Messages

46

User Request for Applications / Zaurus To Web Sync

« on: March 15, 2006, 12:26:46 pm »

well yes the api isnt complete yet.
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Are you a 30boxes developer?

47

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Cheapest Wifi Card

« on: March 14, 2006, 10:37:02 am »

I bought my Mercury CF-wifi, in country for about $30, second handed, in a e-bay like site.....
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got new one on ebay for 22EUR by ADTEC (appearantly similar/equal to D-Links type2 cards). Uses prism chipset and works with all ROMs out of the box (cacko, pdaXrom, OZ) with C860. However I think I should have paid a little more to get a good one: Range and power consumption or suboptimal. (And I have 1700mAh accu)

48

User Request for Applications / Zaurus To Web Sync

« on: March 14, 2006, 09:05:48 am »

maybe a sync app for the website http://30boxes.com
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Maybe. They do offer an API and the plan syncing. That's a start.

I'm not sure whether I'm smart enough to work out a sync algorithm. I'd love to look at an successfull example first. Furthermore I don't know (yet) how well the various standards do (ical, REST, opensync). Hopefully someone with PIM syncing experience will provide hints. My doubts are:
* how to mach entries on both sides. (Subjects and times may change, unique IDs may not be available)
* how to find changes since last sync (timestamps, keep a journal on both sides)
* how to delete (delete&purge, mark as deleted?)
* syncing is a means of backup. Most syncing approaches have "lost data" issues. Shouldn't sync be designed in a way to prevent data loss under all circumstances?

By searching freshmeat I found [a href=\"http://www.brim-project.org]BRIM[/url] promising because it's more than a calender.

As I do not use any PIM yet, I'm absolutely open.

49

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Status Of Sound Support, Mic Through Jack

« on: March 10, 2006, 06:35:15 pm »

I couldn't find any info about sound (drivers). I tried recording (headset) via opie record and arecord. Both failed. Opie record produces 0:00 length file, arecord displays ALSA errors.

Code: [Select]

# arecord -l
arecord: device list:2001: no soundcard found
Do I have to configure sound support? Or is ALSA missing in 3.5.3

50

User Request for Applications / Zaurus To Web Sync

« on: March 10, 2006, 05:58:18 pm »

Most PDA/PIM users sync or backup to their desktop/notebook computers if they backup at all. That's great if you use desktop PIM, it's OK if you use your own PC on a daily basis. I don't use any desktop PIM. Many people don't use personal computers at all; they use computers at home, office and/or school, but they don't/can't install extra software; those computers don't always offer reliable and private long-term storage. PC software/storage was partly replaced by web services (for some, not for me yet). However those web services are not really suited for use with the Z: small screen, not always connected, available browsers not Firefox/MSIE* compatible, ...

My idea is to connect the both: Zaurus/PIM to Web/PIM sync without need for a PC.

Is there any method known? I'm thinking of a PHP calendar/addressbook application which can be configured to accept all fields that OPIE/GPE have and offers a API. Then we can a write some software to run on the Z and connect to the web server by https. (Today you can usually get web access where ever you are, IP MASQ or mandatory proxies are not a problem. Servers that can run PHP/MySQL apps are wide spread.)


* I do know that Firefox does run on the Z and MSIE sucks.

51

Accessories / Dmesg: "card Has Unknown Mmca Version 4"

« on: March 08, 2006, 07:55:19 am »

2.6 sd/mmc support is limited to type of cards for which specifications are available. This means that not all cards will work ;(
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Now that I know that. Is there a compatibility list? (Vendors don't usually print things like MMCA version on the packages.)

52

Site Suggestions, Requests, and Updates / Zaurus News Sites

« on: March 07, 2006, 05:31:05 pm »

Interested?
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Maybe. But openzaurus.org exists and the forums with their pinned topics are kind of news sites. I think stable (and reviewed) documentation is more important than news.

just my .02 eur

53

Accessories / Dmesg: "card Has Unknown Mmca Version 4"

« on: March 07, 2006, 05:24:05 pm »

After I decided I wouldn't like SD anymore for their closed-source only policy I bought  1 Gig MMC card, to my surprise it was reasonably priced and theoretically fast (15MBit/s). OK it's a "plus" and I don't know whether Z supports "plus", but I can live with "minus" speed. It's works well in my camera's SD slot and not slower than my SD card.

Under OZ 3.5.3, kernel 2.6, I get the "mmc0:card has unknown MMCA version 4" in dmesg. Anyone familar with that? They should be downwards compatible; thus, I hope it would be sufficient to tell who ever issued that error to treat version 4 the same as prior versions. Any hints?

jan

54

Accessories / Is 5.15v Dc (idle) Safe?

« on: March 07, 2006, 03:29:07 pm »

BTW, your multimeter probably has a few percent error!
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Sure. Thanks for your reply.

55

Accessories / Is 5.15v Dc (idle) Safe?

« on: March 07, 2006, 05:45:20 am »

Hi all,
bought an AC adapter. Asked the (clueless) vendor whether 5V meant 5.00V+-0 or something else. Vendor said, sure it's exactly 5 volts.

Now I got it and my voltmeter says 5.15V. Rumor has it that anything <5.3V is safe but the adapter wasn't too expensive and I'm afraid that loaded it could have voltage peaks. Any hints.

It's rated 2.5A @ 5V ("stabilized"). The product is called "Electronic 2.5".

56

Accessories / Solar Power For Z

« on: March 06, 2006, 09:51:06 pm »

It is around 700mA and 4.9v.
We cannot confirm it can work with SL-C860.
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Is the 6K power plug and AC adaptor the same as the other models? (I hope so). From the back of my 6k I read:

5.0V--(DC), 5.4W (AC adaptor)
For use with AC adapter EA-70 (DC 5V, 2A)

One more question, does the 700mA means it takes ~ 3 x time to do the same job of the 2A AC adapter?
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If we assume, the Z charger really uses 2A (which is quite a lot). Then yes. (It's even possible then that the battery won't get fully charged at all)

The tiny Japanese (100V) AC-Adpater output only 1A.

57

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Sd Storages Card: Why Mount -o Sync?

« on: March 06, 2006, 11:21:35 am »

general questions

1. OZ Wordpress: Root on SD says we cannot run use "filesystem buffering" because crappy closed source drivers are used? Is this still the case?

hmm?

2. The same article says later one should not mount 'sync'. So the "filesystem buffering" issue is not linked with 'mount -o sync', right?

sync / async is all about buffering.

Can someone comment on the article.

3. Then, why does OZ generally mount cards with 'sync'? To my knowledge sync is still not really implemented for (v)fat and sync has disadvantages (speed, damages flash faster).

Sync is the safe-mode for mounting removable media. With "async" you risk that the user pulls the car w/o umounting (and syncing) it first. This would leave your filesystem in a damaged state. With sync pulling a mounted card isn't a problem as long as do not write at the moment you remove the media.

Also some cards experience heavy filesystem instabilities when mounted async.

Shouldn't async and  unmount produce exactly the same thing than sync? Confused.

5. People tend to use either FAT (obviously for compatibility reasons) or ext2/3 on storage cards? Why is this? Shouldn't jffs2 be a better choice?

Nope, you do not want a journaling FS on a SD or CF card. It would reduce the life-span a lot.

So SD/CF cards don't use the same technology as the internal memory (NAND)?

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58

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Sd Storages Card: Why Mount -o Sync?

« on: March 05, 2006, 06:27:25 pm »

general questions

1. OZ Wordpress: Root on SD says we cannot run use "filesystem buffering" because crappy closed source drivers are used? Is this still the case?

2. The same article says later one should not mount 'sync'. So the "filesystem buffering" issue is not linked with 'mount -o sync', right?

3. Then, why does OZ generally mount cards with 'sync'? To my knowledge sync is still not really implemented for (v)fat and sync has disadvantages (speed, damages flash faster).

4. The article quoted above suggests keeping the (FAT) filesystem and loopback mount a disk image for speed reasons. Will 'eject card' properly unmount both?

5. People tend to use either FAT (obviously for compatibility reasons) or ext2/3 on storage cards? Why is this? Shouldn't jffs2 be a better choice?

I'm about to buy a big SD/MMC card

6. I found compatibility lists but they were pretty old (for collie, sharp rom), are there known problems with cards <=1GB. Should one consider speed? Decide by which info?

7. I think of keeping the most important stuff (PIM software and /home) on internal flash, additional software on SD (by ipkg-link). Is this a good idea?

59

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Opie/email: Error Sending Mail: Stream Erorr

« on: March 04, 2006, 04:35:19 pm »

what did I do wrong?

60

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Oz (current 3.5.3) Unstable

« on: March 04, 2006, 04:14:52 pm »

Hi,
I got a Zaurus only for one reason: It runs linux and there seems to be an active developers and users community. I knew I needed some time on my hand to get it all working, a used Japanese Linux PDA ist not comparable with a localized vendor-supported Win/Apple/whatever device, but it's getting frustrating.

After quite some hassle (partitioning and update.sh) I finally got OZ/OPIE running. It works with WLAN and all as long as you don't touch it, but

1. Installing packages with GUI package manager is near impossible. Usually there are either ipkg errors (such as downloading fails) or the package manager will segfault. I don't think I ran out of memory, got 64MiB. System Infos shows Memory usage slightly above 50% while installing. I can install with 'ipkg install foo'. (This is not easily reproducable; after reboot, things are likely to work better.) Maybe I should file a bug against the package-manager but I don't know all the info that should go into a good bug report (like how ti reproduce).

2. I had to reboot (by removing batteries) my Z quite often to "solve" problems: Last time, the screen just went white while I was using qpe-gaim. Whatever I did (keyboard, touch screen), the screen stayed white, the backlight brightness changes. What is that?


edit: 3. qpe-gaim segfaults from time to time. This time after the segfault messae box appeared, OPIE crashed (could not even FN+left arrow)


Except for those issues which I hope to solve, I decided for OZ because I want:
1. a solid stable base system
2. many apps (but adapted for Z screen size)
3. platform to develop for/on
4. an upgrade path (keep data when migrating to a newer version)
Is OZ/current good for me? Is there something like 'debian stable' (older but well-tested)?