2. The second stipulation is that It would need to be accompanied by fully functional working drivers, (installed and available), for the original Sharp ROM, Cacko, AND pdaXrom.
You might rethink that. My only requirement would be that "cat /proc/usb/devices" shows they are present and recognized. It's an inefficient distribution of labor to require that a talanted hardware modder also spend the time and effort to support every imaginable software combination. There's plenty of other people with the abilities to get the software side working, and it's going to require community effort to make this project fully functional.
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Doc,
I see your point, but you think you may have missed mine. I didn't claim to be speaking for the community. I'm just speaking for myself, and I meant every word of it. It's very important to me and if I can't get that level of functionality out of the box then I'm not interested in spending money on it.
Also I agree and didn't expect him to require coverage for "every imaginable software combination", I specifically narrowed it to the default Sharp ROM, Cacko, and pdaXrom. These are not "fly by night" unknown nor obscure ROM's there's no reason this should cripple his project in the long term.
I didn't intend for it to be inferred that Tom himself had to do all the writing/tailoring of the drivers but I can easily see how what I wrote could be read that way. It was sloppy writing on my part, I should have proofread it better. What I meant to get across was that before I would be willing to hire him to do this then SOMEONE had to come up with working drivers for those ROM's AND that he would have to include the drivers and instructions on how to install them with the modded unit when he shipped it back to me. I don't care WHERE they originated from so long as they WORK and are PROVIDED. My guess is that every tech-head we have will be all over this the moment the first unit rolls out and you probably couldn't STOP those drivers from being available if you tried!
So, if you combine these clarifications you come up with something like this:
Others may, (and surely will), jump in line before me to be his customer. I will wait however until drivers have been written, (I don't care by whom - just that they work), tested, and become available for those three ROM's. Those drivers will have to provide 100% functionality and Tom will need to distribute them in electronic format along with detailed installation instructions. Since I will have flashed my unit back to the stock rom (english trans.) when I send it to him I expect that when I receive it back from him for the hardware modded additions to work right out of the box. If this never becomes a reality then I am doomed to never be an owner of one of these lovely modded "dream machines". =(
Just so that the non-SL-6000 crowd will understand. I was one of the first SL-6000 owners. It was a wonderful, glorious new machine and it DID have great capabilities right out of the box. But I quickly found that us 6k owners were stuck in a time capsule. As the clamshells came out, model after model, ROM's started falling from the sky that not only offered better eye candy but BETTER PERFORMANCE and therefore BETTER FUNCTIONALITY in a few key areas. Full screen video was virtually impossible to me (very sensitive to refresh rates, anythin under 22-24fps makes me physically sick) as was running SNES/Gameboy/MAME class emulators, first person shooters, and even some of the full screen sdl games that I bought retail, (and that scooted in comparison on my SL-5500.) Yes, you could get close to decent performance if you spent a few hundred hours and invested a PHD or so to the task- but until the last few months we never had ONE SINGLE VIABLE OPTION that provided full functionality for our SL-6000's. And STILL TO THIS DAY no rom has provided framebuffer/video acceleration- we currently have hundreds of dollars in open reward money to anyone that would provide us with this! But nothing to show for it to date. If it hadn't been for Guylhem's pioneering efforts at providing a performance kernel and later a ROM to go with it we may never have had any performance enhancements at all- and all other model owners have come to EXPECT those as a minimum requirement. Around the same time Cacko and pdaXrom entered the 6000 fray and also shook off enuf of the use prohibitive problems to be viable for the average numbskull like myself to use.
This doesn't even amble into the misc. hardware (CF, sdcards, USB devices, Bluetooth devices etc) that I've bought in the last two years alone that I was never able to get functioning with even the Sharp ROM of any Zaurus I have owned.
Anyhow, as you can see I've just gotten to the end of my rope with "bleeding edge devices" when it comes to my Zaurus. My pocketbook and patience have both learned their lesson and I'll step back a few and let the folks who are actually talented in the software area take point for a while. So I WILL throw my money into the ring for this C3100 Modding- but until it's 100% ready- neither am I.
Tom doesn't have to slave away at both the hardware and software sides of this thing- but if he doesn't/can't then the not-so-skilled mainstream Zaurus user will never pay for it. If we had the skillz ourselves we wouldn't pay someone to do what we could do for ourselves. It's gotta work, there's gotta be viable ROM options, and its gotta be 100% functional out of the box. Anything less than 100% functional = partially broken, and while I'll use partially broken for free - I'm sure not gonna pay for it. The whole point is to pay someone else good money to make it work for me WITHOUT me having to do it myself.
Just my two cents worth folks, however my feelings probably are pretty mainstream. If Tom wants to sell enough of these mods to make regular money on the side he's going to have to appeal to more users than just the bleeding-edge elite.
Tom, I SINCERELY hope you can pull some/most/all of these mods off. I'm putting my money behind that hope. Make it happen. You can do this, if for no other reason than that.....I believe.
-NeuroShock
