Marcin Juszkiewicz

All started years ago — I was living in Wrocław then. Each Thursday groups of friends met in pub. About half of them used PalmOS powered palmtops. Due to them I started thinking about buying palmtop for myself.

Palm M105

About year later I bought my first PDA: Palm M105. It had monochrome screen (16 shades of grey), PalmOS 3.5 and 8MB of RAM (which is also used as storage). Standard AA(A) batteries were able to power it for quite long time. I moved my calendar, address book into it, used it as e-book reader (with Plucker), public transportation timetable (Przewodas and Fahrplan) and many others things.

Sony CLIE SJ30

One day I decided that 160x160 screen is too small and colour would be nice thing to have. So I bought Sony CLIE SJ30. It was powered by PalmOS 4.1 and had great 320x320 screen. Took me a bit of time to collect apps which were able to make use of that resolution (as PalmOS treats all devices as 160x160 ones — only fonts looks better). I also started hacking some applications to make use of HiRes screen and fonts.

It was nice device and my first one with memory card slot — I used 128MB MemoryStick with it.

But hacking applications was frustrating — system did not made any use of HiRes screen, GUI sizes were mostly hard coded so even replacing fonts with smaller ones did not give more informations on screen. I decided to change platform.

Sharp Zaurus SL-5500

At that time (end of 2003 year) I had two other choices: PocketPC or Linux. I decided to not go into PalmOS 5 as it was not better then older versions. So after checking market I decided to go Linux way (which was even easier as I used Linux on Desktop for quite long time then).

And that’s how I bought Zaurus SL-5500. I found someone who fetched it from USA for me (I even got 3 months warranty from Sharp as it was refurbished device). It was costly device — I had to sell CLIE, its memory card to be able to get “collie” into my hands.

13 February 2004 Zaurus arrived with SharpROM 2.38 installed. It was nice change from PalmOS world but it lacked “hackability” so I decided to switch into open alternative: OpenZaurus. It was 3.2 version (last one with binary compatibility with SharpROM).

Change was great — finally system which I can hack as much as I want to. After some time I switched to “3.3-pre1” version which was totally experimental but it had newer OPIE. But also it lacked software due to not being compatible any more with SharpROM…

OpenEmbedded

I started searching for tools to build some applications. First it was “buildroot” used by OpenZaurus but some guys told me that I should forget about it and start to use something called OpenEmbedded.

Gods… this was hard tool. I had to buy extra RAM to my desktop machine just to use it. But after about week (or two) of asking stupid questions to Kergoth and Mickeyl I finally got ideas how to use it and started to build extra applications for collie (which still was using OZ 3.3-pre1).

My Zaurus started to have less and less packages from OpenZaurus 3.3 and most of installed software was built with OpenEmbedded. So one day I decided to build whole image with OE. It took me week. After that I got write permissions and joined OE core team ;)

We worked hard on our build system and in September 2003 OpenZaurus 3.5.1 was released. It lacked some software present in previous releases but also gave many others. Community started to use it, then some developers joined us so next releases had more software, more machines supported, more environments (not only OPIE but also GPE).

Zaurus c760

Time passed… I was spending lot of time on user support and one day people from #oe and #openzaurus channels started to congratulate me on getting new toy. I was surprised as I had no idea what are they talk about. Someone pointed me to OESF forums thread where Richard Jackson wrote that he donates his c760 for me. It was great day.

Zaurus arrived few days later and I flashed it with OpenZaurus on same day (played few minutes with SharpROM). I did lot of VGA related hacking on it (mostly OPIE). It was my favourite PDA for long time.

Zaurus SL-6000L

In May 2006 one OpenZaurus user contacted Mickeyl and me. He wanted to donate two Zaurus palmtops for OpenEmbedded project: SL-5600 (poodle) and SL-6000L (tosa). Both devices arrived at my place month later.

Tosa is very interesting device — very bright screen (best in whole Zaurus line), internal WiFi (Prism2 on USB bus) and usable USB host. But it is also very huge — too big to be usable ;(

Zaurus SL-5600

Crap screen (same as in collie) and only 32MB RAM. Looks like Sharp wanted to produce newer collie but lacked RAM chips. If it would get 64MB of memory it would be nice replacement.

I did not played with it too much — it moved to Mickeyl during OEDEM 2006.

Zaurus SL-C3000

Another device from OpenEmbedded project. I took it from Mickeyl during OEDEM 2006, played a bit, resolved some problems and during FOSDEM 2007 gave it for Rolf ‘Laibsch’ Leggewie.

I did not like it — too thick and heavy.

PalmPilot 5000

One day I had occasion to buy PalmPilot 5000 so I bought it. It was funny to see that PalmOS5 Datebook is nearly same as the one in PalmOS 2.0 — only ~8 years of time difference…

Nokia 770

During FOSDEM 2007 I got Nokia 770 from MDK. For long time I did not found good use for it. For PDA usage I had cellphone (Sony Eriksson k750i), for web browsing I used my desktop… Finally it became used as games platform — Mahjongg, Sudoku, Battleweled and few others. Plus sometimes some web browsing.

Finally during last trip to London I found use for it (based on experience from GUADEC). After installation of Maemo Mapper it turns into nice city map.

FIC Neo1973 GTA01

Some time before FOSDEM I got email that I am one of 50 developers selected for OpenMoko phase0 program. In March I got GTA01Bv3 and two months later GTA01Bv4 came as upgrade.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this device. Compared to iPhone or recent HTC phones it is bulky and feature crippled. But Neo1973 GTA02 has to fix at least features part :)

There were two versions of UI for them: OM 2007.1 and then OM 2007.2 version which we (OpenedHand) prepared for GUADEC. I remember that time when recipes for components were changing many times during one day until poky-image-phone was ready and working. I still have this image (but with upgraded packages) on my GTA01Bv3 phone. It was interesting to see when OH guys were comparing behaviour of applications on 200MHz device with same apps on 266MHz one.

Nokia N810

My recent buy. Hard to tell more about it now.

Current situation

Now I use my cellphone for PIM tasks (calendar, address book, tasks, notes). It is not perfect but I have it always nearby. My SL-5500 is on a way to new home where it will be used for developing Linux 2.6 drivers. Nokia 770 is game platform like it was. Tosa waits for someone who wants to work on improving its situation (it can be drivers work, images polishing etc). PalmOS devices are packaged in a box with many other not needed computer/electronics stuff.

For now I think that mainly Nokia N810 will be used (for fun and work). Zaurus c760 will be booted from time to time to test some things and so will Neo1973 GTA01Bv4 phone (this one is all time USB connected).

During cleaning house I found two leather cases for c7x0 Zaurus. Both are made by PDAir company and fit c7x0 Zaurus with big or small battery (c1000/c3x00 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).

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.

I got N810 two days ago but lacked time to write about it.

Hardware

At first I was thinking that N810 is heavier then 770 but Ross told me that it is not true — device is smaller so it feel like that. I took kitchen scales and checked. N810 is lighter then 770 with cover indeed.

Good things

Overall look is nice. Good selected colours; nice, very bright display. Screen dimming/lighting based on light level is nice addon. Integrated stand (also present in N800) is useful and it also cover not so often used ports/slots (battery lock, memory card slot, micro USB connector). I also like fullscreen and zoom keys order — same as in 770 so I do not have to learn other layout.

Lock screen/keys key is nice thing. It was present in many Sony devices before (as “Hold” key).

Stereo speakers are nice (770 had only mono speaker) and plays loud enough.

Bad things

Keyboard… Lack of “Tab” key, no padding between keys, D-pad is available only with slider opened, no numbers row. And top row is too close to case :( Overall using of keyboard is not comfortable. I have to compare it with some HTC phones one day…

Top keys present on bottom part of device instead of on top one. With slider open it is hard to reach them.

Mini-SD cards — I wonder which card format will be used in next tablet. 770 had RS-MMC which nearly no one else used, N800 had 2 SD slots which was best option. N810 has one slot for mini-SD card and 2GB internal card. I would prefer second slot instead of that internal card as 4GB cards are quite cheap today.

Not decided good or bad

GPS is something which I will not comment. Have to make comparison with Neo1973 GTA01 first.

Micro USB connector means another cable to take care of but looking at case it probably be hard to use Mini USB one.

I did not tested headset which was in package.

Software

OS2008 looks nice. It is clearly visible that Maemo developers tried to make it finger friendly. Sometimes too much and in other places not enough.

Good things

Hard to tell what is good in OS2008. I used OS2005, OS2006, OS2007 ‘hacker edition’ before on 770 so I have nothing to add here yet.

Bad things

Locale system is like it was in all previous versions… You cannot have 24 hour clock with “English UK” region, you cannot select own date format etc. And I did not yet found a way to hack it to have Polish region (package which works on my 770/OS2006 does not works with OS2008).

Applications menu cannot be switched to look like it was in OS2008 (not finger friendly) so with few more apps installed I have to scroll menu list.

No DivX support in MediaPlayer :( I had to install MPlayer to watch Monty Python Flying Circus.

Internal contacts application failed to import phone book from my cellphone. It told “file too big” on 600KB file ;( Filled bug.

First experiments

First was PowerTOP. As other NCurses based applications it fails because there is no terminfo database installed on device. Also there is no kernel support enabled for collecting timers statistics so I had to flash it with my kernel (which recipe is present in Poky). After all I re-flashed device :(

Second was MPlayer (maemo version). There is “nokia770” video driver written for 770/N800 hardware but on N810 it tells that no hardware is present. After some research I found a reason — it parses /proc/cpuinfo for “Nokia 770” and “Nokia N800” strings to check. But it lack “Nokia RX-44” check for N810. After manual change in binary it now works ok on my tablet (not that it was non-working before… it was but with XVideo output). Filled bug.

I am going to follow XorA way and stop maintaining Zaurus palmtops support. The replacement is the same — Nokia N810 tablet but reasons are other…

As Maemo developer program had strange rules I did not took a part of it. I was not thinking about buying N810 even. But then at work I had some projects which required ARMv6 machine. Due to fact that all my ARM devices use cores not capable of using ARMv6 instructions I worked on getting newer QEmu in Poky working so I had something which allowed me to test resulting binaries.

Few days ago I did a check where to buy N810 and bought one at eXpansys UK. It should arrive later this week so I will be able to test how bad GPS is (I heard raports of 50m consistently wrong, minutes needed to get fix) and does keyboard is really bad (top row especially). But there are few nice things too — OMAP2420 CPU can run ARMv6 code (but do not tell it to Nokia - they still use ARMv5 optimizations), screen is nice and Maemo environment has nice integration of WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity.

OpenEmbedded guys did good job on adding “Chinook” (OS2008 Maemo edition) support into OE so at least few problems will rather vanish: messing with feeds and searching for non-Maemo software.

UPDATE: fixed cpu name.

This post is in Polish language and describe how to buy Nokia N810 while living in Poland. Vendor decided to not sell tablets in our country.

Kupno Nokii N810 w Polsce praktycznie rzecz biorąc jest niemożliwe. Oficjalny kanał sprzedaży odpada więc pozostają inne metody.

Pierwszy rzut oka — Allegro (sprawdzałem też eBay ale na polskim nikt nie sprzedaje N810). Znalazłem jedną aukcję ale jest to egzemplarz wysyłany z USA więc pojawia się ryzyko o nazwie “Urząd Celny” a co za tym idzie 22% VAT do opłacenia… Tak oto 1349 PLN przestaje być atrakcyjną ceną.

No ale możemy sami poszukać w USA — w końcu dolar jest tani :) Na Amazonie można kupić za 420 USD (~1050 PLN), zaś w amerykańskim sklepie firmowym Nokia można dostać 72 USD zniżki przez co wychodzi bodajże 403 USD (~1000 PLN). Do tego oczywiście dochodzi koszt przesyłki do Polski. Niestety nadal pozostaje kwestia wizyty w Urzędzie Celnym…

Tak więc spójrzmy na rynek bardziej nam bliski czyli sklepy w Unii Europejskiej. Najpierw sklepy niemieckie. Według wyszukiwarki cenowej Google ceny zaczynają się od 400 EUR (~1450 PLN) co jest taką sobie ceną — przesyłka z USA z opłatami w urzędzie celnym wychodzi bardziej opłacalna…

Ciekawą ofertę ma eXpansys — pod warunkiem, że zignorujemy sklep w domenie .pl :) Niespodzianka polega na fakcie słabnięcia wartości funta brytyjskiego względem Euro. I tak w sklepie w Anglii N810 kosztuje 294,95 GBP (~1430 PLN) zamiast 454,95 EUR (~1650 PLN) w sklepie “polskim”.

Czemu jednak określam to jako ciekawą ofertę skoro wygląda na tyle samo co w wielu niemieckich sklepach? Otóż cały trik polega na fakcie, że będąc płatnikiem VAT (czyli w naszych realiach: firma z VAT-EU) można od razu nabyć bez podatku co daje cenę 263 GBP (~1280 PLN) wliczając w to przesyłkę DHL-em.

Pozostaje kwestia gwarancji. Z tego co wiem to sprzęt zakupiony w Europie ma gwarancję ważną także w Polsce. Inaczej wygląda sprawa z tabletami zakupionymi w USA — na tamtejszy rynek produkowana jest nieco inna wersja (inne uregulowania w kwestii działania WiFi/BT) i nie jest ona wspierana na rynku europejskim.

Pytanie tylko czy polski serwis Nokii jest w stanie naprawiać tablety skoro nie ma ich w sprzedaży. Zadzwoniłem do jednego z oficjalnych punktów serwisowych i dowiedziałem się, że urządzenie będzie przyjęte do naprawy i przekazane do głównego punktu serwisowego ze względu na fakt, iż nie jest to produkt oferowany na rynku polskim.

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 ;)

It is nearly a year since I got 770 tablet. Currently it is used mostly by my wife as platform for Mahjongg and few other games. Still OS2006 installed as os2007on770 project failed for me — device became even slower (yes — it is possible to make 770 slower then it is) and more often display “no enough memory” requester.

Recently I noticed that “RSS Feed Reader” (pre-installed one) do not want to launch so there is no way to add/edit list of feeds. I did not checked which other applications also stopped working. The worst thing is that it has to stay in such state…

Why? Few reasons:

1. applications for OS2006 mostly vanished from common places
2. new versions of programs are not available for such old OS version
3. I have some packages for Polish localisation which source I do not remember
4. restoring backup results in totally broken system due to lack of Polish locale in base system

I will leave it just like it is now — few things still work so maybe it will be usable for some time…