New Rom

[iamasmith]

Installed!  Looks great!  I'll post more tonight or tomorrow after I've set things up and installed some apps.
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Excellent,

Oh BTW: forgot to mention. The Kernel boots up with more traditional Linux startup display and shows you all the system messages as the machine boots.

A couple of things should be pointed out.

i. Its quite normal to see a lot of messages about the sd card until the driver initialises properly so if you boot with one in then don't freak out when you see the messages. Chances are everything is fine.

ii. Similarly don't get freaked by jffs2 messages talking about deleting child inodes. jffs2 is what runs on the flash and it doesn't fully erase blocks (even when files are deleted) until its desperately short of space (this is tactical to minimise the number of writes and prolong the life of the flash device). Unfortunately the kernel module is extremely 'chatty' and can throw up some messages that look like serious errors. I can assure you they aren't.

Good to see that one of the team are up and running.

Have fun,

Andy

[sriley]

OK, I went through the tabs and turned off fastload  for all the apps that had it preset.  I adjusted most of my settings such as Light/Power to my personal preference.  I reorganized my tabs.  I connected via Ambicom wifi card and browsed this forum.  No problems, so far, and no sign of the dreaded boxes in any of the dialogues or menus.  I'll check my Pretech LAN card tomorrow at work.

My normal usage is mundane, mainly network, office, simple games (i.e. no emulation required) and multimedia apps.  I'll install them and set up and test them this evening and tomorrow at work.  I'll list them all and indicate whether or not they work, afterward.

Wish list:  Graphical overclocking via the battery applet.  I'd like to see it over/underclock for performance/battery life.

First impression:  Great job replicating the look and feel of 1.22a!  Looks like the 3000 will be off my shelf and in my pocket, now.    Since flashing, my 3000 feels quicker and more responsive than my 760.  I plan to run both Zs side by side for a while to see if the difference is real or just excitement on my part.

[euroclie]

Couldn't resist the urge... I'm downloading the stuff right now with my 56k modem in a hotel room. I thought I could wait for the DSL connection in 48h back at home, but I can't wait that long! After all, according to transfer window, the 25Mb will be downloaded in about 110 minutes or so... I'm sure it's worth every minute of wait!

[sriley]

Set up wifi at home.  Unable to pull an IP via DHCP.  Set static values (like I did at work) and it works fine.

[iamasmith]

Couldn't resist the urge... I'm downloading the stuff right now with my 56k modem in a hotel room. ...
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   That can be really expensive!

[elephanti]

Sounds Great. How can i download this alpha ROM.
Greetings

[asche]

Hi there,

haven't found no link for download the alpha1 for testing!?    can somebody give a hint please
where i can find the rom?

greetings from germany  

[iamasmith]

Hi as previously mentioned I am keeping the alpha test phase down to 5 users to limit the scope of assistance during the initial alpha phase.

The number will grow as and when we start to get useful and positive feedback.

I'm expecting these people to 'live with' the environment for a couple of weeks and then we will assess the situation again.

Sorry guys but we have 5 on the alpha team now.

- Andy

[iamasmith]

Once again, may I emphasise that if you are involved in the alpha test then you MUST do as the readme.txt file suggests and do a device erase (options 3 then 1 from the OK menu that you used for the flashing process).

If you don't then your ROM will NOT work properly.

This action is needed to ensure that the user portions of the ROM are correctly populated with the links back into the static portion of the ROM and without doing this you will certainly find that you wont be able to suspend your device etc.

Please, please do this.

- Andy

[iamasmith]

This also means do NOT restore a Backup taken from the Sharp ROM because this will overwrite the new ROM information just created by the system erase process.

The Sharp Backup process carries all user settings but also all system settings that could potentially be changed. This means that although the Backup process is the same what you restore from a Sharp ROM backup is NOT compaible with the new ROM. This is true of all Sharp based ROM derivatives that add significant functionality.

[euroclie]

Couldn't resist the urge... I'm downloading the stuff right now with my 56k modem in a hotel room. ...
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73699\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

   That can be really expensive!
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It took a bit more than two hours to get, but eventually I was able to disconnect the phone line before going to bed! And as for the price, I don't expect to pay too much, by chance I have a local number for the Compuserve access here in New York (pity the hotel doesn't have high speed internet in the room, though...)

I finally decided to go to bed yesterday evening without installing the new ROM, as I needed 1) to perform a full backup, and since I had more than 2Gb of music on hdd3 this was going to take a while, and 2) I decided to do this with a clear head so as to avoid making mistakes...

With the (not so) early rays of sunshine, I finished to backup my data, reformated my SD card (just to make sure it was clean and FAT), installed the files on it, and rebooted to get the OK menu.

The ROM upgrade itself went smoothly, the first boot indeed showed the "normal" Linux messages along with the Linux logo you get with the framebuffer boot, and the first start was OK. Great pleasure to discover the various Cacko bits here and there, and no error message (apart from those mentioned by Andy).

The next reboot, to get to the OK menu again, let me initiate the hard drive reformating to get the ROM content expanded on the hard drive, and again everything was smooth as silk.

BTW, Andy, I took a couple of screen pictures using my digicam, and can write a small "guide" describing the whole process so that newbies (like me) know what to expect when installing the ROM. Just let me know if you're interested, and when this should be done (probably later if you intend to bundle the ROM flashing and ROM expanding on the hard drive in a single step...)

Once the second boot is finished, you find yourself in front of a brand new C3000. You get a welcome screen asking you to tap on the screen, then the Qtopia screen calibration dialog, then the date & time screen, the owner info screen, and you find yourself in the usual launcher screen, except that the background, icons etc... are different (I should write "better" actually).

Launching the calendar or address book is very quick thanks to fastload, and I would say that overall the Zaurus seems more responsive, faster than with the stock 1.01 JP Sharp ROM.

One thing I have quickly noticed is that the Calendar, Address and Mail buttons beneath the keyboard are not setup out of the box. If you go to the Application Key setting program, they are indeed set to "None". Setting them to their respective applications works like a charm, though.

I'll keep playing with the Zaurus to find out more possible bugs/problems (I'll start by (manually, of course) restoring my PIM data, and reinstalling a few apps I need), but so far it's a very smooth and uneventful experience, I want to congratulate Andy for the high quality level of this first "alpha" release!

[sriley]

OK, I installed Qclockchange and BatteryPlus.  As I use my Zaurus for work and I'm usually in a hurry and looking for the path of least resistance, BatteryPlus is more to my liking.  On my 760 I upclock to play Doom, maybe 10-15 minutes per session but I haven't installed it on my 3000, yet.  The screen on my 3000 does have a cyclic flickering when upclocking.  I'm hoping the applet will be worked on to get the same degree of functionality that the battery applet in 1.22 has, currently it only allows for the two higher settings and I like to downclock to extend battery life when reading .txt or .pdf files.

One annoyance I've found is that the left shift button is "sticky" when used immediately prior to the space bar, causing the space bar to produce a pipe symbol after typing a comma, for example.

My Pretec LAN card works fine.  No DHCPD at work, so I can't check the DHCP client until this evening.

Apps I've installed that work correctly:

*aliens 1.0.0

*batteryplus 1.1.3

*dig 9.2.1

*fish 1.1.0

*guigrep 1.0

*neic 1.0.1 (note that the icon stays red in the installer, but it works)

*nethack 3.4.0 (the real reason I have a Zaurus, LOL)

*nmap 2.53 (with the message "Unable to find nmap-services! Resorting to /etc/services"  I knew how to fix that at one point, but I'm rushed and I'll look at it later)

*opie-kpacman 0.3.1

*opie-nethack-sounds 3.4.0-2 (it installed, but I haven't heard anything)

*opie-tetrix 1.5.0-20030214

*processmanager 1.1

*qclockchange-for-c3000 0.1 (interface is a PITA)

*qpdf2 freetype-2.2.1-20040217

*qpe-qasteroids 1.5.0-1

*qpenmapfe 1.0.0 (works, but the interface is QVGA portrait, buttons overlap text and needs to be corrected for VGA landscape)

*qpesearch 0.0.3

*qtrdesktop 1.2.0 (will not function without adding openssl 0.9.7d)

*traceroute 1.0

*treeexplorer 1.6.0

*wlanmon 1.7.0

*zipsc 0.4.3

*zsolitaire 1.0


I've also installed but haven't tested:

*kismet 3.0.1 (bah.  I'll RTFForums later)

*kismet-qt 2.0.0

*opie-keypebble 0.9.1-20020703

*zaurus-fbvncserver 0.3-slc700-0.4


Seems very solid, so far.  Nothing hugely wrong except that the space bar producing a pipe symbol is very annoying.

[iamasmith]

.....
One thing I have quickly noticed is that the Calendar, Address and Mail buttons beneath the keyboard are not setup out of the box. If you go to the Application Key setting program, they are indeed set to "None". Setting them to their respective applications works like a charm, though.

....
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Excellent, that's 3 of the 5 up and running that I know of.

And yes, should probably add that to the release notes about the application keys.

I did know about it but this also happens on the Cacko ROM 1.22a for SL-Cxxx and its such an easy thing to fix (once installed) that it completely went out of my head and I never did search for the cause.

Glad to know that you are up and running...

Anyone tried the USB automount/eject stuff yet?

- Andy

[euroclie]

And yes, should probably add that to the release notes about the application keys.

I did know about it but this also happens on the Cacko ROM 1.22a for SL-Cxxx and its such an easy thing to fix (once installed) that it completely went out of my head and I never did search for the cause.

It's no big deal, but for the first few seconds I was puzzled as to why the key seemed to be working (i.e. I hear the beep when pressing them) and have no effect. A line about it in the readme should be enough, I agree.

Anyone tried the USB automount/eject stuff yet?

Still hunting for a USB host cable for the Z. I'll try at J&R right now, otherwise I'll have to purchase a iRiver cable with the help of a US friend (iRiver won't ship in Europe <sigh>) and test the USB stuff when I receive it...

[iamasmith]

OK, I installed Qclockchange and BatteryPlus.  As I use my Zaurus for work and I'm usually in a hurry and looking for the path of least resistance, BatteryPlus is more to my liking.  On my 760 I upclock to play Doom, maybe 10-15 minutes per session but I haven't installed it on my 3000, yet.  The screen on my 3000 does have a cyclic flickering when upclocking. ....

More info here, especially on the flickering...
https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11753

One annoyance I've found is that the left shift button is "sticky" when used immediately prior to the space bar, causing the space bar to produce a pipe symbol after typing a comma, for example.

Edit Settings/keyhelper.xml, delete the line shown below...

<define key="Shift" type="Shift" toggle="True"/>

Then from the command prompt use...

khctl reload

Actually the Shift / to get the , then producing the | on space IS an issue with keyhelper. It's because Keyhelper is configured to send shift when you hit , to produce / and it masks out the use of the real Shift on that keypress. This leaves the Shift toggle active so when you hit another key you get a caps letter or in the case of space bar you get |. - Phew!

I'll knock that out of the keyhelper.xml before we go live.

- Andy