1Gb SD card, I would probably fdisk it, and format it with an ext2 filesystem on the first partition /dev/hda1 for holding application/game binaries, and a fat16 file system on the second partition /dev/hda2, for holding the photos, mp3s, ebooks, etc. This way, I could whip the SD card out of the Zaurus and into an usb2 card-reader, connected to a Windows (or Linux) pc. Then transfer of data to/from the card would proceed at maximum speed.

I haven\'t decided what would be the ideal split (maybe 250mb ext2 / 750mb fat16) for my needs. Any suggestions?

Regards,
Edo.

10

Software / QtTV problems

« on: January 31, 2004, 07:38:04 pm »

Hi zbones,

Glad you\'ve been taking an interest in this. Before I even attempted to get QtTV running, I made sure I could generate an up-to-date tv listing tv.xml file using XMLTV. I accomplished this by downloading the Windows version of the XMLTV software ( xmltv-0.5.27-win32.zip ) from the XMLTV Sourcefourge development website ( http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...?group_id=39046 ).

I also spotted the \'tv_grab_uk\' thing doesn\'t work, but went a stage further and tried out the tv_grab_uk_rt script. I unzipped the xmltv-0.5.27-win32.zip to the c:xmltv directory, on my Windows pc. I then configured the software by going in an MS DOS Prompt to c:xmltv and typing:

xmltv  tv_grab_uk_rt  --configure

(Note that this goes through a number of options, and I suggest just choosing a few channels - BBC1, BBC2, ITV, CH4, CH5 for your initial trial)

I then wrote the following batch file to pick up today\'s tv listings:

TVPICKUP.BAT --]
c:
cd xmltv
c:xmltvxmltv.exe tv_grab_uk_rt --days 1 ] tv.xml

When this runs it is rather slow (or maybe that was just for me!) which is the reason I couldn\'t be bothered to go beyond 1 day of listings, the first time round. This should generate the tv.xml file all ready to copy to your Zaurus. On it\'s own this file is a searchable text tv listing, that can be queried using a search feature of any text editor.

I had a go at installing and running XMLTV linux version on my Linux pc, but had problems, and decided to not continue with it until I got QtTV working.

Hope this helps encourage you (and others) further forward with this QtTV compiling request.

Regards,
Edo.

11

Software / QtTV problems

« on: January 31, 2004, 01:44:02 pm »

Hi All,

Following up my own posting on QtTV, I\'ve been in contact with the author of QtTV, and he has kindly provided me (and the Zaurus community) with the latest tarball of the QtTV source code. I have hosted this for your access at the following website:

http://www.edo.demon.co.uk/feed/

Favour time:  Could someone who has set up a Zaurus development environment, please download this code, and have a go at compiling it. Specifically, if the compile goes well, could you edit the /qttv_0.0.3/qttv/tvGuide.cpp  and find the line containing  /root/Documents/tv.xml  and change the path to  /home/root/Documents/tv.xml

Assuming this goes to plan, then the QtTV binary would be working and could be easily incorporated into an ipk file, for us all to enjoy. Thanks for any help from you developer guys.

Regards,
Edo.

12

Security and Networking / Zaurus as a Seurity tool

« on: January 26, 2004, 11:26:42 am »

Irongeek,

Yep, I like the page. You are using a few apps that I\'ve had problems installing. The reason I suspect that I\'ve had problems is that I\'m running the Sharp Rom 3.10 whereas you are running OpenZaurus.

Currently I use a range of network tools on my Zaurus SL-5500 for various security and analysis purposes. Applications installed include Kismet and Kismet-qt (GUI for it), Java jportscan, nmap, wlanmon, znetmeter, traceroute, and a few others.

I have Nessus set up on a couple of work Linux servers, for vulnerability testing, and notice there is a Nessus client for the Zaurus. Unfortunately, I\'ve never got it to work. It installs, but doesn\'t login to the nessusd.

The amount of networks tools, clients, and servers available on the Zaurus is excellent. If only all PDAs were this good!

Regards,
Steven Goacher.

13

5x00 General discussions / SL-5600 "BOOT" TIME

« on: January 26, 2004, 04:14:53 am »

Hello Guest,

In general day-to-day usage, pressing the Power Button brings the Zaurus SL-5500 out of suspend mode \"On\" (2 seconds) or back into suspend mode \"Off\" (2 seconds).

If you do decide to \"shutdown\" the operating system it takes about 10 - 15 seconds to turn itself off, stopping the various processes. Turning it back on again (a full reboot) takes about 75 - 80 seconds.

You should rarely need to do a shutdown / full reboot in general operation, so you are looking at a couple of seconds most of the time. I connect my Zaurus to home and office wireless networks via WLAN CF card, and it \'remembers\' its last configuration and is back on the network upon suspend or reboot (which is nice).

I guess the later models (SL-5600, SL-C7XX, and SL-6000) will probably be that bit quicker.

Regards,
Steven Goacher.

14

Software / QtTV problems

« on: January 25, 2004, 10:46:44 pm »

QtTV looks like it is a cool way to view up-to-date TV listings on a Sharp Zaurus (SL-5500 or others). You run XMLTV on your Windows or Linux pc and get a tv.xml file containing a few days worth of listings. You then are supposed to put the tv.xml file into /root/Documents on your Zaurus, to get the software to work.

The software homepage is here:  http://qttv.sourceforge.net/

Problem 1:  /root is not writeable on a standard 3.10 Sharp Rom SL-5500. Is there anything I can do about this (without major troubles)? I realise that / is a cramfs mounted as \"ro\". Maybe rewriting it as \"rw\" and then putting a symlink to /home/root/Documents ?

Problem 2:  I noticed that the qttv_0.0.2_src.tar.bz2 file corrupts when I try to bunzip2 it. This makes it somewhat difficult for me to consider recompiling QtTV and choosing an alternative tv.xml location. Fortunately the qttv_0.0.1_src.tar.bz2 seems not to be broken.

Problem 3:  I\'m no expert on cross-compiling, and don\'t have a Zaurus development environment set up anywhere, so it is a major pain for me to recompile the qttv code anyway! It would be great if someone more experienced could maybe look at the code, and recompile it with a more suitable file location (e.g.  /home/root/Documents/tv.xml ). Obviously,
the fixed application could then be re-released to the Zaurus community for us all to enjoy.

If anyone has suggestions, or can help with the recompile, then please reply to this post.

Regards,
Steven Goacher.

15

Accessories / backup to the Lexar 256 MB SD card failed

« on: December 28, 2003, 11:41:34 pm »

Hi Oreo,

I have a Zaurus SL5500 SR3.10 just like yours. I also had problems at certain points with my backups failing. The thing is... The backup creates itself on the internal Zaurus RAM first, and once the backup is created it writes it out onto the CF or SD card. I have about 15-16 Mb of apps/games/etc installed into my Zaurus ram at the moment and there is about the same amount of free RAM available. I install as many apps/games onto SD card (fdisk-ed and made into an ext2 filesystem) as possible to free up as much Zaurus RAM. Even so, I have little spare space. Anyway, the backup works. If I install much more, I will probably end up with too large a backup file that overfills the tmp space and dies part-way.

Hope that helps....

1) Format sd card with ext2 file-system
2) Install apps to sd card if possible (fortunately lots of apps will install and run fine from sd)
3) Try not to exceed 15Mb of apps installed to internal Sharp RAM
4) Check available space with the System Info program in the Settings menu
5) Finally, if you still have problems with the backup, make sure there is space left on the sd card!! (Doh!)

Regards,
edo.