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Messages - Fraggy

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16
General Discussion / O2 XDA IIs vs Zaurus SL-C3000
« on: November 13, 2004, 11:42:45 am »
Linux on the Zaurus is as Linux on a Desktop. The Z is the best replacement you can get for a laptop, and the newer Zaurus models even better!!!

However, just like "Linux for the Desktop", Micro$oft spoiled and weakened users will not easily harness it's power  or appreciate it's superiority.

Although this must be said: even if you have no experience what'soever with Linux, then STILL the Zaurus will be an EXCELLENT PDA for you, because of it's (transparent) userfriendliness, so you don't need to worry at all!!! Initially you will miss the "polish" that iamasmith mentions, though.

And in that aspect, it may be one of the best ways to step away from commercial OSses and slowly learn about Linux. I've heard stories of WinCE people totally converted to Linux after having used a Zaurus.

It is true that "you may find the number of applications on the market rather poor", but that's a typical way a spoiled Palm / WinCE user's point of view. Yep, the number of commercial applications for the Z is not very extensive. You'll find a lot more free open source applications instead!

I myself, I'd find it rather rich, and in terms of functionalities extremely rich and variable.

Incredibly rich as a matter of fact (like running a Webserver with PHP enabled!!!) and all the applications you can use on a Linux Desktop can be easily ported to the Zaurus. In other words, theoretically, the number of applications available for the Z is simply UNLIMITED

On top of that, a lot of people forget about the power of Java, which enables programs to be written once and then to run on any platform of your choice wether it be Win32, Linux, Unix, BeOS, Qnix, Palm, Amiga or whatever... The Zaurus comes with Java enabled  (although I'd like to see some more Java applications, hehe).  Zaurus stands for FREEDOM, if you want it to.

And again, even if you are scared by so much power and freedom: you don't have to use it, hehe, the Zaurus will work just fine as a simple PDA for all your daily needs

Hope this helps,

JM.

17
Accessories / Socket Mobile Power Pack
« on: November 13, 2004, 10:57:11 am »
Hey V-Man,

I think a lot of people would appreciate if you published a tutorial on how to make those external battery boxes

As soon as I get the thing (finding it is another problem) then I'll let you know about it.

18
Accessories / SL-5500 compatible CF & SD cards???
« on: November 13, 2004, 10:52:11 am »
Sounds promising so far. I guess I should ask the salesguy in a PDA shop if I can test the CF / SD before I buy it, if it's an 'unkown' or 'untested' brand.

But has anybody tried to use Dane-Elec cards for his Zaurus????  I would like to hear about that, because they seem cheap and high quality (very long guarantee!). And I would like to know if the Dane-Elec "XS" series work, because they are supposed to be ultra fast!

I'd like to hear more reactions  

19
Accessories / Socket Mobile Power Pack
« on: November 12, 2004, 09:25:51 pm »
Hi there,

I'm planning on buying the following item (Socket Mobile Power Pack): http://www.socketcom.com/product/AC4009-541.asp

as an eventual "remplacement" for my battery just in case my Z's battery would die on me.

Do you think this is a good choice?

Anyone has had any experience with this Mobile Power Pack? Does it work with the Serialo ZThinCable USB? Or would I need another cable? Or no cable at all?

This thing looks incredibly handy and usefull, but I'd like to hear some experience before I buy this thing!!!!

20
For Sale / Wanted / WANTED: SL-5000 Battery (NEW) in Canada
« on: November 12, 2004, 09:15:34 pm »
Hi Mr. Clark,

This time a reply on your actual post: instead of buying an "internal" battery, you could also try an "external" one, like the Socket Mobile Power Pack.

I've been looking for a "spare" battery for my Z too, and can't find one anywhere.
Since I really do not wanna repeat my bad experiences I had with my laptop (dead battery!!!) an alternative battery for my Z was a very important thing for me.

After a lot of research I found 2 possible replacements in case the Z battery would die on me: the Smart Solar Power Power Pack (http://www.expansys.ca/product.asp?code=106045) or the Socket Portable Power Pack (http://www.socketcom.com/product/AC4009-541.asp), that allows you to recharge your PDA in places where there are no sockets, or simply to extend your battery life (keep working on your Zaurus sooooo much longer than with what the "normal juice" would allow you to do.)

Perhaps this is not what you asked for, but it might be even better than what you were looking for

21
For Sale / Wanted / WANTED: SL-5000 Battery (NEW) in Canada
« on: November 12, 2004, 07:58:04 pm »
Quote
ps. If you ever buy from the States, never use UPS. The brokerage charges will kill you.
That is, if your package ever arrives in one piece at the correct location (at all)!

I've had some SERIOUS issues with UPS, which I can easily be summarised as follows: they messed up in every possible place that they could possibly mess up, without any exception at all.

The long story: they picked up the package too late, in an unofficial car, without providing any info nor receipt, wrote down a wrong delivery adress, the package got stuck in some country in the middle of nowhere and they didn't even notice that. Finally the package arrived and they charged an extra fee in name of the local customs that the customs had me pay AGAIN, because UPS didn't pay those fees (that was a direct and shameless lie) and worse of all, the package was so badly treated that the content (electronic device) was broken. Even the sender's adress was wrong.

In this particular case nothing went right on the whole line of the process!!!!

On the other hand, sometime their complete incompentence can be an advantage: on another occasion they have sent me two LCD monitors instead of just one: they had lost the first one, sent me another one and in the end the lost one just appeared out of nowhere. Go figure! Of course I took the liberty not to mention their small mistake.

Win some, loose some, no? But if you don't wanna gamble: avoid UPS at all costs, they can't do anything right!

22
General Discussion / Garmin GPS + Zaurus
« on: November 12, 2004, 07:32:14 pm »
Hello there,

I don't know where else to post this question, so I'll post it here in "newbies" (I'm a newbie after all )

I've got a Zaurus SL-5500 and a Garmin eTrex Legend GPS.

Is there any way to connect those two together?

I know that there's some wonderfull Open Source GPS software available for Linux that would allow you to connect a GPS to a laptop, but I wonder if such a thing also exists for the Zaurus. Actually I know there is, but is it compatible with the Garmin GPSses? And do I need a special cable for that? (The Garmin cable that comes with the GPS is a SERIAL cable, so connecting it to a Z would need some adapter I suppose).

Anybody has experience with this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

23
Accessories / SL-5500 compatible CF & SD cards???
« on: November 12, 2004, 07:21:23 pm »
Hi there!

In december I wanna spoil my Z (SL-5500), so I'll go shopping for some accessories, but I'll need some advise here about what devices will work for the SL-5500. For example I've read that not all brands and sizes (capacity) of memory are officialy supported, but that a lot of them do work.

www.myzaurus.com says CF memory: up to 256Mb (pretec & sandisk), SD memory: up to 128Mb (only pretec). That would make my choice quite limited and the amount of memory too, hehehe. So is there any compatibility list somewhere to help me?

How about Dane-Elec (up to 2Gb CF) and they also have CF XS cards with a nice guarantee (99 months, replacement within 24h worldwide), which sounds really cool   and how about Dane-Elec's SD cards???

Then there's Kingston, Sandisk (I've read somewhere that Sandisk should better be avoided because they were very bad), Expansys cards, other brands?

I'd like to have at least 512Mb cards (both CF and SD) and even more (1Gb) if my budget will allow it.

Then I also want to buy a wireless networking card. I'm thinking about the Linksys WCF12. Is that a good choice? Or are there better / more compatible options? (Compatibility is veeery important, I don't want to loose too much time in searching / compiling drivers, but "low power consumption" would be nice too).

I'd appreciate the advise and eventually a reference to a compatibility list (also for other hardware / gadgets for the SL-5500).

24
Software / 3D Blender
« on: August 29, 2004, 08:06:18 pm »
My apologies for the guy with the banana in his pocket, at least you humiliated him properly

Yeah I can see now that you're quite addicted to POVRAY

I've played with morray / povray in the early days of povray, long  before I could get my hands on a copy of 3DStudio for DOS... In those days the 3D artist needed to be a programmer in order to be able to get something nice on his screen

I do suppose that povray did improve in userfriendlyness though...

I agree that it takes some time to "convert yourself" from one program to the other: I was used to Lightwave and now that I'm learning Blender, I'm having quite a hard time to adapt myself to Blender's interface. However, Blender's interface seems quite well designed.

But to come back at your question... It's a bit early in this time of the project to talk already about features: a full port may not even be desired, for example we might leave out the heavy rendering functionalities (those are battery drainers). On the other hand, you may score a lot of geek points by clustering PDAs to build a render farm, so who knows what will become of it?

With the explosive growth of PDA horsepower and future battery technologies, I'd say a full port would be interesting

But one thing is for sure: that the file import / export of the PDA version of Blender *should* (if technically possible) at all times support the same formats as the desktop version!!!

25
Software / 3D Blender
« on: August 29, 2004, 04:06:36 pm »
Quote
Do you think Giram could be compiled for pdaXrom?

"Nothing is impossible!" has always been my slogan as a programmer and I have yet to see something that is not possible (or something that will never be possible in any future)   so the aswer is positively "yes".

However, I'd like to restrict this thread to Blender, just to not to get stuff mixed up in too many (and wrong) places. You're welcome to start a new topic "Giram for the Zaurus wanted" in the software section if you wish   or "Open Source 3D appz for the Zaurus" to discuss which appz might be interesting to port to the Zaurus!

Hey, and include a POLL in that thread, while you're at it

In the meantime, if you wanna see some 3D suits running on your Z, why don't you check out "The Art of Illusion" http://www.artofillusion.org/
It's a 3D suite written entirely in Java, so it should run on the Z without any modifications.

I haven't tried it out yet because I don't even have my Zaurus yet (I'll find it under the X-Mas tree next X-Mas) and I'll definately check out more Open Source 3D programs / modelers, but when it comes to porting, I'll dedicate myself to Blender only. The Art of Illusion has been around for quite a while, but Blender even longer and Blender is really a quite mature product, that's why I'd rather stick to Blender.
(And it's originally a Dutch product, so this makes me quite proud, as I'm Dutch myself )

26
Software / 3D Blender
« on: August 24, 2004, 12:44:35 pm »
The project on Sourceforge has been accepted.

I hope this sourceforge page will generate more interest and more participants  it would be really nice to bring this project to a good end.

Here's the url: http://sourceforge.net/projects/zblender/

People who want to participate: register yourselves as Sourceforge members and mail me your usernames, so I can add you to the project.

Come on there, we need some programmers!!!!

I hope we can optimize Blender enough to make it run real smoothly on a Zaurus SL-5500, but for the CL-series with it's VGA screen and 400Mhz processor, Blender *should* run like a dream!!!!!
Well, that depends how well we optimize 'cause the hardware itself just rocks!

27
Software / 3D Blender
« on: August 20, 2004, 08:44:37 pm »
I have applied for a new project page on sourceforge.net. Now I'm waiting for it to be accepted.

Come on guys, we need programmers!!!

28
Software / 3D Blender
« on: August 20, 2004, 07:41:19 pm »
Well, how about I setup a project page on sourceforge.net????

First of all, I'd advise you to simply download the Linux source code and cross compile it to your Zaurus. The ipaq version you have is not optimized neighter, so the result you'll have should be a working one!!!! That would definately be a good start and if we'd turn it into a distributable package for the Zaurus and spread it through the Zaurus Software Index (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/) or other Zaurus software pages, it might generate much more interest and participants in order to port/optimize it for the Z.

Right now, I'm not much of a programmer... I have some experience with Java and right now I'm specialized in Webdesign (programming html / php mainly) and worst of all: I do not have my Zaurus yet .

I'll have my Zaurus in December, when I'll spend my holidays in Holland with my parents (I'm Dutch but I live in Argentina). My parents bought one for me (SL-5500 for the next X-Mas), yipieeeee!!! As soon as I have the Z in my hands I'll start focussing more on programming in C, C++ and well, whatever... Programming for Linux / Zaurus!

I'll try to compile Blender for the Zaurus myself, but when it comes to optimize Blender for the Z? I suppose you'll need some 3D skills for that too, but what the heck, having a Z and having an Open Source 3D suite that kicks arse is motivation enough to at least give it a try! (okay, it's still not as powerfull as Lightwave or 3DStudio Max, but it's still growing and it's free!!!). I've used Max & Lightwave for too long, I wanna be an open source 3D artist, haha!

I bet we kan make Ton Roosendaal, Blender's founder (we had some conversations by mail), very happy if we get this project running, because the old ipaq blender project died because people didn't see the usefullness of it (Grrrrr!!! Like having a stripped down version of M$ word is *usefull*    on an handheld!!!) Of course it is usefull and so would be a (literally) portable Blender!!!!  

But due to this lack of interest, Ton and his people can not spend time on a Pocket PC or Zaurus version of Blender although he really enjoyed to see my enthousiasm.

Let's see if we can get this project off the ground.

labingdaga, please stay tuned while I open a project page on Source Forge and anybody who's reading this thread and wants to participate, you're welcome!!!!

Let's revive the handheld blender project!!!!

29
Accessories / What is the best storage media?
« on: August 13, 2004, 05:56:38 pm »
I rechecked the hardware specs. Both are SDIO cards...

30
Accessories / What is the best storage media?
« on: August 13, 2004, 05:46:27 pm »
In answer to pakman: yeah, that's what I thought too, but the other Wifi card I mention uses SD, not SDIO. The reason it uses SD is because many PDA's do not have SDIO and not even a CF slot...

In theory the Socket Wireless LAN (WiFi) SD Card should work in any device with a SD slot, however, I wonder if there would be drivers for the Z.

I'm reading the other thread now...

I'll play safe and buy a linksys cf lan card, but still I'm curious about the possibilities of SD lan cards

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