Topics

1

Cxx0 General discussions / Newer Kernel Stops Keyboard Working

« on: March 24, 2010, 12:51:20 pm »

I thought I'd have a go at compiling the 2.6.33.1 kernel for my C860, so I took the Corgi configuration file and used that as a starting point using the 'make menuconfig' command.

Well everything seemed to compile fine, but when I tried booting the kernel I found the keyboard no longer works.

I did get some warnings when compiling, including this one:

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']In file included from drivers/input/keyboard/corgikbd.c:24:
arch/arm/mach-pxa/include/mach/pxa2xx-gpio.h:4:2: warning: #warning Please use mfp-pxa2[57]x.h instead of pxa2xx-gpio.h
  CC      drivers/input/keyboard/spitzkbd.o[/div]

Has anyone tried doing this?  Anyone know where it's going wrong?

Cheers,
Dan

2

Windows Issues / Windows Usb Link Quality

« on: August 08, 2008, 05:05:52 am »

I've used the USB link to connect an SL-860 to a Windows PC for a number of years now, and the quality of the connection has never been great.  From time to time, especially during large file transfers, the link freezes and I have to disconnect the Zaurus to re-start the network.

Yesterday I booted Ubuntu on a laptop which I normally run Windows XP on, and set up a USB connection to the Zaurus.  And the amazing thing was, there were no dropouts or anything, just a rock-steady connection, unlike when running Windows.  The same PC when running XP gives the usual unreliability.  So this is a software issue.

My work PC is Windows-based, so I can't install Linux there, but I would really like to have the same stability as under Linux.  Does anyone have any advice on improving the link quality?  I've messed around with all sorts of things, including MTU values, and disabling Windows services, but the link remains unreliable.

3

Cxx0 General discussions / Booting Modern Distros From An Sd Card Using The 2.6.23 Kernel

« on: January 21, 2008, 04:20:27 am »

Hi all,

For some time I've tried to get the Angstrom 2.6.23 kernel to work with Debian on my C860, but I've been bitten by the altboot bug (see http://bugs.openembedded.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1718 for example), where the system freezes a few seconds after booting.

I think I've found a solution to this issue.  After doing some experimenting, it looks like the system hang can be prevented by executing /etc/init.d/sysklogd script early on during initialisation.  I don't know why this should stop the hanging, but it does.  So to ensure this is run early in initialisation,

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']
cd /etc/rcS.d
ln -sf ../init.d/sysklogd S01sysklogd
[/div]

Note that you still have to be fast at selecting option 1 (boot from flash) or 3 (boot from SD card) in the altboot menu, and that you usually have to make the selection twice.  I also commented out line 474 of /etc/altboot.func, so that it says

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']
#$FSCK $1 || sleep 2
[/div]

otherwise when booting from SD card, it always checks the filesystem, which takes forever, and may lead to the system freezing because the syslog daemon is not executed in time.

 My current setup is as follows:

Latest Angstrom kernel and console image including altboot installed on flash.
Debian tarball unzipped to SD card (in /debian directory).
Angstrom filesystem unzipped to SD card (in /angstrom directory).

The failsafe mode is to boot Angstrom from flash.  To experiment with the minimum requirements needed for booting, I

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']
cd /media/card
ln -sf angstrom/* .
[/div]

Then I play around with which scripts I keep inside /etc/rcS.d and /etc/rc5.d, run altboot, select option 3, and see if the system boots.  If it doesn't, I remove the power, select altboot option 1, boot from flash, and make further changes.

To boot Debian, I

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']
cd /media/card
ln -sf debian/* .
[/div]

and then boot from the SD card.

At the moment I haven't got the CF card working, so maybe this functionality has been removed from the kernel so that I need to load a module or something.

In theory this technique could also be used for other distros, such as  Android.

I might have missed other dependencies, such as one or two binaries from Angstrom /sbin, but if other people try this method for determining what the boot requirements are, then we would get a definitive answer.  If anyone gets this to work, please add further comments to this thread.

Cheers,

Dan

4

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Usb To Windows Connection Quality

« on: March 09, 2007, 09:31:56 am »

I used to run pdaXrom rc12 on my C860, and the USB link to Windows was a bit flaky, and would drop out from time to time when doing large downloads.  Now that I've installed r121, the quality has got worse, and drops out more frequently than before.  Has anyone else seen this sort of behaviour?  Are there any settings I can change to limit the maximum bandwidth?  I've tried changing settings such as

Code: [Select]

ifconfig usb0 txqueuelen and

Code: [Select]

ifconfig usb0 mtu
but neither of these seemed to help.

Dan

5

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Problems With 'apm -s' And Xwindows

« on: July 17, 2006, 09:05:31 am »

Has anyone else had any problems executing 'apm -s' from X?  I have found that when I do this, upon wakeup X runs really slowly, and I get a load of errors about timeouts with read and write pointers.  If I use the suspend button, I have no problems.  Similarly, running 'apm -s' from the console wakes up with no problems.

So it appears that pressing the suspend button does something more than just call apm.x, and this extra behaviour prevents the X problem from occurring.  Does anyone know anything about this?  Does it do something with the framebuffer?

I'd like to get this working so that I can control automatic suspends if I wakeup the Z in the night to do some night-time processing!

I'm running RC12 on an SL-860.

Dan

6

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Native Compilation Of Sl-c860 Kernel

« on: July 04, 2005, 07:42:41 am »

Hi,

Has anyone managed to compile the SL-C860 kernel natively?  I don't have access to a linux machine so I'm trying to compile the kernel on my Zaurus.  I've examined the pdaXrom builder here and looked at the instructions here, and can compile the kernel after applying all the patches (in order!) and using the configuration, kernel-2.4.18-boxer-cacko.  For the compilation I'm using gcc 2.95.2 and binutils 2.9.5, from the zgcc cramfs.

The zImage in arch/arm/build builds but when I rename it to zImage.bin, add it to the pdaXrom tools.tar and flash with it, on reboot the system hangs without any messages.  Fortunately I can re-flash with the old version because during the pdaXrom flash routine I go to the command line and copy the original tools.tar back to the CF card.

Has anyone managed to compile a working kernel?  Am I missing something obvious here?

Cheers,

Dan

7

Zaurus - pdaXrom / New Packages Uploaded To Unstable Feed

« on: March 02, 2005, 05:05:37 am »

Hi all,

I've uploaded some files to the pdaxrom unstable feed.  The packages are compiled with the RC8 SDK but should work OK with RC9.  Thanks to pgas for lending me his account to do this.

Emulators

Package: e-uae
Description: Amiga emulator.  It's about as fast as other compiled versions of UAE (i.e. a bit slow)

Package: spectemu
Description: Spectrum emulator

Package: tiemu
Description: TI89/92/92+ calculator emulator. Also installs libticables 1.5.3, libticalcs 4.2.8, libtifiles 0.4.0.  No ROMS included

GPS / mapping apps

Package: viking
Description: gps mapping tool

Music apps

Package: beast
Description: The BEdevilled Audio SysTem.  I was quite excited to get this working as it's a modular synth, but unfortunately it's too slow to use (floating point?).  If it crashes on start-up, remove the scripts from /usr/local/share/bse/v0.5.6/scripts (I should have already removed the offending scripts)

Package: soundtracker
Description: A pattern-oriented music editor.  Again a bit slow in use

Accountancy apps

Package: grisbi
Description: A personal accounting application for Linux.  Has some bug-fixes to remember the position of the columns (useful on a small screen).  Hint: Edit the config file and change the position of the divider between the account list and the transactions to 1, <Largeur_colonne_comptes_operation>1</Largeur_colonne_comptes_operation>

Package: ledger
Description: A command-line accounting program

Package: qhacc
Description: Accounts program.  Compiled with SQLite support

Utils

Package: atvguide
Description: XMLTV viewer, a bit like qttv

Package: autonice
Description: A program to automatically lower the priority level of long-lived processes.

Package: delegate
Description: Gateway / proxy server

Package: mrxvt
Description: Multi-tabbed terminal emulator.  I use this instead of aterm.  Read the docs for keyboard shortcuts

Package: msysm
Description: MasarLabs System Monitor.  I can only get this to work when exporting the display to my host PC.  I use this when compiling on the Z - shut down Xwindows and keep the memory for compiling

Mostly used for development

Package: bison
Description: Bison parser generator

Package: flex
Description: flex

Package: gmp
Description: GMU MP arbitrary precision arithmetic library

Package: guile
Description: Project GNU's extension language

Package: m4
Description: m4 macro processor

Libraries

Package: gstreamer
Description: A framework for streaming media

Package: libmikmod
Description: A portable sound library

Package: libsigc++
Description: The Typesafe Callback Framework for C++

Package: swig
Description: Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator



Hope they are of some use to people  

Dan

8

General Discussion / Project planning software

« on: October 25, 2004, 07:11:31 am »

Hi,

I've been looking for some time now for some software that can produce Gantt charts for simple project management.  What I really want is something where I can enter tasks, duration, and task dependencies, and get a Gantt graph showing the start times for each of the tasks.

I know that Project Professional exists, but I don't like the interface.  What would be ideal, perhaps, is something a bit like Planner, http://www.imendio.com/projects/planner/ (formerly known as Mr Project), but this is a Gnome app I think, so won't compile for Qtopia.

I've tried all sorts of other "programs".  There's quite a lot of PHP groupware projects which produce Gantt diagrams but they require PHP with GD compiled, and this doesn't exist on the Zaurus as far as I know, so the diagrams don't work.  Also this type of setup is slow and memory intensive.

I've tried numerous Java programs which can do project planning, but they all seem to require Swing.  Does this exist on the SL-C860?

I've tried Python scripts (e.g. http://www.logilab.org/projects/projman) but they always seem to fail on something I haven't installed

I've found a Perl script, http://larsen.perlmonk.org/perl/gantt.html, but that only produces text output.

If nothing exists for Qtopia, are there any options for PdaXrom?  (I've tried QtGantt - http://www.gumbley.me.uk/qtgantt.html, but that's in alpha state.)

If anyone knows of anything which might work, I'd be grateful to hear from them.

Regards,

Dan

9

User Request for Applications / Project management tool

« on: February 27, 2004, 11:36:53 am »

Hi,

I currently use a project management tool called Plan5, http://www.twiddlebit.com/, on my Psion 5 but am looking out for an alternative on the Zaurus.

It\'d be great if there was a free project management tool for the Zaurus, such as MrProject, http://mrproject.codefactory.se/

Does anyone know how easy it is to port a Gnome app to Qtopia?

Daniel

10

General Discussion / Running xspect games from their icon

« on: February 26, 2004, 08:24:15 am »

Hi all,

I\'ve found a way of running Spectrum games by clicking on their icon in Qtopia, even though xspect is an x app.  This principle could be used to associate other types of file with a non-qtopia app.

Requirements:
xspect (http://ipkgfind.handhelds.org/details.phtml?package=xspectrum&official=&format=)
perl
Xqt
wm2 (optional)
spectrum games (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/)

After installing all the above, create a desktop entry for xspect, /home/QtPalmtop/apps/Games/xspect.desktop

Code: [Select]

[Desktop Entry]

Comment=Spectrum emulator

Exec=runxspect

Icon=WordGame

Type=Application

Name=Spectrum emulator

MimeType=application/spectrum
(Icon=WordGame as I don\'t have any interesting pics on my Zaurus ;-))

and associate Spectrum files with this by adding to /home/QtPalmtop/etc:

Code: [Select]

application/spectrum            tap z80 sna tzx

runxspect is a simple shell script living in /home/QtPalmtop/bin:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh

. /home/zaurus/.bashrc

export DISPLAY=:0

runxspect.pl < /tmp/qcop-msg-runxspect > /tmp/xspect.sh

. /tmp/xspect.sh
(alter the bashrc line to point to your initialisation script as necessary)

When you click on a Spectrum file, Qtopia appears to create a file, /tmp/qcop-msg-runxspect, with the name of the file clicked on, as well as a load of binary characters.  The runxspect.pl script strips out everything except for the filename, and creates the output:

xspect <filename>

which is then run in the above script.

runxspect.pl is

Code: [Select]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

{

  # gets rid of non-ASCII in QPE file, and creates the string xspect

  my $string;

  while (<>) {

    y/a-zA-Z0-9_/./!/cs;

    s/!//g;

    s/(QPE/Application/runxspectraiseQPE/Application/runxspectraiseQPE/Application/runxspectsetDocumentQString[fb]*[d]*[vr]*)(.*)/xspect $2*n/s;

    print $_;

  }

}
which is somewhat messy, but seems to work most of the time.

You\'ll have to reset Qtopia to associate the Spectrum files with the desktop entry, and Xqt should be running.  After doing this, clicking on a Spectrum game file in the file manager should start up xspect.

It\'s all a bit messy so if anyone has a better way of doing it, give me a shout :-)

One annoyance I find is that on my SL5500 the Spectrum display is too wide and the wm2 window manager always opens the display from the left hand side of the Zaurus screen, so I always have to drag the display left to centre it.  Anyone know a way to automatically get an x window manager to centre it?

Cheers,

Daniel