Marcin Juszkiewicz April 19th, 2007
Few days ago Thomas Kunze wrote to openzaurus-devel list that he has working SD/MMC driver for Sharp Zaurus SL-5000/5500 (aka Collie). He provided patches, Ångström image + kernel so anyone can test.
His patches are now present in current OpenEmbedded metadata so anyone can build 2.6.20 kernel for collie to test SD/MMC. Koen Kooi built images for Ångström so it can be taken as start of support for this machine.
My collie (after charging and removing dust) booted nicely to 2.6.20 powered Ångström console image and I was able to test my cards against driver. Only 16MB MMC card was working so I sent two SD cards (64M and 256M) to Thomas. Now he will have also some not-yet-working cards for testing (all his SD/MMC cards works).
Also worth reminding — there is a bounty for writing SD/MMC driver for collie/2.6 so if you want to appreciate Thomas work you can join ;)
We need more testers for this driver (serial cable suggested to get kernel logs) so we will be able to get working version. 2.6 kernel on Collie has some weak points and need work but now, when we have SD/MMC driver it show that it is worth to improve support for it. If everything will go ok we will be able to release Ångström for all Zaurus models.
You need to load one module after start:
modprobe locomo_spi
After progress bar stop you need to press Datebook + Left to switch to VT1. After login you can remove it with one command:
ipkg remove psplash
Please report your success/failure on OpenZaurus devel mailing list.
Marcin Juszkiewicz August 9th, 2006
Title sounds weird, but it’s true. Some developers from OpenEmbedded team built OpenZaurus 3.5.4x for their non Zaurus machines.
Koen Kooi uses 3.5.4-pre on his HP h2200 and has 72 days uptime with it (running GPE with current upgrades), 3.5.4.1 on Psion Netbook Pro (E17 enviroment - screenshot) and on Ipaq h5550 (GPE). He owns one Zaurus machine but it does run Ångström. Florian Boor uses 3.5.4.1/GPE on h5550 and plans to test on HTC Universal.
I was asked few times about adding non Zaurus machines into OpenZaurus and it looks like it is something to rethink. Looks like history likes to repeat - there were plans for OpenIpaq in old OZ times.
OpenZaurus team July 12th, 2006
Yesterday Richard ‘RP’ Purdie (our master kernel hacker) got sound working on poodle under 2.6.17 kernel.
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Marcin Juszkiewicz June 27th, 2006
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.
I plan to flash tosa to OpenZaurus 3.5.4 + upgrades and check what need to be fixed. 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.
Richard 'RP' Purdie April 21st, 2006
The Poodle from Dow Hurst (which was used by John Lenz for the original 2.6 kernel work) has safely arrived into my care today.
Now I guess I have some work to do! :)
Marcin Juszkiewicz April 14th, 2006
As you probably remember nearly two months ago users started thread on OESF forum about getting poodle machine for OpenZaurus team. Later I wrote to openzaurus-devel that we need developer which will work on getting poodle better supported.
Current situation is nice:
- Matthias ‘CoreDump’ Hentges will get poodle bought by users and work on getting 2.4 based images work better
- Richard ‘RP’ Purdie will get poodle from Dow Hurst (this machine was used by John Lenz to get 2.6 kernel on it) and will work on improving 2.6 kernel
I want to thanks ALL involved users for making this possible - OpenZaurus 3.5.4.x is going to be better and better.
Marcin Juszkiewicz February 16th, 2006
Two weeks ago developer of Watapon ROM decided to stop its development. It was the only one distribution made specially for poodle (SL-5600) machines.
In OpenZaurus team we are unable to help poodle users due to lack of hardware (no device) and/or lack of developer with that Zaurus model. We release images which are expected to work because it does not take much time but sooner or later it could finish in abadonland…
Week ago few poodle users started thread on OESF forum about getting poodle machine for OpenZaurus team. Anyone can help - if you are user (or developer) then you can help with testing images, you can donate cash (or machine)…
When we get poodle we first work on getting current 2.4 based images works as they should, then device will be used to help with 2.6 kernel support (currently it should have SD/MMC, CF, USB working (and probably more) with small tweaks if not out-of-box).
