C3000 Ac Adapter And Best Distro?

[danboid]

Hi!

I've not logged into OESF for a couple of years now- there doesn't seem to have been much activity in this forum lately (obviously eveyone has moved on to newer gadgets- N900's, openmoko, Android, Netwalkers etc.) so I'm hoping I won't be waiting too long for a response. My c3100 only lasted a few months before I had a ROM issue that would've required me send it back to SHARP Japan which I never did but this xmas I got given my dads c3000 which he hasn't used in some time now, which will keep me busy until my Pandora eventually arrives. Anytime now they say, honest!

I managed to dig out my c3100 but god knows where my AC adapter went and my dad has lost his too so I've not been able to power it on since I got it off him. The English Zaurus manual doesn't give specs for exactly what AC adapter is required, they just say "use the official SHARP AC adapter" which I have been unable to find on ebay. I do have one of those adjustable AC adapters and I tried it at 4.5V or whatever the nearest setting was but that didn't work- hope I didn't damage my Z trying it out. Does anyone know where I can get an AC adapter in the UK that will work well my my c3000?

Whats the best distro for the c3000 in 2010? Last time I was here, pdaXii13 was the best 'desktop Linux'-alike distro but since then I've noticed Ubuntu has been ported (zubuntu, of course) and maybe the Zaurus Debian experience has improved in the last couple of years? One of the major advantages of pdaXii13 was that it had working bvdd support in mplayer which allowed you to play QVGA videos smoothly- did anyone ever get bvdd working under zubuntu/ Zaurus Debian or get smooth video playback comparable to bvdd any other way ie through fbdev or whatever? The other thing that concerns me about zubuntu/ zdeb is power management? Mainly I'd like to know if suspend and resume work properly ie as well as or better than pdaXii13? Do we ever hear from meanie any more here?

Thanks!

[utx]

I managed to dig out my c3100 but god knows where my AC adapter went and my dad has lost his too so I've not been able to power it on since I got it off him. The English Zaurus manual doesn't give specs for exactly what AC adapter is required, they just say "use the official SHARP AC adapter" which I have been unable to find on ebay. I do have one of those adjustable AC adapters and I tried it at 4.5V or whatever the nearest setting was but that didn't work- hope I didn't damage my Z trying it out. Does anyone know where I can get an AC adapter in the UK that will work well my my c3000?

You need 5V/2A. Supplies below 4.5V or 1A may be unable to charge the battery. Connector specification. You can even power Zaurus from USB with some risk (power consumption above 500mA may shut power down or burn a fuse, but most devices survive it).

Whats the best distro for the c3000 in 2010?

People are using old distros (pdaXrom, OpenZaurus), Debian, Gentoo or Angstrom. I am using Angstrom. It is still in development and seamless work need some hacking, but it can provide all functions that I need. (See my Zaurus pages.)

[danboid]

Hi Stanislav!

Ah yes! 5v 2A - same as the PSP. Forgot I could use PSP power adapters with the c3x00 - thanks for reminding me!

Forgot to mention Angstrom but I never did get that working anywhere near as well as pdaX last time I tried. I'm certainly willing to give it another go, especially seeing as it is the default OS for the Pandora, its 2 years on and it should be much less resource intensive than Deb or zubuntu.

Have you tried getting 320x240 xvid, mov or flv files to play smoothly at their native res under Angstrom? I know smooth 640x480 video is out of the question.

[utx]

Have you tried getting 320x240 xvid, mov or flv files to play smoothly at their native res under Angstrom? I know smooth 640x480 video is out of the question.

320x240 mode is now broken in Angstrom (it was working in older kernels but nobody yet ported the patch), but I was able to play it in past with MPlayer pxa output.

I guess you can get smooth 480x640 videos with some fast codecs (e. g. MPEG2), just resample, rotate, pick a bit lower data rate, rotate X and play (fbdev mode or X mode, not MPlayer pxa).

[danboid]

Yo UTX!

After much ringing round I found a local shop selling unofficial PSP AC adapters for £5 but sadly the address on g.maps was wrong- I got to their old shop on the other side of town just before they were to shut so I didn't get it today- bit annoying!

Thanks for the video encoding/playback tip- yes I remember hearing about having to encode for 480x640. MJPEG AVI might be even better than MPEG2? I'll let you know what I discover.

Has no-one put together an Angstrom based distro for the c3000 thats fully pimped out and ready to rock straight after flashing just like pdaXii13, but newer?? If no-one else has then maybe we should?

How does pdaxrom-ng compare to Angstrom?

Looking forward to booting the Z again!

[utx]

Thanks for the video encoding/playback tip- yes I remember hearing about having to encode for 480x640. MJPEG AVI might be even better than MPEG2? I'll let you know what I discover.

Maybe, you need to try it. But take into account, that also stream data reading speed is limited. More CPU time to read data = less time to decode them.

Has no-one put together an Angstrom based distro for the c3000 thats fully pimped out and ready to rock straight after flashing just like pdaXii13, but newer?? If no-one else has then maybe we should?

How does pdaxrom-ng compare to Angstrom?

Angstrom is based on the latest Linux software. But Zaurus still has to use old kernel and X. Several people are working to fix it.

I build spitz images regularly (see my pages). They are stable, but some of them need some hacking before you can start to work (install correct X version, stop or start some daemons etc.)

Old kernel (2.6.26-RP):

Vanilla kernel is going better and better. Now it does nearly everything it can do except:

- Offline charging (you have to charge online (6 times slower) or while the device is off)

- USB client broken in time of 2.6.25 (not a big pain)

- USB OTG automatic host/client switching (not yet implemented, but easy to do)

- 320x240 mode (not tested, but patch was never ported from 2.6.24)

- CE-RH2 remote support (not yet ported, but easy to do)

- Noisy touchscreen (all kernels are affected). Hard to fix, easy to work-around.

Old X server:

- Either fix touchscreen support (recommended way, may need new kernel working) or fix tslib driver to not crash (deprecated driver)

- Implement XRandR support (rotation is supported, but needs server restart)

- Some operations are very slow with the new fbdev driver. Review its code, look at kdrive specific code and try to make it faster.

- New keymap compatible with XKB (nearly done)

If you want to see the progress, just subscribe to zaurus-devel list.

[danboid]

Thanks for successfully pre-empting my likely next question by comprehensively detailing all the major flaws of the current Angstrom and kernel for Zaurus UTX!