Build Your Own Linux Powered Pda

[Ferret-Simpson]

Back to our point in case again.

It's an intel chip.

The whole point in choosing the moto chip is to get away from the ruddy PXA270!

The iMX300 has a built in 3D accelerator, as well as codecs and a huge number of I/O interfaces. At about $19.60, it's roughly 1/3 the price of a PXA250 with 2700G. it has Floating point math, and is generally a better option. Not to mention Freescale are very supportive of Open Source, and have ported the linux kernel to this device already. It has a better memory system, as well as several other key bonuses that are very good for the PocketPenguin.

The MXC300 is ANOTHER applications processor based system, for use on it's own in mobile phones.

My link's better!  We need to look at chipsets built to work around a central processor, because all we're finding is a bunch of processors made for use in the next budget Motorola eXXXX

[Da_Blitz]

I think with the news that intel sold thier PXA line we wont have  to repeat that too much more , truley i belive that this is a better and faster chip for what we want to do and so for no one has really come up with a good reason why we should be using a pxa2xx chipset

guess i misintpreted the chip, i read the document and it just listed chipsets, thats why i thoght it was a platform (besides the name contianing "platform") and the fact you cant buy it (as its more of a design guide)

well its getting to the end of the week and i have 1 last thing to hand in and then i will start some heavy R&D and design, next week there should be a website with wiki up as well as some pics of board layout

[rusanov]

self made pda price around 400$
http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/hw_build-up.html

[Tom61]

It's been a while since I've seen MyLinux PLW. This thread had brought it to mind a few times, but I forgot the name. If you're looking for more DIY PDAs in the past, search for "Compaq Itsy".

Anyways, I've remembered that there were a couple of blogs about building a open-source/hardware phone. Both have been idle for quite a while before I stopped checking them regularly, and checking them now, one seems to be gone, the other had an update that they had created a website, and it seems the website is now up: http://www.opencellphone.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

[Da_Blitz]

I have seen both of those project and just relised that they must have been at the back of my mind the entire time

the Mylinux board story gives a good insite to the problems we face in trying to make this thing, unless there are large sponsers i dont think we will be able to produce this in volume (hence why i keep saying dual licsencing, mabey to gumstix or the gpx32 guys)

[rusanov]

I have two questions about:
1. Screen: size, resolution, price (or link)
2. keyboard (link)

[Tom61]

I have two questions about:
1. Screen: size, resolution, price (or link)
2. keyboard (link)
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Both are still to be decided last I heard. We're hoping for a 640x480 touchscreen in the 3.5" to 4" range, and a few were linked (I could only find a link to the [a href=\"http://www.gethightech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=XX1811&Category_Code=DELL]X50v[/url] screen in a quick search, though.) I believe Da_Blitz mentioned creating a custom board for the keyboard, but was unsure about the membrane.

[rusanov]

I got toshiba e800 screen 4" 640x480 believe me it's hard to read

[Tom61]

I got toshiba e800 screen 4" 640x480 believe me it's hard to read
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It depends on your eyesight, I suppose. Most reports I've seen says that the e800 screen is pretty good.

There's nothing stopping you from using a lower res or larger screen in your own build. I've found a seller on eBay with 6.4" displays, about the absolute maximum size for a non-widescreen display in a handheld, IMO, with 640x480 resolution.

Edit:
I was reading the "2D/3D Graphics Support in the i.MX31 and i.MX31L Multimedia Applications Processors" White Paper, mainly because I can't seem to download the datasheet for the processor for some reason.

Anyways, I found some cool stuff about the iMX31's graphics:
It has the ability to use an external video accelerator chip.  I doubt you could use it for a secondary display, though.

The built-in accelerator can share memory with the processor, or use seperate memory. With 256MB of DDR ram, and Quake 3 likely the highest 3D game this will be running, I think shared memory should be fine. Nice to know that it can be done, however.

The built-in accelerator doesn't bother rendering stuff you can't see (unlike most desktop accelerators), which gives a nice performance boost.

They had a chart that said that the performance of the accelerator is better than the orginal Playstation. There's more specific numbers, but not very readable.

[speculatrix]

I got toshiba e800 screen 4" 640x480 believe me it's hard to read
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if you're running pocketPC it probably will be, my guess/understanding is that QVGA was all it was designed for, so running a higher res simply makes things smaller (much like Windows x86 tends to do). The same mistake was made by Palm, and the transition to scalable rendering was never properly completed, what with Sony doing their own hires hacks.

this is one key advantage of linux in that it's much less dependent on display resolution

I forget who said it but an old adage went something like "those who do not understand unix are condemned to relearn all the mistakes it made".

[speculatrix]

p.s. whatever happened to the rplacement  Nokia 770 with qwerty keyboard that was heralded a while ago?

[Da_Blitz]

as far as i know the keyboard was a hoax, you could use a bluetoothe one thogh, it would work quite nicly

"those who do not understand unix are condemned to relearn all the mistakes it made".

i belive that it went: those who dont understand unix are doomed ot reinvent it, or somthing similar

the reason i want higher pixels counts is for the extra calrity, i find it makes things easier to read, but if we get vga out going then higher pixels = good thing

i am looking into a seperate video decoder as he inbuilt stuff has some limitations, but i dont expect it to allow for moives, only as a big FB for X

built-in accelerator doesn't bother rendering stuff you can't see (unlike most desktop accelerators)

in fact you will fitd most do include this feature (cant remeber what its called, hidden surface removal or culling or somthing) and this feature can be used in opengl (if coards are placed clockwise then the surface is facing you otherwise it has its back to you and you dont need to render it, get the blue book and red book, they are good reads and are free (google: blue red book opengl))

if i remeber corectly gnome dosent do by pixel but by real length or somthing so that text is always the same only at higher rez, part of CIRO or somithing

quake 3 would be nice but i prefer quake 1  ZPSX anyone

[koen]

in fact you will fitd most do include this feature (cant remeber what its called, hidden surface removal or culling or somthing) and this feature can be used in opengl (if coards are placed clockwise then the surface is facing you otherwise it has its back to you and you dont need to render it, get the blue book and red book, they are good reads and are free (google: blue red book opengl))
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'Z occlusion culling' is one buzzword that was used for that

[Da_Blitz]

Any one seen any other chips that might be nice to use (including as the main cpu) just thoght it was worth asking as you never know what might turn up

as far as i can tell even thogh the arm11 are multicore capable, no one has produced a multicore chip which is a shame as they had the ability to do some cool stuff including turning off any of the cores to save power (plug in and turn all cores on or go on battery and power saving)

found this in the 68K section, seems intresting
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/app_note/AN2385.pdf

[Da_Blitz]

Please ignore link, was not what i thoght it was