March 8th, 2010
With all the projects I’m working on, it is hard to find a proper balance between. Granted all the projects are just different platforms under pdaXrom, but it does take time and effort to get them fully functional. As of now I want to get pdaXrom booting on
1. Zaurus SL-c1/3xxx (Working for me, others are having troubles)
2. Zaurus SL-c7xx/860 (Almost There)
3. Zaurus SL-c3000 (Sorta Started, need new nand driver for uboot)
4. Zaurus SL-6000 (Sorta Started, need new nand driver for uboot)
5. Palm Pre (Not Started)
I have to have a even balance between all of these devices. Dedicating time to 2,3,4 will either stop or atleast pump the brakes on any or all of the other projects. As of right now, I’m focusing on getting #1 working for other users (not only me).
# 2 will not take much effort. Just a different kernel (and a few other small tweaks) since the board, nand, keymappings and touchscreen are different between the 2 series of devices.
#3 will not be able to make use of UBIFS, but hopefully the added optimizations of ext4 will speed things up. The only roadblock as of now stopping this device from booting would be the nand driver.
#4 has uboot booting on it, but it fails when it tries to read the nand. The same failure that is received on the c3000.
#5 On to to the Palm Pre, which is going to be a gamble getting it to work. On a positive note, Sashz already has working version of pdaXrom booting on a Samsung Spica. The biggest headache is going to be porting the current patches for 2.6.26 to 2.6.32-up.
Well this is my update for now, I will possibly have more tomorrow… but until next time…
Late
Posted in Embedded Devices, Palm Pre, Uncategorized, Zaurus, Zaurus Clamshell, Zaurus SL-6000, pdaXrom | 2 Comments »
March 5th, 2010
Bootloader w/ Emergency Image
UBI Rootfs w/Kernel 2.6.32.5 (issue fixed)
UBI Rootfs w/ Kernel 2.6.32.5 (Basic Image with no X11, building X11 image now)
Follow these instructions
As stated prior, proceed with caution and post here for now with your concerns!
Until a very soon next time…
Late
Posted in Zaurus, Zaurus Clamshell, pdaXrom | 3 Comments »
March 4th, 2010
So while at work today I figured out a way to make the uboot bootloader work and its seems to be working. I’m going to do some needed clean up and I should have a release up on sf.net tomorrow or the next day at the latest.
Once again sorry for the big delay!
Late
Posted in Zaurus, Zaurus Clamshell, pdaXrom | 1 Comment »
February 27th, 2010
Sorry for no updates but I’ve been bombarded by ‘real job’ stuff… But just a quick update on what’s going on.
Well as of now I’m still trying to figure out the inconsistancy of flashing the emergency image. What I’m going to do it try and change the nand layout back to as it was prior to the changes and see what happens.
Gosh darn uboot!
Until next time…
Late
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 18th, 2010
With the announcement of the iPad I’ve been looking for an alternative to the device. Well after searching I have found some “close but no cigar” devices. (One of which I’m VERY interested in.)
SmartQ has released 4 models in the past 2 years and I think I’m interest in the first model 5. The only negative right now is the screen size sinces it’s only .3in larger then the Tosa. I could always purchase the v7, but I don’t like the looks.
What I’m looking for is a device that will allow me to read PDFs and possible watch a movie on a long trip. Obviously I have a netbook that can do the trip but is isn’t portable enough for me. I also have the zaurus but the screen isn’t large enough for me. I need something with a fairly large screen but not so big for use in the bed and place on a night stand after use.
I’m open to suggestions… What have you seen?
Until next time…
Late
Posted in Embedded Devices | 1 Comment »
February 16th, 2010
I pulled the r1396 uboot and rootfs installers from SF.NET due to issues the user community were facing. I will be unofficially uploading TEST releases every so often (for the next week or until one of them works) via IRC so if you want to get your hands on a bleeding egde release or would like to help out this project by testing these releases, please join the IRC #pdaxrom@freenode.
Well until next time…
Late
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 15th, 2010
(UPDATE AGAIN* Links and downloads removed until the issue is resolved)
(UPDATE* This release is ONLY for 1000,3100,3200)
Well as promised here is a VERY alpha version of pdaXrom 2.0a
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdaxrom/files/
(for C1000/3xxx only as of now, hopefully I can throw together a C7xx/860 build later on this week and hopefully C3000 in the following)
Install Instructions
1. *IMPORTANT* do a NAND Backup of your current setup, because you will only run this for a few days max (few hours possibly)
2. Download pdaXrom-spitz-r1396-armel-linux-gnueabi-uboot.zip and copy the contents to a SD or CF card. Disconnect power and battery from your device and insert you SD or CF card. Press and hold C +D on your device and plug in the AC adapter. You will notice your 2 LEDs lit up. If the LEDs start to blink something is wrong. (A new version of U-boot is required due to the change of the Nandlogical layout.)
3. Once the lights go out your device has been updated. At this point your device show no life (do not panic!). Next step is to disconnect the AC adapter again and leave the battery out. Press and hold down the OK key (the one on the keypad, not the back of the device) and insert your AC adapter. Within 5-6 secs you will see scrolling kernel text.
4. Once your at the login prompt type “root”. At this point you are logged into the emergency initrd.
5. You should now download and copy the contents of pdaXrom-spitz-r1396-armel-linux-gnueabi-uboot.zip to a SD or CF card. (Anywhere, do not have to be in the root of the FS)
6. Insert the SD or CF card into your device and mount it is necessary ( mount /dev/mmcblkp(x) /mnt or mount /dev/hda(x) /mnt ) and change directory to /mnt/<location of files> and run “./autoboot.sh .” (the . after autoboot.sh IS required). This command will write the kernel to nandlogical, wipe and write the roots to your NAND.
7. Once this process is complete your device will automatically reboot and load kernel and rootfs. Your done! Log on as root w/ no password.
All the bells and whistles are not there and it is still a work in progress and I need your help to point out what needs done. Obviously there there are going to be PLENTY of things that need fixed and please comment back with the things you see. In the meantime I’m trying to find a REAL bug repo to track issues and progress.
Until the next time…
Late
Posted in Zaurus, Zaurus Clamshell, pdaXrom | 9 Comments »
February 12th, 2010
Well with every post there is always another hurdle. Well this is update is no different. Well the latest hurdle would be rtc (Real Time Clock). Since the zaurus does not have an onboard backup battery to maintain the clock, the time resets on reboot. Many distros have found ways to work around this (including pdaXrom) but after not working with this for awhile, I forgot what we did and I’m searching through the old svn data to figure this out.
Next would be networking. I have a Symbol Spectrum24 cf card (popular in the Zaurus community) and I cant get it to work. The device is detected and recognized by udev then it dies trying to initialize the firmware. Well with the firmware in the correct location, it still doesn’t grab the firmware. Something is telling me since the drives are so out dated, it possibly is hardcoded to use hotplug or something. I dont know, but that is the next thing I need to look at.
Next would be sound. I havent had a chance to config sound other then compiling the snd-soc-spitz module. So once again, the next thing I need to work on.
But, I still plan on releasing this on the 15th (4 days away) as an alpha copy. This will give me a chance to get some responses from the community and what they like and dont like and what is working and what is not working.
Well until the next time…
Late
Posted in Zaurus, pdaXrom | 1 Comment »
February 5th, 2010
Well after a day of tweaking I’m going to put uClibc on the back burner once again… this back burner will also include 2.6.32.7. Something in this release is causing ubi volumes to not boot. I thought possibly I broke something in the updated kernel config, but after jumping back to 2.6.32 and rebuilding with the same config, it boots! Well I’m going to try a 2.6.32.6 build today and try to find some success.
Next on the agenda would to getting all the manual tweaks I have to do on initial load to be automated. Shouldnt be too big of an issue, but it takes time away from other things I could be doing (not all pdaXrom related).
Well until the next time…
Late
(PS. I’m going to try and update this blog more then once or twice a month, and make that once or twice a week, be it Zaurus, pdaXrom-NG or just plain linux related)
Posted in Kernel, Zaurus, Zaurus Clamshell, pdaXrom | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
Well, after seeing the size of these libs, im going to take another crack at uClibc to free up some space and even improve some performance. The toolchain is built and I’m currently building the kernel and rootfs (as I type).
Next topic would be the decided package manager, and it seems like deb took the cake. I’m currently working with all the dh_* scripts to implement a process in pdaXrom-NG builder to allow for building debian based packages. It shouldn’t be to hard to building/creating the packages, but configuring to recognize package dependencies is going to be a lengthy process.
Im hoping I can still meeting the Feb 15th date for the alpha release, but keep in mind thing release is going to come with a disclaimer, because your not going to have a lot of functionality. It will more more like a interactive demo 
Until next time…
Late
Posted in Zaurus, pdaXrom | 1 Comment »