Re: [jornada] A couple newbie questions

On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 12:54:46PM -0600, John Boggs wrote:
> Hello all,
> I recently stumbled upon the project for Linux on J720. I have been
> following the NetBSD port for some time, but it seems that much more
> progress is being made on the Linux port (such as a working X server). I
> would like to contribute to this project as much as I can, although I have
> limited experience with this sort of thing. I work with Yuen's Research
> group at the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute at the University of
> Minnesota and we have been using Jornadas for wireless networking since
> July. (I have had my own jornada for over a year, great machine!) We
> wrote a paper documenting our testing, see the link in my sig if you're
> intrested. We are most interested in seeing Java run on this in linux
> since it would be much better than the WinCE version of java. Will this
> ever happen? I don't see Sun porting Java every Linux platform in
> existence. We just need a recent JRE, although a JDK would be nice too
> :-)
>
The handhelds.org wiki has a nice overview of java on strongarms:
http://handhelds.org/z/wiki/JavaOnIPAQ
It states "for ipaq" but should work fine on the Joranda720.

You may also want to check the various handhelds.org mailing list
archives. http://handhelds.org/email_lists.html

> Another question: What exactly is this modification that needs to be done
> to "convert" to linux? Is it possible to boot off a flash card? Does
> this conversion wipe out WinCE and if so is it possible to get WinCE back?
>

My understanding of it is that the roms are replaced with flashroms.
They reside on a daughterboard so is physically easy to swap.

When mine was converted, it came with the CRL bootloader and the
familiar linux distribution.

You can e-mail John Ankorn <jca@alum.mit.edu> to request the conversion.
The daughtercards are in short supply (initially 30 or so available)
as this is also a test by HP.

Regarding booting off flash, a new version of the bootloader is soon
to be released that will support booting off compact flash memory (on iPAQ).
This may work just as well on the j720 with little/no extra effort.

Hope this helps,
Greg

> Thanks!
>
> --
> John M Boggs
> Minnesota Supercomputer Institute
> http://www.msi.umn.edu/~boggsj/wireless.htm
> boggsj@msi.umn.edu ICQ: 8454083
> "What we do in life echoes in eternity"
> -General Maximus Decimus Meridius, A.D. 180
>
Received on Sat Mar 02 00:45:46 2002