Pre-purchase questions about the C760

[Foxdie]

Hello one and all, I am thinking of jumping aboard the Z wagon, but I have a few questions to help me make up my mind, those will be towards the end of this post.

I\'ll start by introducing myself, I\'m an IT technician from the UK and up to now I have had only a little experience with Linux (after numerous kernel recompiles I got sick of it and reverted to Windows) but enough to get by. While visiting a friend in france I had the opportunity to play with his Zaurus (5xxx series) and was quite smitten by it, but the cost was a little too much to justify something in my eyes is a lustworthy boys toy.

When the C7x0 series came out touting the X-Scale CPU and a great clamshell design I reconsidered my judgement and realised it could be of some real use. I am giving strong thought as to whether to sell my Sony VAIO C1VE and use the money to buy a C760.

The questions I have are as follows:

:arrow: I\'ve read various posts on watching movies on the Z, I\'ve noticed that mplayer seems to be the best for watching divx movies like, but what\'s the best it can handle? Would it play a 320x240 25FPS 384kbit divx movie with a 48khz MP3 Stereo sound track perfectly?

:arrow: I notice that the C760 doesn\'t support SDIO, is this a hardware limitation or kernel? Basically all I\'m asking here is if there\'s a chance in the future that SDIO support can be added to the C760

:arrow: I read in a post that watching movies from a SD card is a bad idea, something about the SD card not being able to transfer the data quickly enough. This question is would an SD card work fine with transferring MP3\'s and other things? Also will the C760 support a 512MB SD card?

:arrow: I\'m a big fan of First Person Shooter style games and I read that the C760 has Doom available for it, also Quake (but it apparently runs slowly). Are there any better first person shooters than these games for the C760 that take advantage of the X-Scale CPU?

My hat goes off to the people who answer my questions

Jason Gaunt aka Foxdie
[img]http://foxes.dontexist.com/foxpyro.gif\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[ScottYelich]

hi ...


I have a C760 and a lexar 512MB SD card.  I\'ve also used the same card in a c700.

Ive have played doom on the c7x0, but I have not finished it.  I thought I saw a post recently where someone said that he had finished it on the zaurus.

Scott

[HennaOjisan]

Hi Foxdie,

I\'m using C760 with Jp Sharp ROM and tkcVideo Player, and it plays my 320x240 DivX 29fps - 69kbps, MP3- 55kbps fine. Although, some of the fast moving scenes gets slightly choppy. Oh, and that\'s 200MB video from 256MB SD card. I\'ll have to try mplayer ...

Don\'t know the answers to other question, sorry. I\'m a newb too :-)

Good luck,
HennaOjisan

[Anonymous]

The questions I have are as follows:

:arrow: I\'ve read various posts on watching movies on the Z, I\'ve noticed that mplayer seems to be the best for watching divx movies like, but what\'s the best it can handle? Would it play a 320x240 25FPS 384kbit divx movie with a 48khz MP3 Stereo sound track perfectly?

 :!:  I kinda doubt perfectly.  If you lower the frame rate to 20fps, maybe.  The pocket movie clips should be an example of what the zaurus can play with little hiccup.

:arrow: I notice that the C760 doesn\'t support SDIO, is this a hardware limitation or kernel? Basically all I\'m asking here is if there\'s a chance in the future that SDIO support can be added to the C760

 :!: I\'m pretty sure the is a hardware issue.

:arrow: I read in a post that watching movies from a SD card is a bad idea, something about the SD card not being able to transfer the data quickly enough. This question is would an SD card work fine with transferring MP3\'s and other things? Also will the C760 support a 512MB SD card?

 :!: The Zs currently only use one of four data channels so it isn\'t as fast as it should be.  MP3s shouldn\'t be a problem.

:arrow: I\'m a big fan of First Person Shooter style games and I read that the C760 has Doom available for it, also Quake (but it apparently runs slowly). Are there any better first person shooters than these games for the C760 that take advantage of the X-Scale CPU?

 :!: No.  Games are even more limited on the 760 (as opposed to the 5x00 series).

My hat goes off to the people who answer my questions

Jason Gaunt aka Foxdie
[img]http://foxes.dontexist.com/foxpyro.gif\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[Foxdie]

How come they are more limited? I would have thought that the CPU is twice or more than twice as fast as it\'s predecessors?

[tumnus]

The form factor of the C7x0 isn\'t suited very well to many of the existing Zaurus games out there because many of the games are designed for a portrait screen and expect you to be able to use the cursor keys at the same time. For example, some of the best games for the Zaurus from http://www.eongames.com are probably not very easy to play on a C7x0.

[Foxdie]

The form factor of the C7x0 isn\'t suited very well to many of the existing Zaurus games out there because many of the games are designed for a portrait screen and expect you to be able to use the cursor keys at the same time. For example, some of the best games for the Zaurus from http://www.eongames.com are probably not very easy to play on a C7x0.

Excluding the screen layout / resolution would it still be able to run more intensive applications / games? I don\'t wanna buy one and find out there\'s no decent games for it

[Anonymous]

I was also looking at picking up a 760, and had a few questions of my own I\'d like to add to the mix.

- Is there any easy way to sync up your contacts with a cell phone?

- Is there a CF bluetooth adapter that is compatable with the 760?

- Any chance of being able to hook it up to my server\'s serial port to use as a console?

The first question is the only possible deal breaker, as I currently use a combo device (Kyocera 6035), and I still am not sure that I want two separate devices again.

[tumnus]

Excluding the screen layout / resolution would it still be able to run more intensive applications / games? I don\'t wanna buy one and find out there\'s no decent games for it [/quote]
The C7x0s can technically run just about any Zaurus game AFAIK.

All Zaurus games are listed here:
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/
and here:
http://www.handango.com/sharp/Home.jsp?sit...Id=9&catalog=80

[Foxdie]

- Is there any easy way to sync up your contacts with a cell phone?

- Is there a CF bluetooth adapter that is compatable with the 760?

- Any chance of being able to hook it up to my server\'s serial port to use as a console?

I\'ve been doing a lot of digging on these questions as they are related to what I want to use my C760 for (I\'ve just placed the order).

No doubt there\'ll be an easy way to copy your phone contacts via Infrared / Bluetooth, probably some software that you must purchase but the majority of Zaurus software is less than $30 from what I\'ve seen.

Yes there are multiple CF bluetooth adapters that work with the 760, you can find a list of them here: http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/devices.html

As for the serial port question, I have seen somewhere a Compactflash to Serial adapter. As the majority of Bluetooth Adapters use a 16650 (I think the numbers wrong) UART then most likely there\'ll be a CompactFlash version with Linux / Zaurus drivers somewhere. I suggest you check out the Official Zaurus DevNet Forums at http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php

The C7x0s can technically run just about any Zaurus game AFAIK.  

All Zaurus games are listed here:  
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/  

Thats a very comprehensive list tumnus, thankyou