Re: Beginner Questions for H3660

On Thursday 01 March 2007 18:17, Andreas Klostermann wrote:
> Somewhere in the mailing list archives it says you explicitly need a
> serial cable, an usb cable won't do. According to the docs it seems as
> if the methods via cf card or activesync or any other way to get the
> files onto the ipaq should work too... Just get the bootloader
> installation program transferred and execute it. So what's true?

Well, technically what you're quoting from is for two different things. There
are two stages to the installation process:

1) Get the handhelds.org bootloader onto the device. This is accomplished
initially through WinCE, so you can use any method you like that works with
WinCE.

2) Get Linux onto the device via the bootloader. This is where you either need
a serial cable, serial cradle, a CompactFlash sleeve, or an *original* single
or dual-slot PCMCIA sleeve (ie, _not_ the plus version with the removable
battery). Those are your options at the present time.

If you later want to restore PocketPC onto your device, that's when a serial
cable can be helpful. However, if you have one of the aforementioned
compatible sleeves you should be able to reflash WinCE using the same method
you used to flash Linux on, without needing a serial cable.

In all cases a USB cable or USB-only cradle is of no use during installation.

> Second I couldn't yet find some kind of repository for applications that
> would run on it.

The Familiar repositories are set up by default and contain a great number of
applications that you can install. All you need to do is get your device
connected to the internet (eg. through your PC via PPP over serial, using a
WiFi card, etc. - there are a number of different ways you can do this) and
then update your list of packages by running "ipkg update". Then you will be
able to use "ipkg list" to list available packages and install a package
using "ipkg install packagename".

> And third, but that is highly optional, how can I create some sort of
> emulation environment for development purposes?

Well, I don't know anything about emulation (I don't think there is a full
PocketPC hardware emulator), but for development you should be able to
compile your applications for x86 and run them on your PC until such time
that you actually need access to hardware that is only on the device. At that
point you can just cross-compile and run the program on the device itself.
Probably the easiest method of cross-compiling is to use familiar-build,
which is derived from OpenEmbedded (OE):

http://familiar.handhelds.org/build-setup.html

Familiar-build is quite close to OE so most of the documentation for the
latter should still apply to the former. I would recommend however that you
don't ask the OE people for support - ask any development questions you may
have on the familiar-dev_at_handhelds.org mailing list or in #handhelds.org on
IRC. You'll also probably want to check out the development information for
GPE or Opie assuming you're developing a GUI application for one of the two.

Cheers,
Paul
Received on Thu Mar 01 2007 - 01:15:21 EST