Friday, February 1st, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
During cleaning house I found two leather cases for c7×0 Zaurus. Both are made by PDAir company and fit c7×0 Zaurus with big or small battery (c1000/c3×00 does not fit). Both are in ideal condition (one was not used).
One of cases has also clip mounting.
I offer them for anyone in EU who will cover post costs. Payment via Moneybookers or Paypal (when I will recover passwords) or you can send me Mini-SD (or Micro-SD with adapter) card or something from my Amazon wishlist (yes, I like Dale Brown books).
Tags: zaurus 1 Comment »
Friday, February 1st, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Yes — I do not have “collie” (Zaurus SL-5500) any more. Three days ago I sent box with palmtop (full original set) and few additional cards (Bluetooth and few CF/SD memory cards) to Thomas Kunze.
I hope that this delivery will help him with his work on SD/MMC driver for this device.
Tags: collie zaurus 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 24th, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
From time to time I see people asking what to use instead of original charger to charge Zaurus palmtops. Some suggest using Sony PSP chargers, some recommends sync-and-charge USB cables.
I have simpler solution — USB Hub chargers. Recently I bought another powered USB Hub and it’s charger does not fit in any of my left sockets (due to size of plug) so I charge it with original Sharp Zaurus charger. Other way is of course proper too — Zaurus power plug is compatible with many devices ;)
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Friday, January 11th, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Few days ago I shared my thoughts on replacing Zaurus palmtop with other device. According to comments few people do not understand why hardware keyboard is so important for me.
Collie
Nearly 4 years ago I bought my first Linux powered PDA — Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 (codename: “collie”). One of nice features was hardware keyboard:
It is thumb operated keyboard but usable after a bit of learning. You have everything needed to operate in console, writing text — even Vi is usable (”Cancel” key works as Esc).
c7×0
Time passed and I got another Zaurus — this time it was clamshell model — c760 (codename: “husky” or “c7×0″). This device has great keyboard. Keys are small but there is separate row with numerical keys so it is improvement from “collie” one.
Those Japanese keys right to “Fn” one are mapped as “Control” and “Alt” so user can even try to use Emacs :) For Vi lovers there is “Cancel” key which works as Esc.
Tosa
Another months passed and another Zaurus arrived at my place — this time is was SL-6000L (codename: “tosa”). It has keyboard similar to “collie”: but more comfortable due to size of keys:
“Esc” is on “Cancel” like it is in collie.
N810
Recently one Finnish company released new product from their line of tablets: N810. It was their first tablet with integrated keyboard. Thanks to photos provided by Koen I can comment a bit on it too. It it similar to “collie” and “tosa” keyboards when it comes to mapping (no numeric keys, lot of symbols available only with “Fn” key) but it also lack “Tab” key which can make shell using a bit harder.
There is “Esc” key — one of side keys works as one (not visible on photo).
Summary
For now the best keyboard is “c7×0″ one — all needed keys are available, lot of others can be made available by editing keymap. And when I have to hack something on device good keyboard is one of most important things. I can not count how many times I ended with having 3-4 consoles running on my c760 with miscellaneous applications started due to amount of hacking required by projects.
Akita/Spitz
UPDATE: Matthias ‘CoreDump’ Hentges reminded me about Zaurus SL-Cxx00 keyboards (used in c1000/c3000/c3100/c3200 models):
Yes — they are similar to “c760″ one but have changed cursors into 4-pad and each key is separate one — they are no longer parts of membrane. Many people found that one more comfortable then “c7×0″ one but I am not one of them — used both and still prefer older one.
Tags: collie linux n810 tosa zaurus 4 Comments »
Monday, January 7th, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
My Zaurus c760 is nice ARM based palmtop. I use it for testing miscellaneous things during my work days.
It was device where I hacked some Python based applications to fit in 10 megabytes of flash (it was fully working console system with Python and those apps). I test Ångström and Poky on it, tested different combinations of software etc…
But it shows age — batteries (950mAh and 1700mAh ones) started to lose capacity (one of them gives less then 60%) so sooner or later this device will stop booting (as battery is needed to boot even on AC).
But how to replace this device? There are lot of ARM palmtops in a world but most of it lack one or more features which c7×0 has:
- ARMv5t instruction set
- Linux support
- VGA screen
- working keyboard
- 128MB flash
- 64MB RAM
Due to first one all devices powered by Samsung S3Cxxxx processor can be ignored. Most of today WindowsMobile powered devices lack VGA screen (not to mention that they also usually lack Linux support). But at least those ones are available in normal shops in Poland.
I already considered few options but each of them has minuses:
- other Zaurus (but they are few years old technologically)
- HTC Universal (hard to get in good state, still boots from WinCE instead of flash)
- Finnish tablet N810 (impossible to buy in Poland and lack any warranty/service)
In worst situation I will slowly switch to using QEmu ARM emulation instead of real device.
Tags: linux poky zaurus 28 Comments »
Friday, December 28th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
During last months I did few attempts to unify kernel configuration for all PXA Zaurus models (so no collie). As last one did not generate working ones and I do not have time to fix it (or devices for testing) I decided to release last version so maybe someone will look at it and try to get it fixed.
Download archive
To generate configuration files run make.
Tags: testing zaurus 2 Comments »