manufactures photo of Zaurus, portrait and landscape modes

Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000

First impressions

Screen: excellent: even v. small fonts in the bash terminal are very readable.

Software: After a quick look I ignored the Sharp PIM tools, and started exploring the K ones ...

Good sound quality from the tiny speaker at the rear.

Trisoft: excellent and fast service. "No-questions" replacement when my first Zaurus failed to either light up or boot (a replacement was shipped *before* I had chance to return the original yet).

Problems: s/w sometimes gets confused with the screen orientation (characterise better later).

Importing data from Palm (migrating from Palm Vx to Zaurus SL-C3000)

I basically followed the advice here to sync from Palm to KDE desktop, then export, copy to Zaurus and import into KOPI (KDE PIM/PI) apps.

(Using SUSE 9.1 / KDE 3.2.1 / Palm Vx to Zaurus SL-C3000 KDE PIM/PI applications (pre-installed ?by Trisoft)).

I had a problem with the time of entries in the calender: they where all 2 hours out on the Zaurus. I fixed this in KOrganiser:

Connecting to Linux

The Zaurus, despite running Linux, only comes with Windows syncing software :-( However it is compatible with Linux 'usb-storage'.

Method...

I had success linking to an SD Card, after ignoring lots of error messages (expand). (Gentoo/2.6.10 Kernel).

As I wanted to share cards/data between my PC, Zaurus and camera I decided to buy a cheap n-in-1 card reader and use the cards to transfer data.

Networking to Linux over USB

USB Networking HOW-TO

mplayer

I followed the instructions here but first installed slightly different VLC packages (next para) (I found the bvdd packages here (site in Japanese, but enough English to find what you need!):

# ipkg install bvdd_0.4.0-1_arm.ipk
# ipkg install mplayer-bvdd_1.1.5-1_arm.ipk
# exit
> mplayer x.mpg

And with packages from: VLC/Zaurus/download:

# su -
# ipkg install librt_2.1.3_arm.ipk
# ipkg install libffmpeg_0.4.6_20030304_arm.ipk
# ipkg install zaurus-libsdl_1.2.5_arm.ipk
# ipkg install zaurus-vlc_0.5.4_arm.ipk

Then I tried Kino2 for a GUI from, downloaded from here but I think it screwed up my display (see below).

Just installed ZPlayer: works much better than Kino2 (for me !) although it does seem to drop a lot of frames.

Zaurus Sl-c3000 software Rotation Broken

Following is an edited post to OESF Forums (25/07/05):

When I open it (landscape) it displays in portrait mode, then decides to rotate *part* of the screen to landscape *upsidedown*.

When I start an app it starts in portrait mode (even thought the screen is still physically in landscape) and works OK apart from that. But no way can I get back to using landscape mode.

Record of what worked for me (thanks to "curiosity"): My qpe.conf had the [Rotation] section in, but it was empty. So I added the "HReverse = 1" and saved the file. It does not take effect immediately, but when I physically rotated the screen to portrait it was read and took effect. I rotated the screen back to landscape and it works fine now :-)

Specifications

Links

Users

Zaurus How-To Docs: Wiki with *loads* of help; some on the Zaurii in general, but also an SL-C3000 specific section.

hluc: my Zaurus SL-C3000: Loads of information: software/config/advice/instructions/loads of links...

Shops

Trisoft: German importer, e-shop, and localisation to English for Zaurus devices and accessories. Excellent service. Most of the site is also in English.

Software

Question

Why can't I stop and start my desktop computer just as fast as my Zaurus ? (like turning on the TV).
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