Re: [iPAQ] Hello

Toby Gray wrote:

>On Saturday 19 June 2004 22:56, Marco Cecconi quoth thusly:
>
>
>>First of all, what are the risks of installing linux
>>
>>
>
>Probably the riskiest part of the whole process is flashing the new
>bootloader using the BootBlaster program. If this step goes wrong, your
>iPAQ will be a brick. Fortunately, you only have to do this once
>(unless you later decide to upgrade to a newer bootloader) and
>BootBlaster seems to work very reliably (despite having to run under
>Windoze).
>
>
Yes, I've seen that that part is painless. Has anyone tried setting the
serial port speed over 115K? Maybe I'll try that myself and see if it
works, right now it takes about 20 minutes to install.

>>and the chances of reinstalling windows after it if something goes
>>wrong (or whatever reason)?
>>
>>
>
>Restoring Windoze is a fairly simple matter, but again it requires
>re-flashing the bootloader (back to the Windoze one), except this time
>you'd do it from within the CRL bootloader.
>
>
Yeah I figured out as much. Maybe it should be specified better on the
site, I originally thought I would use BootBlaster to flash back the
original bootloader.

>>Secondly, how is hardware support for the ipaq5550?
>>
>>
>
>I don't know the details since I don't have one of these myself, but
>judging from messages on this list and the Familiar list I would say
>it's working pretty well now. You will want to install an "unstable"
>image to get the latest bug fixes for the 5550.
>
>http://handhelds.org/~pb/unstable
>
>
I will check it out and let you know... Things that are missing in the
stabe version are support for the light sensor (to automatically set the
screen luminosity) and support for the fingerprint reader. This last one
is sorely missed since security under winCE is _really_ bad (installed
autoexec programs are run before you login, go figure...) and so what's
the point of having biometrics? :-)

>I'm not sure what you mean by "skins", but if you are talking about
>GUI's it depends what you want to do with your iPAQ. For example, Opie
>has very good PIM apps, but no X server; GPE maybe a bit lagging in the
>bells and whistles, but it runs under X so you can run all sorts of
>"third-party" GUI apps.
>There is also a kind of "third alternative" in the Pocket Workstation
>project, but you need a lot of external storage and I don't know if it
>will work on a 5550 anyway.
>
>
I'm willing to try. Is Pocket Workstation supported by Familiar?

>>How will I sync the ipaq with a windows or linux pc afterwards?
>>
>>
>
>This also depends on which GUI you go with. If sync'ing is a big deal
>for you then it's likely that you'd be best off going with Opie and
>using QtopiaDesktop. I don't know much about this. I would suggest
>asking about this area on each of the GUI's own mailing lists
>(opie@handhelds.org and gpe@handhelds.org).
>
>
I thought there would be some standard solution like a FTP server or a
SMB server... What about sshd? Sorry if I'm asking so many questions... :-D

>>In general, do you feel that linux on ipaq is "ready for work", or
>>are we still in a "hack" phase?
>>
>>
>
>Again, it depends what you want to do with it. Many people seem to be
>using it as a basic PIM device fairly successfully. On the other hand
>Familiar is still version 0.x, so don't expect it to be a "finished
>product" because it clearly isn't
>
I figured out as much. 0.7.2 has too many problems on my model to stay
installed. I've gone back to WinCE because of that and because i
couldn't find the "unstable" version. I will now try that and see if I
can use it...

Marco Cecconi
Received on Sun Jun 20 05:54:06 2004