Random mumblings of ARM developer
Vacations was nice but ended… Now it is time to be back to work, websites, Zaurus stuff etc… Time to follow OpenEmbedded migration to newer Monotone version (partially did it already on some of machines), look at OpenZaurus users posts & requests.
I will try to write something how was on vacations later — we did over 300 photos which need selection. Many of them are wallpapers which I will publish somewhere.
It is good to have vacations…
and NO Zaurus stuff, NO e-mails, NO phones from work — quiet and cool ;D
Many people use IM (Instant Messaging) each day. There are many protocols available: AIM, GaduGadu, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, Meanwhile, MSN, WinPopup, Yahoo and probably some other…
I use IRC since my usage of Internet began, then ICQ started to be popular (and my Amiga was connected to academic network via Ethernet), about year later people started switching to GaduGadu and some time later I started using Jabber. Today I use IRC each day (you can catch me on freenode and IRCnet), two Jabber accounts, one ICQ and two GaduGadu (one for private contacts, one for coworkers). My favorite method of IM contact is Jabber, then ICQ (I do not count IRC here as it is not so one-to-one chat). I dislike GaduGadu for its lack of normal features, ignoring privacy and such stuff.
For example — today I added contact of coworker to be able to send some infos to her instead of writing it in email or on sheet of paper. As usual she had to ask someone which number she has (GG use numbers like ICQ does — not names like Jabber or IRC). So I added her just to notice that she has a status ‘not available’. In this shit called GG it does not have to mean that you are not available — it can be that user defined status as ‘hidden’. In ICQ or Jabber this stuff is handled by authorization — if I want someone to be able to see my status I can authorize contact. When I told her that I do not IM with ‘not available’ people she replied ‘Why? I prefer this way and will not change it — you can send me emails.’
Other GaguGagu crap is called ‘conferencies’ which are just few people chat not chatroom/channels. Anyone can start conference with other people — but all people got request ‘do you want to enter conference with NUM1, NUM2, NUM3, NUM4. NUM5’ — lack of any method to block of showing own number to people which I would like to avoid (if NUM3 does not want NUM5 knowing his number he cannot hide after such conference request).
Few days ago I flashed 2.6.17 on tosa (with unofficial OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 OPIE image) and I have to say that it was good choice. After fixing keymap (pushed into OpenEmbedded) and adding one script into apm (not yet pushed) I have machine which suspend/resume very fast, has working WiFi after each resume and behave better then it was with 2.4 (see my previous post).
But it is not yet ready for end users:
Tomorrow I will get USB keyboard from friend so will test how it is — usage of external (wired) keyboard with PDA…
OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 is released!!!
It took 4 months instead of few weeks, I lost motivation few times but finally it is done. I can not count how many times I had to build images during last week just to notice that something is wrong. Building world (all packages) killed dual Opteron machine once, took few days and I had to wrote many patches to get stuff built.
But it is worth it — users got nice system to use, based on recent kernel (2.6.16 — 2.6.17 was not yet tested) instead of shitty 2.4 provided by Sharp (let name of that company be forgotten forever).
What next? Vacations, then tosa fighting and maybe another release in September.. who knows..
Yesterday I got USB Host cable from Trisoft (donated like I wrote before) so I decided to check how it works.
First try was my TDK Bluetooth dongle which I got year ago. Installed kernel-module-hci-usb, connected dongle and it was not working. So I rebooted and after reboot and manual module loading I got hci0 shown in hciconfig output. But I was unable to do any scanning for devices.
Then I disconnected BT and connected my few years old 64M pendrive. Tosa did not even notice that change… so I did another reboot. After that I got /dev/sda1 mountable and working.
In next weeks (plan to have 2 week vacations) I plan to test some more USB equipment — plan to buy powered hub, already have multiport card reader, will borrow USB keyboard etc. And most important thing — test 2.6 kernel on tosa.
During last days I moved from my C760 to Tosa. It is heavy, big and has awesome screen — I can use it even with lowest brightness setting (one step from “no backlight”). Stylus is made from plastic but is longer then styli from other Zaurus models. Internal WiFi is able to do WPA on firmware level but driver do not support it ;(
First day was SharpROM day because I forgot to take CF card from home to flash OpenZaurus. SharpROM looks quite OK but some things was weird. For example handling of QVGA applications — screen was switched into 240x320 mode with ‘please wait’ message on start and exit… This slowdown plus no possibility to switch off that switching force user to rather skip using such apps. WiFi settings has profiles support which is nice but due to fact that internal wireless use wlan-ng drivers I could not get WPA so was not able to connect to my home AP.
Same day evening I flashed OpenZaurus 3.5.4 (OPIE flavour) into device. System boots and works but I needed to install some upgrades to get fixed keyboard mapping etc. Reconfigured AP to get connection, configured WiFi in tosa and ipkg update;ipkg upgrade was working. Lot of stuff upgraded and after reboot I got working keyboard but lost HostAP configuration files (will hunt this bug and add proper fixes into OpenZaurus upgrades feed). Lack of Control key make it not so usable with OPIE terminals so I use OPIE-IRC on it instead of logging into my irssi-over-screen session. And there are two keys which functionality is something which I must find out (one above Cancel and Backlight/Rotate one).
Machine works quite nice but after using 2.6 kernel on PDA for over one year I feel that 2.4-crapix is slow… Resuming from suspend need time to get machine responding, enabling WiFi means machine not responding for a while too… I hope that 2.6 will get into usable state soon.
About one month ago one OpenZaurus user contacted me and Michael ‘mickeyl’ Lauer with info that he want to donate two Zaurus machines to project — SL-6000L (tosa) and SL-5600 (poodle). After some discussion we decided that both machines will be sent to me. I will keep tosa for some time to resolve some of bugs, poodle will go to Mickeyl when we will meet in Berlin during OpenEmbedded developer meeting. Both machines are added into OpenEmbedded project devices.
As donor could not send them overseas I contacted Aman ‘TheMasterMind1’ Gupta (one of old time OpenZaurus developers) and he agreed to get them and resent to me. Last Friday I got mail from customs office that package wait for me. I went there, paid 22% VAT (110 USD) and got box with two Zauruses.
Now I’m charging Tosa — it’s huge but this screen is awesome! Now I understand why people want it in clamshells — Sharp do you hear it? Stop using screen from c700 and move to something new! I also played a bit with SharpROM (last time I used SharpROM over two years ago with my collie) and I can say that it looks nice but I feel slowdowns too often, weird behaviour on application close, handling QVGA apps is weird for me too. Too bad that I cannot test USB Host functionality — Sharp forgot to add proper cable and they are hard to buy (USB mini-A connector) but I found them in Trisoft offer so maybe will get it soon.
UPDATE: I contacted Trisoft and they will send me USB host cable for free. I also ordered one for our main tosa kernel hacker Dirk Opfer (also free). It is good that such companies exists — without them getting Zaurus and accessories in Europe would be hard.
During evening I plan to find time to flash tosa to OpenZaurus 3.5.4 + upgrades and check what need to be fixed. Too bad that wlan-ng driver for Prism2 USB lack WPA — I will have to lower security of my home AP — now it is WPA-PSK but will move to WEP so Tosa will connect with internal wifi. Next I will check how poodle works but this machine is something which I prefer to not touch too much rather — it’s 2.4 support was already marked as ‘terrible, awful’ and we want to move into 2.6 kernel on it. I will check how both machines works with 2.6.17 and maybe will try to hack it a bit — time will show.