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Gentoo as of now still fully supports armv5, that being said, the 6.x kernel does not support zaurus hardware any more, so, while the OS itself ends up being quite up to date, the kernel doesn't.
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Hi btgdelta and welcome! Unfortunately I can't help you with the SD card reader initialization, but looking forward for any progress report. Does gentoo still support the armv5 CPUs?

Varti
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Hi DiTBho! I am also very interested on the bootloader side of things, I even tried writing you an email a couple of days ago.
I've been poking around my SL-C1000 and could not figure out how to initialize the SD card reader properly (without booting a full-on kernel). One would think that it should be a trivial task, since there are pretty good Intel developer documents for the PXA27x platform, but there seem to be some very quirky deviations about the SL-C1000 implementation especially.
I have a gentoo kernel booting with the "Frankenstein", but it seems to also suffer from some SD controller handover shenanigans. My debug was somewhat limited though, since I only recently purchased a serial cable that would help immensly on the debugging part of things.
I will write a longer forum post with all the stuff I did and all the info I gathered so far at a later point in time.

P.S. I also found out that the 4.4.8 kexecboot (https://github.com/LinuxPDA/linux-kexecboot/tree/master/zaurus/kernel-4.4.8) uses the same kernel for both akita and borzoi, but while the kernel runs perfectly fine on the latter it crashes pretty early on the akita. There seems to be a condition race/kernel bug that I haven't been able to fix yet, even though I was able to solve it for the gentoo 5.x kernel, using some rewritten kernel patches (I think the original versions are from greguu if I remember correctly).

Greetings,
btgdelta
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Site Suggestions, Requests, and Updates / Issue with new users registrations
« Last post by Varti on April 12, 2026, 04:43:57 am »
Hi,

an user has informed me that it's not possible to register any new account since emails are not being sent. I'm now investigating on this.
In the meanwhile, I have manually accepted all the account request, so those of you that are still waiting for the mail should have the account validated, let me know if it works now.

Varti
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Hi ArchiMark, glad to see you back here, hope things are going well for you.
I'm also interested if there are news about the new bootloader.

Varti
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Hi DiTBho,

I know it has been a long time since your post above, but I am interested in your work and progress if you would like to share.

Thanks,

Mark
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Gemini PDA - Hardware / Re: Gemini notification LED
« Last post by Varti on March 20, 2026, 04:29:38 am »
AFAIR LEDison only lets you configure the five LEDs in the middle.

Varti
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Gemini PDA - Linux / Re: worth picking up a Gemini PDA today (2024) for Linux ?
« Last post by speculatrix on February 26, 2026, 11:25:32 am »
having been working with graviton instances in AWS, I think there's two things we need to make the Gemini useful for today

1. newer kernel with latest drivers
2. up to date packages for the distro

I don't think we'll see a newer kernel, because it's a Mediatek CPU/GPU.

However, I think there's a good chance we can build newer versions of most of the packages to bring the distro up to date, so long as they don't need features from the latest version of the graphics drivers.

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Gemini PDA - Hardware / Re: Replacement Planet Battery
« Last post by covex on February 07, 2026, 11:33:39 am »
My Gemini shuts down showing half the battery used, then on restart shows something like 1%. So I suspect the battery is dying. If anyone knows a replacement, and _how_ to replace it, please share. I know how to open a top cover, there is a tool for that, but how to open a bottom with the battery?
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New products and alternatives / Mecha Comet portable Linux device on Kickstarter
« Last post by Varti on February 02, 2026, 10:24:29 am »
The Mecha Comet is a modular handheld Linux computer that lets you swap out the parts to suit what you want to use it for. A keyboard, a gaming controller and an IO board module have been announced so far.

https://www.xda-developers.com/i-love-this-linux-handheld-computer-and-you-can-help-fund-it-right-now/

The device can be configured as follows:
- an AMD64 I.MX8M Plus CPU, 4-core, up to 1.8 GHz or an I.MX95 CPU, 6-core, up to 1.8 GHz
- 2GB, 4GB or 8GB RAM
- 64GB or 128GB eMMC storage, an external MicroSD card or an NVMe SSD disk can be used too, supported size up to 1TB
- a 3.92" AMOLED display

It will be available starting from May 2026 (I.MX8M Plus version) or September 2026 (I.MX95 version). The prices start from $189/€160 for the base model, the modules and all the other accessories must be ordered separately.

As a word of warning, this is a Kickstarter project, so keep in mind that the project might not reach its goal or the pledged money be returned.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mecha-systems/mecha-comet-modular-linux-handheld-computer

Varti
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