Topics

1

General Discussion / Shut Off Wifi Connection While Browsing

« on: October 28, 2007, 08:25:56 pm »

I would like to get this idea out there before I forget it.  I realize that when I am browsing the web, I spend a lot of my time simply reading the current web page.  I wonder if it is feasible to reprogram Firefox or some other web browser to shut off power to the wireless networking card after loading a web page until I click on a web link, click on the home page button, select a bookmark, or enter a new URL in the address bar to take me to a different page.  That way, you should be able to browse the web a lot longer than you would be able to do by having the wireless network card on during the whole web browsing session.  Does the wireless card have to be constantly on to maintain the wireless connection?

2

General Discussion / Found The Forums Again

« on: October 12, 2007, 01:04:06 am »

For the past several days, I was wondering if someone had pulled the plug on the OESF forums.  I finally found this place again via a Google search.  If

https://www.oesf.org/forum

without the "s" at the end is going to be the new permanent address for the OESF forum, then the link to the forum from

http://www.zaurususergroup.com/

should be fixed to point to the new web address.

3

General Discussion / Modified Voicerec

« on: July 18, 2007, 08:04:40 pm »

I tried the modified voicerec program, and it no longer gives me a false message that my 4GB CF card is out of space, but I get an error message:

QLibrary open failed!: /home/QtPalmtop/lib/libqsfepj.so, libkke.so.1: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory

libkke seems to be related to Japanese language input, based on a Google search.  My Zaurus SL-C760 was converted to English by the previous owner.

4

General Discussion / Voice Recorder Thinks That 4 G B Is Not Enough

« on: May 18, 2007, 01:52:21 am »

I recently purchased a 4GB CompactFlash card for my Zaurus SL-C760.  When I try to use the Voice Recorder program that comes with the stock Sharp ROM, the Voice Recorder program informs me that there is not enough storage space.  I am guessing that the Voice Recorder  is using a 32 bit signed long integer with an upper limit of 2GB for positive integer representations, causing a larger positive number, such as 4GB, to overflow into negative number representations.  That is annoying.  TkcVox does not complain about the 4GB card, so I am using tkcVox now to record voice audio.

5

General Discussion / Star Wreck Movie

« on: March 28, 2006, 09:23:41 pm »

I converted a movie called "Star Wreck" from *.m4v format to *.avi with a free program called MediaCoder, which is currently a front end to mencoder.  The video codec is XVID.  The audio codec is mad.  I used the QuickTime presets to do the conversion.  The resulting *.avi file can be  viewed on my C760 with kino2 and mplayer on the Sharp ROM.  After hours of experimenting with various encoding options, the smallest file is 315,667,794 bytes.  Is anyone willing to host this file?  

The space combat sequences of this film look professional.  The film could be stripped of all dialogue and have these space combat sequences strung together, and it would essentially tell the same story.

6

General Discussion / Qemu 0.8.0

« on: January 04, 2006, 09:20:05 pm »

A new version of QEMU v0.8.0 is out with ARM system emulation.  The web site is:

http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu

I wonder if this can be used on the Zaurus models.

7

X/Qt / Extracting Files From Openoffice Cramfs

« on: January 02, 2006, 11:45:55 pm »

I am having trouble extracting the OpenOffice files from the cramfs file.  When I try to use the cp -R command from the mount point, I get error messages about links not being copied, or I get an out of space on destination error.  Has anyone here been able to do it?

8

General Discussion / Awk Tar File Is Actually An Ipk

« on: January 01, 2006, 07:19:44 pm »

I just downloaded awk from the ELSI library with Internet Explorer, and the file that I got was a *.tar file.  I tried to view the tar file, but it looked like a binary file, so I changed the file extension to *.tar.gz and attempted to gunzip it, and it worked.  gunzip extracted a debian-binary and control*.gz and some other *.gz file, which made the original file seem like an *.ipk.  I then started from the beginning and renamed the extension to *.ipk.  I installed the *.ipk, and my C760, running the Sharp ROM, indicated that some files could not be installed, but awk seems to run fine.

9

General Discussion / Irda Versus Wifi

« on: December 10, 2005, 11:22:59 am »

IRDA seems mostly useless to me compared to WiFi.  IRDA has the limitations of lower speed, higher power consumption, a need for line-of-sight, and a need for close proximity between the sender and receiver.  I think that in future handheld computers, IRDA should be dropped entirely in favor of WiFi.

The only advantage of an IRDA port is that you can potentially use it to control televisions and VCRs, but not many people are going to use an expensive handheld computer for that purpose.

The question was cut off.  The question was:  If you could have IRDA or WiFi built into a future handheld computer, but not both, which would you rather have?

The IRDA port is the infrared serial port with the reddish plastic cover.  

WiFi is a slang term that refers to a range of wireless radio communications technologies that are used in various places such as libraries, Starbucks, and home networks.

10

General Discussion / Mount Confusion

« on: September 01, 2005, 02:49:06 am »

In the Sharp ROM on my SL-C760, if your present working directory is "/mnt/card" and you type at a shell prompt:

mount directoryname

Then the computer acts as if you typed:

mount /usr/mnt.rom/card/directoryname

because /mnt/card is a symbolic link to /usr/mnt.rom/card.

However, if your present working directory is not /mnt/card and you type:

mount /mnt/card/directoryname

Then the computer acts as if you typed

mount /mnt/card/directoryname

The program that implements the mount command, busybox, looks through the /etc/fstab file and looks for an exact string match to either /usr/mnt.rom/card or /mnt/card, but not both.  If you have one or the other string on a line in /etc/fstab, then the mount command will fail in one of the instances that I described above.  This failure is what is probably stopping most people from installing the dev-img1.5 setup script on Zauruses that have the Sharp ROM.  If you have two separate entries in /etc/fstab with the /usr/mnt.rom/card and /mnt/card strings to mount the same directory and use the "mount -a" command to mount everything mentioned in /etc/fstab, then there will be two separate mounts for the same directory, which is undesirable if you are mounting loop devices and have a limited number of loop devices.

Here is a work-around.  The mount command exists as a symbolic link in /bin/mount to busybox.  Write a shell script called mount and put it in a directory that is closer to the beginning of the $PATH environment variable.  On my computer, the /home/QtPalmtop/bin directory is earlier in the path than /bin.  You have to be the root user by executing the "su root" command in order to be able to place the new mount script in the /home/QtPalmtop/bin directory.  The content of this /home/QtPalmtop/bin/mount shell script is one line:

Code: [Select]

/bin/mount $(echo $* | sed "s/\/mnt\/card/\/usr\/mnt.rom\/card/" | sed "s/\/mnt\/cf/\/usr\/mnt.rom\/cf/")
This script can be made executable with the commands:

su root
chmod 755 mount

What this script does is replace the first "/mnt/card" string in the parameter list with "/usr/mnt.rom/card".  The script also replaces the first instance of "/mnt/cf" with "/usr/mnt.rom/cf".  The script then passes the altered parameters to the original "/bin/mount" to process.  This script makes the path names consistent when you use the mount command.

You also need to do one more thing.  In your /etc/fstab file, you have to replace "/mnt/card" with "/usr/mnt.rom/card", and you have to replace "/mnt/cf" with "/usr/mnt.rom/cf".  That way, the /bin/mount command will find an exact string match in /etc/fstab.

11

Software / New Version Of Zknights Chess Board

« on: February 10, 2005, 10:43:59 pm »

After I suggested to Udo Berger that he make the jog dial let the human player review previous moves, he implemented that feature.  He replied that when the move history list box has the focus, you can use the jog dial to move back and forth in the history list.  With the new version, the history list box has the focus by default.  You can also use the up and down keys.  The chess board and various compatible chess engines are available for download from:

http://free.pages.at/uberger/zaurus/zknights_en.html

12

Off Topic forum / Star Control 2 Music And Remixes

« on: December 12, 2004, 08:47:32 pm »

I used Google.com to search for the Thraddash MOD music from the Star Control 2 game and found a site which contains the original music plus remixes from some of the original composers in MP3 format.  Even if you have never played Star Control, check the music out at:

http://www.medievalfuture.com/precursors/music.php

You can carry and listen to the tracks that you like on your Zaurus.

13

Cxx0 General discussions / Sun Visor for Zaurus Clamshell Models

« on: September 06, 2004, 01:36:02 am »

A piece of construciton paper works well as a sun visor for my Zaurus SL-C760.  The dimensions of the construction paper are 6"x14" inches, or about 15cm x 35.5cm.  This visor is easy to carry around.  Perhaps some other material could be used instead that would resist crinkling while still having enough stiffness to shade the screen.  Do any of you have any suggestions?

Front:
[img]http://www.chinet.com/~edlee/visor1.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

Back:
[img]http://www.chinet.com/~edlee/visor2.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

14

General Discussion / Disabling Screen Saver and Suspend

« on: August 28, 2004, 11:29:14 pm »

Keywords: disable disabling screen saver screensaver suspend suspending Zaurus

I found the following web page through a google.com search:

http://lists.trolltech.com/qt-embedded-int...3/msg00015.html

It gives a hint as to how to disable both the suspend and screen saver features of the Zaurus.  I am using the Sharp ROM on my Zaurus SL-C760.  Other people have indicated how to disable the suspend feature in a shell script, but I did not find direct information on how to disable the screen saver.  I have created the following script for disabling the suspend and screen saver feature for keypebble in /usr/local/bin/keypebble-ns:

Code: [Select]

qcop QPE/System 'setScreenSaverMode(int)' 2
qcop QPE/System 'setScreenSaverIntervals(int,int,int)' 0 0 0
keypebble
qcop QPE/System 'setScreenSaverMode(int)' 100
qcop QPE/System 'setScreenSaverIntervals(int,int,int)' -1 -1 -1
You have to be the root user in order to place this script in the /usr/local/bin directory.  This directory must also be listed in your PATH environment variable.  You must make the script executable with a sequence of commands like:

su root
cd /usr/local/bin
vi keypebble-ns
chmod 755 keypebble-ns

You also have to be the root user to modify the

/home/QtPalmtop/apps/Application/keypebble.desktop

file so that "keypebble" is replaced with "keypebble-ns" so that the "keypebble-ns" script runs instead of the "keypebble" program when you click on the icon to start keypebble.

The ability to disable both the suspend feature and screen saver of the Zaurus is important if you are going to use the computer to view a GPS navigation display on battery power.  If this method of disabling the screen saver works for a lot of you, then I recommend that this information be added to the Zaurus FAQ document.

15

Linux Applications / dev_img-1.5 tgmath.h corrupt

« on: June 17, 2004, 08:09:47 am »

I tried to compile the source code for the shine program from the comprec package but could not do it.  Part of the reason is that I cannot compile anything that refers to the trigonometric function cos().  The only reference to cos() that I found in the include files is tgmath.h, but that file seems to have been truncated.