Messages

1

General Discussion / New Zaurus Sl-c3200

« on: March 10, 2006, 11:31:15 am »

I can't help feeling like they've shot themselves in the foot with this one. Particularly with the new hype over Microsoft's Origami. Say what you like about Microsoft, its potentially a very nice device and the XBox proves that their kit can be modified to take linux/BSD.. Its such a nice device that I think the speed of that project will be very fast indeed.

The Origami device so far seems more like buzzword hype than anything concrete. Or at least, to me, it looks quite like a tablet PC -- not quite what I want.

My SL-6000's thumbboard recently started going on the fritz, which is a bugger. So I've kind of been skimming around to figure out what's around.

For me, it looks like the only real competitor to what the Zaurus *can* do is the OQO. Basically, I want a portable device that has a thumbboard, can connect to the Internet on the go, and open a todo list text file and other files (Excel, etc.) that I can sync up with my PCs at work and home. Games are good too for when I'm bored.

There may be more players in this game in the future, but we'll see. I know there's the Tiqit and the Flipstart, both promising, but vaporware for some time (Tiqit says they are in preproduction though). Sony's rumored to come out with something ala the OQO, but maybe not. If they made the Pepper Pad smaller, it could work but it's too big now and that split keyboard design would irritate me, probably. The i-Mate JASJAR / Universal HTC / etc has the right form factor IMHO but its use of Windows Mobile would probably frustrate me, and I don't need phone functionality anyways. And the Nokia 770 might become the next Z for the Linux crowd if they only added a thumbboard.

Lots of promise, but nothing that great that I see yet.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 30, 2005, 11:40:29 pm »

soundwave106: What version of the xtq-gtk jumbo do you have installed? You can find out by executing the version script which is located in the same location as the xqt-setup.
Check whether it is 0.7.2 (previous version) or 0.7.3 (latest version)
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105624\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The version I uploaded to my site is 0.7.2. If Bam's got the latest version on his site, I'll go ahead and delete the files out of mine (unless you want me to grab the files Bam has got and put it on my site for backup).

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 30, 2005, 12:46:29 am »

The versions of the cramfs files I got didn't seem corrupted, so maybe you can pick them up from my site in the mean time, until the official site with them gets back in place.

XQT Cramfs files

I only have the apps, mozilla, and gtk-jumbo files.

Hope this can help some of you out until Meanie gets the regular site back in action.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 23, 2005, 10:31:10 pm »

I installed the new CRAMFS images. From the old images, unfortunately the biggest problem I got is that somehow the X/Qt icon is not appearing in the menu window of my Sharp Zaurus SL-6000L. This kind of makes it useless as the screen will only occasionally show up as the foreground window, and even then once you tap out, you've lost the window forever. Any ideas on getting the icon back?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104734\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Could you be a bit more specific since I don't have a 6000, I am getting a bit lost here with your problem. A screenshot would be a nice and easy way of showing what's wrong so I can hopefully fix it for you.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104748\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Well, actually I figured it out. For some reason Xqt.desktop was missing the first line ([Desktop Entry]). Thus no icon was appearing for the window. Weird.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 23, 2005, 06:58:28 pm »

I installed the new CRAMFS images. From the old images, unfortunately the biggest problem I got is that somehow the X/Qt icon is not appearing in the menu window of my Sharp Zaurus SL-6000L. This kind of makes it useless as the screen will only occasionally show up as the foreground window, and even then once you tap out, you've lost the window forever. Any ideas on getting the icon back?

6

C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 07, 2005, 10:45:30 pm »

If nothing else, it looks like Debian versions of Konqueror and Opera don't need the java plugin. I was thinking that would be worth a look if no plugin was there.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 07, 2005, 10:07:06 pm »

cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep Hardware returns:

Hardware: SHARP Tosa

If anyone could confirm that the two libraries mentioned is a problem on the C series as well, perhaps this would help. Myself I thought it was just a couple of libraries that for whatever reason were incompatible with the SL-6000.

Unfortunately, Java applets doesn't run on Firefox even in this. I guess it will be this way from what I'm seeing until the Debian package is finished? I've managed to get to my Java applet by downloading the page from my PC and running the evm -appletviewer function, but I was hoping a way could be made that wasn't such a pain in the butt. Ah, well. Still neat.

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C1000/3x00 General discussions / Jumbo Xqt Package

« on: November 07, 2005, 05:32:36 pm »

I would like to thank Meanie for the work on the cramfs package, this is exactly what I wanted to run these type of programs. So far everything looks good. It's cool to add some functionality in something that will, eventually, be relatively easy to install.

This is some notes from the installation. I am running a Sharp SL-6000L with the standard Sharp ROM:

A)  Right now, the packages at http://www.thegrinder.ws/Meanies_XQT/ seem out of date? They are only for October 23rd and lack the split packages. Or maybe that is all that is out right now.

 I ran into the same installation problem mentioned here regarding libjpeg.so.62, and because I failed to read ahead, I forgot to correct it after running the app install. :/ Fortunately pure-ftp worked after the reboot so I could FTP in as root and replace the file, avoiding the reflash.

C) The /etc/fstab method that was used by the app installation script for some reason did not work on bootup. The Zaurus was giving a message that it wasn't recognizing the /usr/mnt.rom/ paths. I'm suspecting how the fstab is handled may be different for the C series. For now what I've done is modify the mntpython script that got dumped into /etc/rc.d/init.d/ to also mount the X/Qt cramfs images using the mount command. (The mntpython script comes from the Python cramfs image posted here.)

D) The following apps did not work on the SL-6000L at least with my configuration: Abiword and Minimo (missing: g_type_class_add_private while loading libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0); XChat and Thunderbird (missing: g_type_class_add_private when loading libpangoft2-1.0.so.0)

The following apps at least ran  : XMMS, Sypheed, Gimp, Firefox, Dillo, Ethereal. I didn't do much testing on how they worked, but I like what I see so far.

E) For the SL-6000L, the screen is upside down in rotated (640x480) mode, and the coordinates for tapping the stylus are reversed. The interesting thing is, the X/Qt server does not respond to rotation changes. So you actually can start in rotated mode, flip to the standard (480x640) mode, and you have a working 640x480 screen. It's kind of strange.  

Here's a sample of what I mean...

[img]http://www.kcgould.net/temp/xqtzaurus.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

My quest in installing this is to see if Firefox can run Java applets in the browser (as far as I know this is not available on any Qtopia-based browser yet). I'll give it a try tonight.

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General Discussion / Another Embedded Linux Device

« on: July 02, 2005, 01:13:12 pm »

I usually holster the Zaurus 6000 around. The Zaurus 6000 is probably about the limit that most people would be comfortable with, I agree. Not really pocketable that well.

A foot wide? Geesh, that's near laptop size. Certainly bigger than the mini-laptops I've seen.

10

General Discussion / More Developers...

« on: June 24, 2005, 07:27:24 pm »

I'll throw in my 2 cents here....

Sorry, folks. The trend in programming is *not* going to be to create low-level stuff from scratch in which you need three months just to compile "Hello World". The trend in programming *is* going to be high-level languages that allow "beginners" to create what they want easier. I'm sorry to all Microsquish detractors, but you aren't going to convince me to, say, write hardcore XML text processors using C++ code, makefiles, several days, etc. when Microsquish has .NET modules that allow me to write four or five lines of code in 10 minutes.

The easy way of course to do XML processing on the Z is Python, and Python's pretty good for other things along those lines. Now Python isn't as RAD as what the folks at Borland did for Pascal and what the Microsoft folks have done for now many languages with .NET, and I honestly think the language is a bit clumsy compared to C++ and the RAD langauges above. But I thought Python was the best hope for a RAD Sharp Z development environment. Alas, the GUIs for Python seemed very blah, even commercial ones liked Blackadder seemed remarkably clumsy with limited good tools for beginners.

If you want to develop in C++ for the Zaurus, it seems like I had to go through a lot of hunting and pecking just to find best development environment practices. Like a lot for the Z, dead links abound. It got frustrating for a while and in the end, hell I didn't care too much. Most of what I need for the Z, I already had. To develop apps on the Z seemed more troublesome than it seemed to be worth, just because it wasn't easy. If someone is ticked off that someone has this attitude (and I'm no programming slouch), sorry. But my time is valuable and I'm not going to waste it hacking away when I can have fun elsewhere and find alternate solutions for my needs.

11

Software / Which Game Emulators Run At Full Speed?

« on: May 27, 2005, 09:41:58 am »

znester runs at a passable speed. All of the others so far seem to be fairly slow.

12

6000 - Tosa / Software for the SL-6000

« on: March 01, 2005, 11:04:23 am »

I currently use version 0.9.6 of the FB VNC server. Sorry to hear that 0.9.7 doesn't work (I haven't upgraded yet and now won't until the IPK is confirmed to work  ).

You can download 0.9.6 from here.

13

Security and Networking / Network/bluetooth Connectivity Pass Thru To Pc

« on: February 27, 2005, 08:44:05 pm »

I don't know if doing the reverse in the Zaurus Unix environment is possible (sharing a Z Internet connection to the PC), but I found an article about Internet sharing in Unix that may be helpful, if that is your goal. Maybe that will help.

14

General Discussion / Olympus Digital Camera & My Z

« on: February 24, 2005, 12:21:51 pm »

That's cool.  I have an Olympus with USB access as well. So now it's time to try viewing pictures taken with the Olympus on the Z using Sharp's newly released photo program... a 4" 640x480 screen is a heck of a lot better to see an image than that tiny Olympus camera screen!

15

6000 - Tosa / Smb In Files Tab?

« on: February 23, 2005, 12:12:24 pm »

I think you can avoid at least the backup issue by storing the symlink on a SD card (and have the files appear there) instead of the internal flash.