Tel: (905)272-2222 Cell: (416)802-8175 E-Mail: bob@mybest.net
That's me on the right. Smiling because I think I
have cracked many if the issues I had integrating my
Zaurus.
My Zaurus Page
OPPS.... my Zaurus was stolen on Feb 14th 2008. I
am still "spitting" mad, but I have to move on......
See the Movie....
| Equipment |
Sharp Zaurus SL5600 (sn: *226) |
 |
|
| External Memory |
A 128Mb SD card
A 256 CF card
|
 |
| Wireless |
Ambicon WL1100C-CF |
|
| Keyboard |
Micro Innovations MP -0118 |
My
Home Page |
| Computer |
Linux (SuSE 9.0) |
My Links Page |
Overview
Need help with a Zaurus on Linux? Here is my
Zaurus howto.
I have had a Palm Pilot V since February 2000. It
was a 2MB beast!, but I had that PDA tuned just the
way I wanted. I used Hackmaster extensively and had
tens of shortcuts. I bought Action Names, 2xCalc,
Commander & jack flash. It had it's limitations,
so it was time to look around....
The upgrade
OK, I'm a LINUX guy... I had not heard much about
the LINUX PDA. In fact, I could not even procure one
here in Canada. However, I decided that the Zaurus
was for me, so I bought one through neutroncanada.ca
(US stuff, in US$ but NO surprise import
duties/delays. A few days later, my Zaurus
arrived.
I bought the Wireless card from neutroncanada.ca
at the same time and the two memory cards (CF &
SD) locally.
The details
After considerable reading, I decided to start
with the Synergy version of Open Zaurus. That
requires that the boot file be loaded on to one of
the memory cards, then rebooting and clearing the
standard (Sharp) boot-up. All that went without a
hitch and all the installed applications worked. Even
the wireless card worked first time; Just calling up
OPERA (web browser) and the wireless pop-up prompted
me to start the wireless service - magic. Of course,
I have my wireless service available!!
Any form of communication or synchronizing
requires that I plug my Zaurus into one of the USB
ports and switching it ON. I wait for the
high and low beep before running a connect
script.. That has changed with SUSE 10. The
USBNET module must be installed, then, through
YAST:
Network Devices:
Network card; Add; device Type USB (static address
setup) with an IP Address of 192.168.129.200 with
subnet mask 192.168.129.200.
Now I Plug the Zaurus into the USB port and,
without any additional scripts/commands, I'm
connected
UPGRADE to SUSE 9.3.....
As far as my Zaurus is concerned.... it was
no-good!! Much has been writen anout the lack of the
USBNET module and no USB0 interface in the Linux
kernel. I downloaded several iterations of the kernel
as well as the USBNET module. Nothing worked.... This
was very annoying as SUSE 9.0 worked well.
UPGRADE to SUSE 10..... (Mid August 2005)
I have just downloaded SUSE 10 (beta4) for my
laptop. I upgraded the system. Now
things are as they should be. The only thing I have
to do is "modprobe usbnet". All the route adding is
already done. Yippee... Who can I bill those
countless hours I wasted on 9.3??!
So I install (from the same CDs) Suse 10 on my
desktop.... Then I am back to where
I was with 9.3!!! I install the kernel sources (from
the CDs) because I am trying to emulate what is on my
laptop. That didn't work, so I replace the default
kernel with the smp (multi-processor) kernel. IT
WORKS.... Don't ask me to explain too much!!!
Synchronizing
Hmm... It probably works out-of-the-box for
Windoze machines, but I had problems. I went through
various iterations of copying the ".ics" (for the
calender) files to and from the Zaurus which was far
from adequate
Here is the copy command I USED to use when I used
the Korganiser.
scp kpp/calender.ics
zaurus@192.168.129.201:/home/zaurus/Applications/korganizer/calender.ics
With the file now a local file on the zaurus, I
could sync the zaurus to that local file, then copy
it back to my SuSE Linux.
The better
way
I have now settled on the KDE-Pim/Pi system
(currently VERSION 2.1.18) for the calender and
addresses. For this to work (and it is NOT crystal
clear from the documentation), you must install the
system on BOTH the Zaurus and the Desktop (although
the versions do not have to be the same). Again, I am
using SuSE 10 with KDE for my desktop. The rpm file
(KDE-Pim-Pi-2.1.18-SuSE_9.2.i586.rpm) at first gave
some dependance problems SuSE 10 - which I ignored
(normally I woule NOT do that). You do have to enable
the Pi-Sync button under the Synchronize menu on the
Zaurus before initiating the synchronizing from the
desktop. You also have to configure the synchronizing
mechanisms - so that they do the hand-shake
correctly.
Accessing the Zaurus
Plug it in, switch it on, run the script...
Using GFTP:
Host: 192.168.129.201
Port: 22
User: zaurus
Pass: "spacebar"
You will be prompted for a password; use spacebar
until you set up a password.
You should be in.....
OR
You can also take a terminal session using a
secure shell (ssh)
ssh 192.168.129.201 -l zaurus - try it
Other Stuff
Unison
is a great utility; install it on Linux and the
Zaurus then you have great control over syncing
files. Unison keeps track of modifications and
changes. I also use unison to track syncing of data
between my desk-top, my flash memory card and my
laptop.
Keyboard. I
bought the keyboard on e-bay. There is a free IRK
application available at
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/. The keyboard is an
infrared device and worked out-of-the-box. There is a
mechanical issue that the IR port on the Zaurus is on
the side. I have not got the rotating fonts working
properly to rotate the fonts 90deg. I bounce the IR
signal off something shinny - that works fine
although I do not use the keyboard much.
Grok, of
Kgrok.
As a long-time fan of grok for unix/linux, it was a
pleasant surprise to find it ported to the Zaurus.
Out-of-the-box are many useful applications, such as
expenses, secure notes, addresses etc. The really
neat thing about kgrok is the ability to create your
own forms on your desktop and copy them to the
Zaurus. It is a card database system which can be
integrated to external routines and has validations,
graphs, images etc.. I use Unison to synchronize the
data with my desktop.
Qashmoney
is an expense/budget system which uses sqlite (an
free SQL database system). It all works well,
although I had to install sqlite on my desktop for
the purpose of extracting the date from qashmoney.
Ultimately, I have to run the following to extract
the data (after copying the qmtransactions.db file to
my desktop):
sqlite
qmtransactions.db 'select
year,month,day,number,amount from transactions' | awk
-F"|" '{print $1 "/" $2 "/" $3, " " $4, $5}'
See: http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/suse/9.1/i386/suse/i586/libgda-sqlite-1.0.3-51.i586.html
& http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/sqlite.html
FxConv, for
currency conversion. It is a little tricky getting
the fresh data to the Zaurus. See: Here.
OpieReader
(or QTReader) is a great way to read different
format files. I use it extensively with Plucker to
grab web pages for reading/reviewing on my Zaurus.
Here is a three line script (which I attached to an
icon) which grabs the BBC web page for me:
plucker-build
-H http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm --maxdepth=2
--stayondomain --stayonhost -f bbc
sleep 5
scp
./.plucker/bbc.pdb
zaurus@192.168.129.201:/usr/mnt.rom/cf/Documents
Note that I copy data files to the CF card so I do
not clog up my internal Zaurus space/memory.
OpieReader can also read palm docs. That is useful
as there is wealth of information available for
downloading at memoware.com.
Zbedic
is a free dictionary and a language converter.
Download the zbedic*ipk file and install it, then
download as many dictionaries as you want from here.
In Opie, go to Settings, Configuration, Local. In
Dictionary Application, enter "zbedic" and "find" in
the Message window. Save that configuration and you
will have the dictionary integrated into the
OpieReader. Mark (capture) a word in OpieReader and
you will find yourself in the dictionary. You can
then change the dictionary to convert the word into
another language.
NOTES:
I found, after many months of experimentation, the
best way to make and transfer notes is to use the
journal mechanism in KO/PI. That way, the data is
synchronized with the rest of the calender data.
Another way I have for synchronizing any type of
files is to create a sync-docs directory under
Documents directory - on both the Zaurus and my
desktop. Then I use Unison (see above) whenever the
desktop is connected to the Zaurus. Unison detects
new or changed files and transfers them as
appropriate. I also use Unison to sync my kgrok data
files.
NEXT:
Voice over IP (VOIP)????????
Hope
this helps. I was grateful to tap into other people's
experiences when I was struggling... Sometimes I
still am:-)
Some Other Links
qtinfo qtconfig qtopia
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia
Buy from
http://www.neutroncanada.com/prod.cfm/231274/SL-5600
applications
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/
and
http://www.linuxlinks.com/PDA/Zaurus/Software/Utilities/index.shtml
and
http://zaurus.spy.org/
Zaurus How-to Docs.
http://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Zaurus_How-To_Docs
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