Topics

1

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Running Minimo In *true* Fullscreen?

« on: November 10, 2005, 02:32:12 pm »

I've been trying to edit files in /usr/lib/mozilla-minimo for about a week now, and I can't figure out how to make Minimo go into *true* fullscreen mode.

Really all I want to do is get rid of the menubar and status bar when Minimo is in fullscreen.

Has anyone done this?

2

For Sale / Wanted / Sold- Sl-c750 And All Of My Accessories!

« on: June 08, 2005, 12:01:30 pm »

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/everything.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

The time has come for me to move on...  This is hard for me, but I think it's for the best.  I've decided that my need for a large hard drive and full size keyboard outweigh my love for my Zaurus.  Because of this, I am selling my SL-C750 and all of my accessories, to be replaced by a Fujitsu Lifebook or a Sony Picturebook.

In the above picture you can see the following:

* Zaurus SL-C750
* Original AC adapter, plus an additional AC adapter
* Original box with documentation and CD
* Hawking 10/100 CF LAN
* Socket low power CF WiFi (these are getting hard to find these days)
* SimpleTech 512MB CF
* Lexar 1GB SD
* SimpleTech 256MB SD (click here for a closeup of all 3 cards)
* Car mount (keep reading for more on the car mount)

What you can't see:

* EA-BL08K battery and cover (larger battery that the C760 and C860 use)
* Overlay Brilliant screen protector (I'm a perfectionist, I bought 3 of these before I got it applied correctly, it's almost impossible to tell that it's on there when you're using the Z, no bubbles or dust)
* Original battery, cover, and case
* USB cable (forgot to take a picture of it)

The coolest accessory, if you ask me, is the car mount that I put together.  It lets you have the Z right at your fingertips while driving.  I've been using it as a display for a carputer, and for playing music with XMMS.  You can see the entire project here.

I have priced everything if purchased separately, and it comes to well over $700.  I am asking $550 for everything.  Please either reply to this thread or send me a PM if you are interested.

If nobody is interested, in a few days I will sell everything individually on ebay.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I will flash with any ROM that the buyer wants.  If the buyer wants pdaXrom I'm more than willing to provide the various scripts that I use (mplayer, doom, etc.).

Here are some more shots of my Z in action:

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_front_closed.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_left_closed.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_right.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_bottom.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_firefox.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_doom.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/z_video.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

I have finished selling my Zaurus and accessories, thanks everyone!

3

General Discussion / Possibly Selling Clamshell Models Soon

« on: April 29, 2005, 10:54:34 am »

Ok here's the scoop:

A very good friend of mine might be (he's about 99% sure) heading off to work in Japan for a year or two within a month.  I have been talking to him about possibly running a small Zaurus importing operation while he is over there.  This would be primarily for people in the U.S., but I'm open to the idea of shipping to other countries.  I would like to hear feedback from folks here about these questions I have:

1. Is it worth it?  Obviously this would have to be financially beneficial to myself, my friend, and the buyer.  I was checking some prices of Zaurii in Japan compared to conics.net and dynamism.com, and at least for the C1000 and C860, it seems like it would be worth it.  The C3000 still looks very expensive even in Japan.

2. Would people be interested in configuration services?  Obviously I would be able to convert them to english, but are people interested in other configuration services?  For example, I could flash them to a different rom image (pdaXrom, cacko, open zaurus, etc.).  I could also install software, scripts, or anything else that someone might want, and after I could do a NAND backup to a CF or SD card if provided.

3. Would selling on ebay be a good idea?  I notice that ebay doesn't have a lot of clamshell models.  Is this because there isn't a demand for them?

4. Are there legal issues that I should be worried about?

I'm a strong believer in Zaurii, and I would like to help others obtain them, and hopefully make a little extra income in the process.  

4

General Discussion / Fusion Of Zaurus And '00 Accord

« on: April 19, 2005, 01:18:11 pm »

Ok, prepare for a long post, but first, something to pique your curiosity:

 

[img]http://bemetal.com/images/misc/20_mount.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

The mount from behind, notice the vorbis fish!

5

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Disconnect From Fullscreen Vnc

« on: April 17, 2005, 04:42:13 pm »

This should be easy.

How do you disconnect vncviewer when it's in fullscreen?  What keys do I need to press?

Thanks!

UPDATE:

Ok, from the documentation it looks like F8 is used to disconnect, but the Z keyboard doesn't have function keys...

Can anyone help me map one of these keys to F8?

[img]http://img9.echo.cx/img9/2816/slc7508kr.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

It would really help with this "project" I've got going.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Ok, I used xev to find out the keycode for the button on the left in the picture above, then I added this to /etc/X11/kb/corgi.xmodmap:

keycode 129 = F8

This gives me a menu, which I can use to select "exit", which is good, but I would really like to exit from vncviewer completely by pressing this key.

Ok, that's it for me for tonight, any help would be greatly appreciated.

6

For Sale / Wanted / Wanted: Ea-bl08 Battery Cover

« on: April 05, 2005, 03:47:16 pm »

I'm working on a car mount for my SL-C750, and I'm looking for an extra battery cover.  I know that conics has them for $25, but I'm hoping someone here might be able to sell me one a little cheaper.

7

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Zaurus As A Car Media Player

« on: March 19, 2005, 02:57:13 pm »

In my never ending quest to make my Z run my life, my next task is to create a car media player with my Z.

Here is my logic, the most expensive part of a car media player is the display.  Then it hit me, I already have a perfectly good display on my Zaurus!  Why go out and buy a new one just for the car?  However, I quickly realized that there are 2 big problems with using the Z in the car:

1. Limited storage.  Compact flash cards are getting cheaper, but I want access to my entire music collection (> 40GB).
2. Poor interface.  Xmms is great, but it's not really meant for this purpose.

Now, nothing is going to fix problem #1 any time soon.  Yeah, I could get a RATOC USB card and connect an external drive, but that means buying the card and the drive.  I would have to spend at least $200, and I don't even know if the RATOC card works with pdaXrom yet.  And problem #2 would still exist.

Then I started looking into what people are using in their cars for a media player in Linux.  I came across this thread on mp3car.com.  There they talk about a few interfaces, HeadUnit, MythTV, Freevo, and a few others.  HeadUnit looks the best, but I couldn't get it to compile.  MythTV is cool, but I couldn't get it installed either.  Freevo, on the other hand, was a breeze.  I got it installed on my home Debian box, and with a little X11 forwarding trickery I can now do this:

[img]http://img239.exs.cx/img239/2251/freevoz5ut.png\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

This is exactly what I want in my car.  Simple interface, looks good, and it plays every music format out there.

Now, how am I going to do this??  I'm thinking the easiest way will be to get an inverter to power a computer in the trunk, and then do X11 forwarding with the display to my Z.  I'll just have to figure out how to connect them...  WiFi?  Cat5?  I don't know which would be better.  I've never configured a direct IP connection between two computers, so I would really appreciate any help with that.  Then I would connect the computer in the trunk via usb to my stereo (that's right, I have a unit for my stereo that functions as a usb audio device!).

Can anyone think of a better way to do this?  Are there better interfaces out there than Freevo?

I've already ordered this car mount from shirtpocket, so I'm on my way at least.

8

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Adventures In Tv Encoding For The Z

« on: March 01, 2005, 05:51:01 pm »

I have a goal of being able to encode any TV shows into a format that I can play on my Zaurus.  Here are the results of my quest thus far:

So I have an HDTV DVR from Comcast at home (and I work for them), and I read that you can use the firewire output to record (unencrypted) content to a PC (the guide that I followed is here).  

It works, but the files it creates are huge "transport stream" video files (a half hour Family Guy episode took up 1.6GB!).  These "transport stream" files seem difficult to manipulate.  All the guides I found for windows software wouldn't work.  Eventually I came accross FFMpeg for Linux, which is able to read and re-encode these files into mpeg/avi format.

Here is the command I've been using to create video that plays on my Z:

Code: [Select]

ffmpeg -i video.ts -f avi -vcodec mpeg4 -b 300 -g 300 -bf 2 -deinterlace -s 320x240 -croptop 2 -acodec mp2 -ar 22050 -ab 96 -ac 1 video.aviThis creates a video at about 3 to 4 mb/min that plays well with mplayer (actually I wrote a script for mplayer, I'll post it if anyone is interested).  This is all well and good, but the files it creates are a tad big for my taste (almost 100MB for a half hour show).  

I know very little about encoding video, but I know I followed some guides a while back to rip DVDs into DivX format for the Z, and they turned out to be around 1 to 2 mb/min, and they looked much better than these videos.  Also, I was watching the CPU load, and it's right up around 90% when watching these videos, which seems high.

So at this point I'm looking for anyone with ideas on how to use FFMpeg, and maybe a DivX encoding program, to lower the size and raise the quality of these videos, if possible.  

Hopefully this will spark some interest in encoding TV signals for the Z, which as far as I know hasn't come up yet.

9

General Discussion / Linux World Boston

« on: February 02, 2005, 09:40:45 pm »

I'll be at Linux World in Boston in a couple weeks, Zaurus in hand of course!

Just wondering if any other Zaurus users will be there.

10

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Dual boot with another ROM?

« on: November 03, 2004, 12:19:19 pm »

I just ordered a Lexar 1GB SD card from newegg.com, and with the extra storage I'd really like to dual boot pdaxrom, and maybe cacko or another ROM as well.  I remember a thread about this a while back, but so much has changed with pdaxrom I don't know if it would be relevant or not.

Has anyone done this with RC5?

11

Accessories / New EA-BL11 battery will work in the Cxx0!

« on: October 21, 2004, 08:32:52 pm »

I emailed Brett over at conics.net, and he said that the new EA-BL11 battery that comes will the SL-C3000 will be compatible with the Cxx0!  If you have a C700 or C750, I'm sure you will need the battery cover that comes with the EA-BL08K in order to use this battery, but C760 and C860 owners should be able to use it right away.

I emailed him back to find out when they will be available, what the performance increases are, and how much it will cost.  Hopefully he'll write back soon.

12

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Request for rdesktop for RC5

« on: October 14, 2004, 05:52:28 pm »

I was hoping someone would be able to compile rdesktop for RC5.  I used it a lot with 1.0.5, but it's not available for RC5 yet.

13

Zaurus - pdaXrom / NFS in pdaxrom?

« on: October 12, 2004, 10:02:10 pm »

I have two boxes running Debian that I would like to connect my Z to with NFS, but I've never actually used NFS before.  Can someone point me to some good documentation?

14

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Packages not linking when installed to SD

« on: October 11, 2004, 04:58:34 pm »

I have noticed that some applications don't seem to link correctly when installed to my SD card.  For example, I installed gimp to SD, now when I try to run it from the command line I see that it can't find libgimpwidgets-2.0.so.0.  After a little playing around I found that this is part of the gimp package, so I ran ipkg-link add gimp.  That gets rid of the first error, but now it's looking for libart_lgpl_2.so.2.  Running ipkg-link add libart-lgpl gets rid of that error, and gimp loads successfully.  However, if I reboot I have to the same thing all over again.

I have been using this SD card for a long time, it is formatted ext3, so I don't think it's the card.

Any ideas?

15

Deals and Great Z Buys / Lexar 1GB SD for $32.49 (US) shipped

« on: October 09, 2004, 09:54:00 am »

Slickdeals has a post about the Lexar 1GB SD for $32.49, it's here.  I just ordered one, I'll let everyone know how it goes.

It looks like they probably made a mistake, since this card usually goes for over $100.