Messages

46

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Thank You for bringing PdaXrom to ours Z

« on: October 13, 2004, 01:56:10 pm »

Laze -- have you looked into the possibility of offering subscriptions through PayPal? Some of us can afford to contribute $100 directly (and I already did) but there are probably a good many more that wouldn't miss a few dollars a month, especially if it was charged automatically without people having to remember and take the time to go to PayPal each month.

No one would have to subscribe, of course, but those who wanted to contribute could elect a fixed amount per month, cancellable at any time, instead of just a fixed one-time donation as it is now. I think the fees for PayPal are about 30 cents for a minimum plus 2% or so. That would be about 34 cents out of $2.00/month or 50 cents out of $10.00/month. I'm not sure if there is a fee to become a seller able to offer such payments. This information would need to be checked, but if it worked I think it would give you a dependable minimum of donations each month, and probably more total donations than you get now.

That is the point of a subscription system if nobody has to subscribe? A fear of the developers getting away with all the money donated? The fear of the developers spending too much money on alcohol at once? ;)

I would say that a forced subscription system would work much better, as it works at LWN.net, but as it is all a GPLed software, it can not be forced at all, and besides, some people would get alienated.
The best I think would be a bounty-driven system, where the developers and the users decide on how much for the feature implemented or the bug fixed :) The result would be available for everybody, payed by the most interested of them :)


p.s. Shame on me, still have to get to the bank :( The good thing is, my LWN.net subscription is running out, so I will have to do it now :) By the way, this also shows how ineffective the donation system is, as I have to pay for LWN or they'll get me out, but that would not happen on the short term with pdaXrom if I don't pay. People should really have some real short-term reason to do it.

47

Zaurus - pdaXrom / pdaXrom and C750 = flickering

« on: October 13, 2004, 01:34:04 pm »

Now I got it, got all the parts in the pussle. It flickers in the landscape mode on pdaXrom but not in Sharp's rom just because the data on the framebuffer was originally always arranged for the portrait mode, and on Sharp's rom, the rotation for the landscape mode was made completely in software. On the pdaXrom instead, the rotation is achieved in hardware with some nifty hack involved. That's why it flickers.
Now that I understand it, I would say let's just keep it that way, not going back to software rotation as it is a pain in the arse to program and it would certainly work slower

48

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Does your pdaXrom rc3/rc5 freeze in X11?

« on: October 13, 2004, 01:07:45 pm »

IKM please don't tell me you have these problems in RC5 :-)

Rest assured, I don't have them  I just recall I saw that kind of stuff earlier, but it was very rare, after the device had a rather large uptime scattered across many suspends-wakeups. I took it for granted, as I've actually seen how crazy the Z kernel may be after much work, back when I tried compiling XFree natively with a swap and nfs working over a wireless connection %) The process always failed after a half a day or so, in a rather strange ways, wireless went dead, 'ps ax' locally showed a complete mess, and so on. That is understandable, since the original Z kernel was much of a hack, and nobody in Sharp cared about that kind of long-term stability anyway (it's pda, not a server). On a large enough timeline some smallish problem(s) can, little by little, triggering occasionally, make the device get to the point when it is no longer alive and kicking. And it is *completely* normal as long as it is really rare.

In case that particular problem reported by amrein is really quite frequent and annoying, it may be a bug. But in that case I would just say I've never experienced that *bug* at all

p.s. And no, I have never experienced these symptoms on RC5.

49

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Does your pdaXrom rc3/rc5 freeze in X11?

« on: October 13, 2004, 06:57:13 am »

I had such kind of problems a couple of times when the device came up from the suspend -- the cursor moved but everything else seemed dead, but it was a very infrequent problem, I encountered this only two or three times, so I thought it was not a big deal.

Bundabrg, don't do powerdown while in ScummVM, use the 'Suspend' option from the menu. It works gracefully, well, at least for me :)

50

Zaurus - pdaXrom / How to contribute ipks?

« on: October 13, 2004, 06:47:26 am »

You should contact Laze, the pdaXrom webmaster, at webmaster@pdaXrom.org, with the desired login and password, and he'll arrange it for you :)

51

Zaurus - pdaXrom / RC5: ScummVM 0.6.1b uploaded

« on: October 13, 2004, 06:38:03 am »

I find the side buttons hard to use to be honest (My hand feels wrenched after a while, holding too many items) (On a C860 anyway).

I added two lines to /usr/lib/scummvm/scummvm.xmodmap that maps the two japanese keys to the two 'clicks' and tend to play in open clamshell mode.

Yep, side buttons may feel not very handy, but unfortunately we don't have any other exterior buttons. Have you tried playing in flipped mode with the clamshell closed, so the buttons are at the top of the screen, not at the bottom?

And yes, I thought about mapping some real keyboard buttons, but I haven't figured what would be the comfortable ones (Cancel/Ok looked nice, but that would deprive the Esc key, and so on). Japanese keys seem to be the right choice, especially for right-handed, so I will apply your xmodmap additions, thanks.

52

Zaurus - pdaXrom / pdaxrom now speedy...

« on: October 12, 2004, 07:30:57 am »

No chance, I always modify my last post before you post your new one.

The last time I checked, the difference  between packages were bigs. I guess I was tired because I don't see this kind of difference now. Most size was 10 / 20 / 30 % smaller. Hoping that I'm not becoming mad.

Forget about uclibc.

Take care. As for uclibc, well, checking it out was worthwile anyways.

53

Zaurus - pdaXrom / pdaxrom now speedy...

« on: October 12, 2004, 07:07:04 am »

Yes. Most packages are 10 /20 / 30 % smaller and they run faster.

Of course, I can be wrong and I will admit it if someone show me the way to the truth.

I just don't understand why should they be smaller. The macros should be pretty much the same, otherwise all that is left is just plain function calls. Pretty much nothing changes.

And comparing the .deb sizes from the uwoody link you posted with the official debian stable, I don't see much difference, though I haven't compared them all, just a handful

They may run faster, though the uclibc FAQ says that uclibc is not optimised for speed, but for size.

From the FAQ:

"Some of the space savings in uClibc is obtained at the cost of performance, and some is due to sacrificing features. Much of it comes from aggressive refactoring of code to eliminate redundancy."

I would like to add that I personally had no actual practice using uclibc, so take this words with a grain of salt. I am just speculating with a common sense approach. If to talk about practice, when I built some floppy routers back then, I used a Debian PIC version of glibc with only needed functions left, which were determined automatically by a script which was checking every executable

p.s. And please, stop altering your comments all the way. Just decide what to say before you post. I am not sure what I am replying to.

54

Zaurus - pdaXrom / pdaxrom now speedy...

« on: October 12, 2004, 06:09:21 am »

scoutme I agree with you and this was what I wanted to say. You said it with better words.

btw, to continue my main post, here is two links to uclibc. They have built debian over it. OE already support uclibc. Have a look on packages size:

http://people.debian.org/~andersee/uwoody/main/binary-i386/
http://www.uclibc.org/

What is actually the point in using uclibc? You gain a small bit of additional flash space (as currently /lib/libc-2.2.5.so weights only 1.1M) for the hassle of recompiling everything and running into potential software incompatibilities and other problems here and there throughout the entire lifetime. While it may be nice for floppy routers or other space-hugry small embedded systems, are there any merits for Zaurus?

55

Zaurus - pdaXrom / pdaxrom now speedy...

« on: October 12, 2004, 05:04:44 am »

There is a place in the bible where they talk about people building their house on sand instead of rock... or putting the plough before the oxem...

The big questions are:  "how many time before pdaXrom fondation become enough concrete" and "how people can get involved to speed its maturation". If you think that all is already good for everyday developer use than I can understand why you already want to build on it.

Concider me as a bricklayer having issue with the fondation and you will understand my first comment.

If you develop, you know the state of affairs yourself. The only major change happened since 1.0.5 from the developer point of view is the VFP.

If you just want some mock philosophy, do not consider yourself a mere bricklayer. Be a god. That would be much more productive. And much more to the point. If you want to cooperate with the people seeking similar goals -- do so. If you want to seek metaphors instead -- it's your choice.

It is indent that rules everything. If you want, you seek possibilities, if you do not, you seek for justification.

56

Zaurus - pdaXrom / pdaxrom now speedy...

« on: October 11, 2004, 10:18:21 am »

amrein's got the right idea...

You aren't going to see allot of user submitted ipks until the final version of the rom/sdk is out.  So many changes are being made to the rom right now that it would be a waste of time.

These guys are doing amazing things with the rom right now.  It is great that the development is as heavy as it is.  Let them continue working on the rom and use RC3 if you want to use most of the apps in the unstable feed.

amrein got it all wrong. The development is infinite. It is over only when the project itself is dead. So, do you suggest waiting for its death? Sure, in the end, life is just a waste of time. Just don't waste it before it's over!

I say, do not use RC3. Switch to RC5. Help the developers by using what they produce, loot for the bugs, make suggestions as you see it.

You are going to see alot of user submitted ipks. And the RC3 unstable is no more.

57

Zaurus - pdaXrom / X on the 5500/5600

« on: October 11, 2004, 08:36:58 am »

Every once in a while, even someone as pig-headed as I am, must admit a mistake.

When the pdaXrom first started gaining steam, several people made posts about the posability of X on the 5x00 series.  A number of people, including myself, espressed oppinions about what a tragicaly stupid idea that was.

While I can't speak for anyone else, I have to say that I now believe I was dead wrong.  Now that I've seen the GPE version of Open Zaurus 3.5.1, I finaly see the power behind X on a QVGA PDA. 

Even as terribly broken as GPE OZ is right now (first release), it's still a breath of fresh air to my Z and I would LOVE to see pdaxrom for the 5500 or some of the pdaxrom guru's lending mickeyl a hand to get GPE-Oz where ti belongs.

Just my $0.02 for the day.

It's not the X itself that poses a problem. X server alone can work on a 100x75 screen as well, with no problems.
But what is X for? For running the applications. And what applications are in pdaXrom? All the usual desktop applications... that just can not be made usable on QVGA. Some of them are actually having a hard time even on a full VGA screen.

So yes, you can run X on QVGA, but no, you can't run pdaXrom on it. Not with the usual desktop applications.

58

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fix Sharp loader NAND 64MB limit(slc760/c860 only)

« on: October 10, 2004, 04:18:06 pm »

I decided to try RC5 last night and thought it would be nice to resize the root to 121 mb on my c860.....no such luck.

While in the process of resizing/reflashing to find the max size root partition I could flash to, I kept wondering what option #3 is.  It says "Fix Sharp loader NAND 64MB limit (slc760/c860 only).

I tried searching with no luck.  Any ideas???

There is a bug in the Zaurus' NAND loader that prevents from having a root partition larger than 64Mb. This option permanently fixes the problem by patching the relevant code in the NAND.

All the gory details are here:
https://www.oesf.org/forums/inde...indpost&p=20469

59

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Thank You for bringing PdaXrom to ours Z

« on: October 10, 2004, 04:03:22 pm »

bol'shoe spasibo razrabotchikam pdaxrom 

Присоединяюсь к тостам

60

Zaurus - pdaXrom / RC5: ScummVM 0.6.1b uploaded

« on: October 10, 2004, 03:40:48 pm »

Very cool.  I just installed it and fired up my Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis demo and it worked.  However, I couldn't get the in game menu to come up using the right jogdial.  I'm not sure what's wrong.  I had to do a hard reset to get my Z back.  I'll try it with Day of the Tentacle and see what happens.

That's strange. Try also using the 'Menu' button. But the right jogdial must work as well.
And btw, if nothing helps, you can always quit it by 'alt-x' (Address-x).

Please report back more, as that looks odd.