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5x00 General discussions / Hybrid Roms On The Collie

« on: July 14, 2007, 01:47:19 am »

I am really excited that folks have been documenting installation tricks for the various ROMS: pdaXrom, TKC roms, Cacko Crow, etc.  Because these folks have helped so much with thier efforts, I feel I should give a bit. So here are my install tricks. There are two versions of this ROM, but I will focus my comments on version 1.1. I have not had any success with the version 1.0 of this ROM.

First, after much reading, I actually discovered what the Hybrid ROMs are. Maslovsky can correct me, but in plain English (sort of), these ROMS are the the Cacko ROMS on a JFFS partition. Version 1.0 is just the kernel and jffs installed. The user has to install the actiual operating system. Qtopia 1.5.4 is the OS that comes with it. Qtopia can be installed on the jffs, sd card or the CF card.

Version 1.1 of the Hybrid ROM installs qtopia 1.6.2 on a jffs partition. This schema is very similar to OZ. Like the other Cacko kernels, the Hybrid ROMs come with 32-30 or 64-0 kernels. Unlike the straight Cacko Crow kernels, the Hybrid ROMs do not have that irritating flashing light when the Z is plugged in. And, for some reason, they are much faster than the Cacko Crow ROM with the 64-0 kernel.

The hybrid roms can be obtained here: http://www.elsix.org/downloads/hybrid/
Applications modified for this ROM can also be found as the same address. The file is called: qtopia-1.6.2-apps-1.1.zip  

Hancom applications and Jeode for the hybrid ROMs can be found here: ttp://www.tekprosystems.com/zaurus/feed/

Installation (version 1.1): Same as any other ROM. Be sure to format your SD card as ext2. This ROM is not as picky with SD cards as OZ. I have used a lexar, pqi, panasonic and sandisk with success. However, the pqi and sandisk resulted in periodic crashes.

When you are ready to install software, after flashing, you have the choice of installing onto the jffs or sd card. Some of the software can only be on the jffs. Here is what I found:

Hancom Mobile Word and presenter can be installed on the SD card. Hancom Sheet needs to be installed on the jffs.

Jeode has to be installed on the jffs.

I don't exactly remember, but I think Opera needs to be installed on the jffs as well. Opera is flaky on this ROM, but usable. Only opera_sl-5x00-7.30.9965_arm.ipk or lower works for this ROM.

If you want screen rotation, the qpe-rotation ipk and qt-embedded fonts (all of them) from the qtopia-1.6.2-apps-1.1.zip file need to be installed on the jffs. Out of habit, I also install the files
qt-embedded-rotation_2.3.2-4_arm.ipk and qt-embedded-rotation-fix_2.3.2-4_arm.ipk on the jffs. I'm not sure these do anything for screen rotation on the hybrid.

KOPI works nicely on this ROM. I install it on the SD card. The version I use is 2.2.7

OPIE Reader version 1.0.3 works and can be installed on the SD card.

Of the media players, I have had the most success with the OPIE2 media player. This can also be installed on the SD card.

Most other files can be installed on the SD/MMC card.

As far as stability, this ROM crashes about the same number of times as OZ 3.5.4.1. It also has some issues. Opera periodically crashes. All of the media players periodically crash, although that may have been due to a bad SD card. It has also crashed once when pressing the suspend button. I gave up on it in March after it had crashed when trying to enter a date on KOPI. However, OZ has done the same things. Moreover, I use the cheapest SD cards, so I should expect this kind of behavior.

That is what I can share now. I used this ROM for six months last school year with a fair amount of success. It is by far the most functional ROM that I have used to date. From March through June I re-tried OZ and the various home-on-sd roms by Steven and just now have come back to the hybrid. Presently, I have no software installed other than some the the qtopia 1.6.2 apps and the usb mass storage app. . As I find tricks, techniques and anything else useful I will post them on this thread.

Chris--

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5x00 General discussions / 3.5.4.2-rc1 Installation

« on: August 13, 2006, 12:58:03 pm »

3.5.4.2 was recently released for collie's! Hurray! Late last night I tried to install it on my collie. It would pause just after startup, saying that the 2.6 kernel was not installed and then would go to this splash screen, get stuck and then text would scroll across the screen saying it was out of room. The release notes say that this release does not have SD/MMC support, and it is possible that this is the problem.

Has anyone had any success installing it on a 5500?

3

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Installing Hentges Opie Rfs/loop-file

« on: July 25, 2006, 12:39:12 pm »

I like OPIE and like the Hentges ROMS. Up to this point I have been using the card file system. While it provides everything a newbie needs to get started, it does have some problems: The package manager is useless, one has to use ipkg-link in addition to ipkg and the computer loses the links to some of the pre-installed programs (like opie reader, opie eye, tinykate, xmms, etc) and has to be re-linked.

Consequently, I tried to install a Hentges tarball root file system. While the rfs for gpe works, the one for opie does not. The main problem is that erroneous medium mount window that pops up right after the initial boot and cannot be circumvented. Using the CFS, I could just pop out the SD card during booting, but when the OS is on the SD card, there is no way to do this. There is another option where someone used ssh, but that does not work for me.

So, is there a way to bypass this screen so I can boot from my SD?

Chris--

4

Mac Issues / Mounting A Z As A Smb Filesystem

« on: July 16, 2006, 01:04:14 am »

Recently, I compiled AJZaurusUSB on my mactel machine and was able to get my Collie and mac to see each other. While seeing each other is great, I need a way to exchange files. Using my digital camera as a card reader for my mac is getting old. There are posts everywhere talking about mounting a Z as an SMB filesystem, but very little documentation.

As an attempt to do this, I installed Samba on my Collie and then tried to mount it on my mac as an SMB filesystem using the directions from the original AJZaurusUSB driver web site. This did not work. When I installed Samba I got a postprocessor error code stating that some directories and files (I think it was rc.d) did not exist. Yet when I looked for these files and directories, they where there. Also, as samba loads after reboot, it aborts. When I try to load my Z on the mac side with the IP number, it says that the volume does not exist.

So my question is: What are the steps I need to take to accomplish this? Is there good documentation for a mac that I missed? Is there some other software that needs to be installed or is there another version of samba (the version I used was: samba_3.0.14a-r12_arm.ipk from the OZ feeds) that I should be using?

Thanks,

Chris--

5

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Installing Oz On A Collie

« on: June 20, 2006, 11:30:02 pm »

I have had my Collie for just under a week. In order to maintain the possibility to sync my Z with my mac and the ability to mount it as a USB mass storage, I decided to go with a Sharp variant of ROM (Cacko). Since then I have learned there are other options to achieve the same aim. Recently, I have tried to install/flash OZ 3.5.3 (the cfs ROM from Hentges). I load the three files (the initrd.bin, the z-file and the cfs file) onto my CF file as the instructions dictate. The result is always the same: a penguin splash screen that says Cacko.net and a red blinking cursor in the corner. I have found a few posts on this forum that noted the same problem, but for apparently different reasons. My questions are:

1. Is there something extra that needs to be done to flask OZ on my Z?

2. Is it worth my while? Currently, my current setup is slow, but suitable. I would really like to use gpe, but is OZ/GPE stable enough and have drive support (for wifi) to be useful for daily use?