Messages

1

General Discussion / Adios

« on: November 17, 2008, 02:45:47 pm »

Hi,
sorry for delay in responding.

I think we'd be interested in midori, the others still seem to be available elsewhere. Just rename the file to .zip and attach it to a post?

thanks very much
Paul

Here it is.  Sorry for the bandwidth, if this is not appropriate.  No promises about this at all.  To install, rename to *.deb and try dpkg

2

General Discussion / Adios

« on: October 28, 2008, 04:59:48 pm »

sorry to hear you're off. if you have useful downloaded files, applications, ipkg's and ROM images etc, please do let us know rather than dump them, as there are occasions when people have the only surviving copies of something.

if you do have stuff of interest, then I can provide somewhere for you to upload them.

all the best
Paul

I hadn't thought of that.  I don't know what I have that isn't widely available, except for cortez' first kernel (armel, 2.4.*, but it fit on flash) for spitz and a few others.  Here's what's on one of my backup spots.  They are all armel, I think.  Is there anything worth uploading?

armel-root-fs.tar.bz2
autoboot.sh
cortez_installation_pack_0.1.tar.gz
dillo_0.8.6-r2_armv5te.ipk
djvulibre-3.5.19.tar.gz
gpe-mini-browser_0.21-r0_armv5te.ipk
kernel.img
midori_0.0.12_1_armel.deb
pdaXrom-1.1.0r198-Kathrin-akita-current.zip
rootfs.img
tetex-texmf_3.0-r0_arm.ipk
xvkbd-2.8.tar.gz

3

General Discussion / Adios

« on: October 20, 2008, 12:15:09 am »

Well, I have to say it has been an adventure.  I got my first Zaurus, a 5500, in maybe 2004, and my 3100 in 2006.  I had been using them fairly regularly as my only portable machine.  

The crunch came last Spring (well, January, actually), when I went on sabbatical to Spain.  My Zaurus 3100 was my only computer for this trip.  I had thought that I'd have a computer in my office (at the University of Valencia), and I did, but it was not reliable, and did not have the software I wanted, so I usually just used my Z.  Aside from e-mail, banking, and usual web stuff, I used it two write 2 papers and several lectures.  

By the time I was back in the US, I was somewhat fried with the small screen and small keyboard, and with the limited software (especially internet software and mathematical software), so I got an eeepc.  I immediately stopped using the Z, and have been much happier with the physical setup of the eee (701) as well as software availability.

So, I have sold my Zauri, and am checking out of this community.

I have to say you guys have been great in terms of support and development for the Zaurus; truly selfless devotion of hundreds of hours to development of installation packages, special programs and scripts, custom kernels, and a huge amount of bug-chasing and hardware adaptation.  It has been great.  The development of software for these machines has really made great strides, and I have used nearly all of the various available systems, from the stock ROM through debian-eabi.  

So, thanks for all the help, and good-bye.   Keep up the good work.

4

For Sale / Wanted / For Sale: 3100 And 5500

« on: October 18, 2008, 05:59:54 pm »

I should have mentioned this earlier, but the 5500 is now also sold, and on its way to foreign lands.

Thanks, guys.

5

For Sale / Wanted / For Sale: 3100 And 5500

« on: October 06, 2008, 10:00:45 pm »

Let's try again here to sell my 5500.

I have a Zaurus 5500 in good shape for sale, including an extra battery, cradle, charger, car charger, and whatever else I can find that is Zaurus related.  

I had two people interested, one who decided that the 5500 did not meet his needs, and the other who balked at the very real costs of shipping it/taxes from the US to Europe.  

So, who want this, and what are you willing to spend for it?  If I cover shipping costs and the cost of taking my wife to lunch, I'm happy.  I'll be satisfied with lunch by myself....

What say ye?  Who has a project that might run on a 5500?  Wanna find out if it works?  Any 5500 users who need a spare machine?

6

For Sale / Wanted / For Sale: 3100 And 5500

« on: September 15, 2008, 05:29:45 pm »

The 3100 and associated accessories is/are sold.  Thanks, Bruce.

But the 5500 is still available, along with its charger, cradle, and car charger.

Someone make me an offer.  I'm more interested in this thing finding a home than in collecting a whole bunch of money.

7

For Sale / Wanted / For Sale: 3100 And 5500

« on: September 11, 2008, 05:15:27 pm »

I have, sad to say, abandoned the Zaurus world, seduced by the discrete charms of eee.  Oh well, my loss is your gain.

I have two Zauri for sale, both used but in good condition.  I also have several accessories.

#1:  Zaurus 3100.  This has cortez' kernel, 2.6.23 (in flash), and a completely functional debian sid distribution.  I've been using it from 2006 until this August when I got my eee.  This was my only machine while I was in Spain from January to June of 2008.  It worked like a charm, no problems.  It has a complete LaTeX distribution, LyX, icehamster (minimo with options), sylpheed, etc.  Lots of solid software.  I use an Ambicom 1100 wifi card that works, but lost part of its cover some time back and has tape to protect the innards.  I also have a cf LAN card, a cf modem, and a wifi card that was supposed to do b/g, but I could never get it to work.  It also comes with an extra battery, the charger, a replacement pointer since I don't know what happened to the original.  It won't come with any memory cards unless you really want the 64meg sd...

I also have two usb converters, one with the mini-A jack so you can plug in a keychain drive or a mouse (except the mouse has to be held sideways...).

I want $250 US plus shipping, including all these accessories.

#2:  Zaurus 5500.  Works fine.  I have OZ on it from about 2006, and I haven't touched it since.  It has a cradle (I think), charger, extra battery, and a car charger.  The car charger does not, I don't think, work on the 3100.

I only want $50 for this with the accessories.  If the person buying the 3100 doesn't want one of the cf devices I'll throw it in.

Pictures will be on http://www.lehigh.edu/~dlj0/zauri when I can get them uploaded.  They will just be the jpg files without additional explanation, but they are pretty obvious.  Both machines are shown while running.

Contact me off this forum at  david.johnson@lehigh.edu.  As the e-mail suggests, I'm in the US, in Pennsylvania, to be precise.

8

Debian / Why Is Debian Slow?

« on: July 29, 2008, 01:08:37 pm »

Ahh, that would make sense.

Well, it would make sense were it true.  But the debian kernels kicking around for the Z are not full-featured with lots of things you don't need on a Zaurus, but are specifically compiled for the Zaurus.  In fact, I seem to recall that at least some of them _were_ Angstrom kernels.  All the scripts are set up specifically for the things you would want on your Z as well, so IIRC there were not a bunch of extra services or logging.  

Frankly, my experience was that debian was essentially the same speed as Angstrom.  Now, maybe I whittled down some memory hogs, such as blacklisting  the sound modules since I didn't use them (maybe that's part of it), and used a lightweight window-manager (I used xfce4 and, later, icewm).  

The biggest differences were the ease of upgrade and availability of packages, both strongly in favor of debian.

9

Spain / Sharp Zaurus Sl-3100 & Debian

« on: July 14, 2008, 04:35:57 pm »

Lo siento, llevo meses leyendo y releyendo documentación y no encuentro una respuesta o solución a mi problema, espero que vosotros me podáis ayudar.

Dispongo de una Sharp Zaurus SL-3100, como accesorios solo dispongo de una compact flash bluetooth, una CF de 4Gb y una CF modem gprs de la marca audiovox, así como un par de tarjetas SD de 1Gb y en cable usb que trae la propia pda en la caja

Mi intención era poder instalar una distribución como Debian o OpenBSD en la pda para poder trabajar con ella como si fuese un pequeño portátil, pero la documentación que he leído hasta ahora no me ha servido de nada y no hago más que dar palos de ciego.

Me podríais ayudar con la instalación (preferiblemente debian) o de donde puedo sacar un documento que me explique como poder hacer la instalación en la actualidad (otro de los problemas que me he encontrado al buscar info es que esta obsoleta o desactualizada.

Muchas Gracias

Sorry to reply in English, but as the McDonald's commercial suggests:  I understand Spanish, but don't speak it...

You can indeed put debian on your Z and use it as a very small laptop computer.  I used it for 5 months as my only computer when I was on sabbatical last Spring (in Valencia, by the way).  

Look on these forums for "debian".  There are several installation methods available.  The trick is to get a usable kernel, and some specialty programs for the touchscreen, the peripherals, and the keyboard.  Beyond that it is pretty much pure debian.  There are two somewhat incompatible systems, oabi and eabi.  I used the eabi, and so was somewhat restricted to what is available in the still-incomplete debian armel distribution.  But it is somewhat faster.  Since the kernels are too large for the flash, the kernel installation methods are more complicated.

For oabi, you use the debian arm distribution, which is more complete.  titchy linux is a good place to start there.  

Once you get past installation with either system, you have debian, and the system is just like any other debian, with a few exceptions.  Some programs don't work real well with eabi.  iceweasel/icedove (firefox/thunderird) to menthon the biggest problems.  But you can use sylpheed, and icehamster is a minimo-based browser that is very good on the small screen.  A real firefox, which is available with oabi, really boggs down the little machine, anyway.  

If you want more details, e-mail me off-list.  All of the instructions and documentation I know about is in English, but I can help you with that.

BTW, the previous reply suggested Angstrom.  I switched from Angstrom to debian to get more packages.  Their distribution is good in terms of initial installation and porting, but they do not use a standard debian package base.  You can hack around and install debian eabi packages in Angstrom, but it is difficult, and you won't get help from them since you are going outside their system.  I needed tex and lyx, which I could not get from Angstrom.  

As a last note, when I got back from Spain I immediately replaced my Z with an eeepc as my portable device.  I really got tired of that small screen, limited RAM, and itty-bitty keyboard --- and with the limited packages.  It is bigger than the Z, but not real big (1Kg), and cheap (~300 euros).

10

C1000/3x00 Hardware / What Do You Guys Do With A Zaurus?

« on: April 29, 2008, 07:19:44 am »

So I pose the question to you guys, 'What do you do primarily with your Zaurus?'

Well, for this semester I'm on sabbatical, living in Spain (Valencia).  My 3100 is my only computer.  The Univ. here did have another machine available, but it is probably the least reliable Mac on the planet, so I don't bother with it.  I use the Z at the office for browsing, e-mail, connecting to my machine back home for serious computational things, and writinf papers (with LyX and LaTeX).  I then take it home and use it for basically the same things there.

After 3 months of it I'm fairly adept at typing on it, but I am also somewhat tired of the small screen.  I do admit I long for a "real" computer, but for trips this is still the best.

11

Debian / Usb Mouse ?

« on: April 24, 2008, 05:21:17 am »

I want to see if using my usb mouse will make writing easier.  I'm using my Z for everything now, office and home.  But I am in the midst of writing a bunch of stuf, and I think the mouse will make things a bit easier.

I used to have it working, although I have to hold it sideways because it thinks right-left is up-down.  I'll deal with that.  But now I can't get it running at all.  ISTR blacklisting mousedev to cut down jitter with the touchscreen, but manually adding it does not help.  The mouse is just not recognized.

I have a 3100, using debian eabi, started with titchy but am using youngen's 2.6.23 kernrl (I believe -- that was a while back).  Usb works fine for flash drives, and like I said it used to work with the mouse, but no longer.

Any hints appreciated.

12

Debian / Icehamster (was: Customising Minimo)

« on: March 19, 2008, 01:54:10 pm »

I am still having trouble downloading files.  Most such ware links from a page.  I can't just save the whole page, can I?    Yet, when I click on the file to be downloaded, I still get the same error.  What is the workaround?

Can you give an example?  I haven't managed to figure out Minimo's built-in download manager, but mine (select "File => Save Link As..." and then click a link to download) works for me.

Well, I just tried to download either icehamster itself, or minimo, following what you just suggested (before I had clicked the link -- seemed like the thing to do -- and got the weird error message as before.  I didn't get your instructions before).

But all I got was some empty files with random filenames in /tmp.  Where are they supposed to appear, and with what names?

13

Debian / Icehamster (was: Customising Minimo)

« on: March 17, 2008, 07:57:24 pm »

Icehamster 0.5 released.

• Fixed "Open File...".
• Added basic downloading support.

To download a file, select "File => Save Link As..." and click the link to download.

I am still having trouble downloading files.  Most such ware links from a page.  I can't just save the whole page, can I?    Yet, when I click on the file to be downloaded, I still get the same error.  What is the workaround?

14

Debian / Icehamster (was: Customising Minimo)

« on: February 04, 2008, 11:36:48 am »

The minimo deb put in calno.com is hosted by ehostsource.

I can download it without problem. I have no clue if it was down when you try it.

As far as I know, ehostsource's service is quite stable.

Maybe you can put a mirror in some free webspace service?

To clarify:  this is a problem with Minimo itself, not the debs or the hosting.  Using Minimo (or Icehamster) to download anything produces an error message like "/tmp/xzcmnams.deb could not be saved, because the source file could not be read. Try again later, or contact the server administrator."

I'll try to track it down and fix it in the next version.

Well, I tried using another web browser.  Neither dillo nor websurf managed it.  Dillo had trouble with this site, for some reason (the oesf site, which had worked before), and netsurf downloaded the minimo document, but then displayed it as a bunch of garbage in the window, but woult not let me save it.  

Fixing the dowload problem in icehamster would be nice for me.  I had to go to a machine in my temporary office to get it, so now I have to go wash my hands.

15

Debian / Icehamster (was: Customising Minimo)

« on: February 02, 2008, 04:45:35 pm »

Icehamster 0.4 released.

• Full Google Bookmarks integration.
• Added menu bar.

I can't download either minimo or the icehamster wraparound from that link.  Both give error messages to the effect tgat some file can't be downloaded since it does not exit.