More Fun To Be Had With the iPaq

Veidit writes: "The Compaq Cambridge Research Laboratory seems to have a cool project named "Mercury". They are integrating an IPAQ running Linux with many diffrent types of wireless alternatives like 802.11b, Bluetooth, GSM, CDMA via PCMCIA. The linux version seems to be the one that Handhelds.org has. " We also had an e-mail from Dan Sparks who writes: " The free Compaq TestDrive Program has added two new features allowing iPAQ handheld development online. In the Test Drive Program, we have four DEC Sharks (DNARD) SA-110 based network computers running Linux allowing development on Linux based StrongArm systems. In addition, Alpha2Arm cross-compiler tool chain has been added to every single one of our Alpha Linux machines, including our Brickwall Beowulf cluster. This means that you can compile programs for your iPAQ handheld on our blazingly fast Alpha computers. The Toolchain includes support for C and C++, and is available on all the Alpha-based Linux distributions we have, including RedHat Linux, SuSE Linux, TurboLinux, Kondara Linux, and Debian GNU/Linux."

Comments

sci-fi ?

[mirko]

How long will it be until beowulf clusters are stored in Geeks' pockets and dynamically reconnect themselves to the closest wireless network switch, regardless its standard ?
I believe this is not that futuristic.
--

Re:sci-fi ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the promise of Bluetooth and Jini. There is a Bluetooth CompactFlash card out (eval units now, production in "Q1 2001") that supposedly works in the iPaq's CF sleeve. 802.11 wireless LAN cards do work in the iPaq's PCMCIA sleeve, with drivers for Linux (yay!).

Java (Kaffe) runs on Linux on the iPaq, though it's not entirely stable yet.

Re:sci-fi ?

[jehicks]

How long will it be before everyone carries computing clusters in their pockets, on their wrists, or in their cars?

It's not going to happen next month, but I think this is the future of computing.

In our research in the Mercury Project, we are exploring some of these ideas. Between the iPAQ handheld and the Mercury BackPAQ, we are building a device that will have simultaneous access to multiple wireless networks so that it can use the best available communications. It has a camera for taking pictures or for video conferencing. It has a headset jack so that we can explore speech-driven interfaces on handhelds. It has an accelerometer for gesture-driven interfaces. It has 32MB of flash for additional file storage.

The software side of the project is actually more interesting than the gadget side. That is where the action is. If you have to manually invoke ifconfig, iwconfig and route, then only the geeks are going to use these devices. We are going to have to develop systems (devices and infrastructure) that are much more advanced than the current ones. They need to be able to take care of themselves and to carry out what the user wants to do. We need to be able to tell our devices to "Make it so" and expect the right thing to happen. Now maybe I'm talking science fiction.

Some of the other comments are about applications. Although Moore's Law is helping us out with computation, memory, and disk space, we should not expect monolithic desktop applications to run on handheld devices. We would like to have componentized applications that adapt to the device they are running on, to the input and output devices being used, and to the available network connectivity.

A good browser

[gattaca]

All we need now is:

• a good browser... The port of Konqueror looks good, has anyone got it going on an IPAQ?
  
• Java
  
• power management and suspend...
  

Re:A good browser

[gattaca]

This is clearly a troll, but I have to say, I quite agree with you. At the moment CE is significantly better than anything the linux community is offering. However, lots of people are working on it, and things are likely to change. WinCE is not perfect, I for one, can think of many things I would like to see done differently.
The IPAQ is interesting because it is the first PDA with enough oomph to do useful things with. I would prefer to develop those for a Linux environment - probably mainly for reasons of personal taste, but I think there are some good commercial and technical reasons too. Also, it's fun, which is quite important, and to my mind significantly more fullfilling than trolling on Slashdot.

Re:A good browser

[gattaca]

It's also cheaper, I believe.

Re:A good browser

[opkool]

Did you know IE comes standard on an Ipaq?

I guess the reason that they do not want to use IE on iPaq-Linux is because it has to be pretty hard to run WINE with it!

Well, if it can run, it will look like this.

Have a nice Week-end!

iPaq availability?

[pet-owningISslavery]

I remember looking for an iPaq a few months back and finding that almost no place had them in stock. Are people still having to wait months to get them, or have the availability problems been solved?

Re:iPaq availability?

[GlassUser]

Yes, they're still having supply issues. I'm working on getting a screen fault replaced (their service is impressive - it might help that I'm ten miles from the service center, but they're sending someone over to give me a new one in person, to make sure there aren't any problems with the replacement).

Now I hear they're coming out with a model with 48 MB RAM (plus 16 MB ROM) available, but not out until March. I suppose you can expect that one to be in even shorter supply. But I'm looking forward to seeing one.

And as for the other replier that is whining about how bad compaq support and products are, I don't think it's at all true. Yes, mine did ship with that screen fault, but it wasn't apparent at first, and you see the type of service I'm getting to have the issue resolved. I'm nothing less than happy with my unit.

Re:iPaq availability?

[Mr. Protocol]

The iPAQ seems to be unavailable except on eBay, not a viable source of supply for any corporate research effort. This leaves the development of the iPAQ as a wireless platform in the hands of a) individuals wealthy enough and bold enough to get supply from eBay, and b) corporations with backdoor purchasing agreements with Compaq.

Neither of these seem like good options for an open-source platform. I fear we'll have to look elsewhere for the "killer platform" for wireless Linux.

Re:iPaq availability?

[GlassUser]

The most reliable place I've found is Dreampages Computer. Of course they're running short too, but I've found them to be the most reliable, and you have direct dialogue with the owner, so you can easily tell when it's shipping (he's quite honest about how things work there). I do admit, though, that the global lack of supply is killing an otherwise kickass PDA.

Re:iPaq availability?

[GlassUser]

Nope, I'm running WinCE on it. But I did notice that when I got it back, some times it will run slower, especially noticable when opening larger apps, and some times when pulling down the main menu.

cramfs

[Anonymous Coward]

At the moment linux on the iPaq uses cramfs, i.e. anything you want stored when the device is turned off (i.e. stored in flash) must be uploaded as ONE BIG FILE. I.E. if you have a one byte bug fix to the kernel or any binaries etc. you must upload everything again. This will be fixed soon, using jffs to allow the flash to be written directly by the filesystem. It will be much more flexible then. Also wrt to the devices in the mercury project, any compactPCI device will work as long as the OS dirvers are available. Another little problem that Compaq will soon fix is that the key events are serialised, so you can't have any logic that depends on more than one simultaneous keypress, which limits that UI possibliites quite a bit. pixelbeat.

And now we need ...

[mr.nicholas]

We're all set: we have compilers, cross-compilers, development tools, sites that are willing to help, good ports of Linux, lots of hacking information, good storage space, nice looks and quality.

Now all we need is the iPaq itself; mine has been on backorder since last year.

However, the Linux iPAQ still can't play quake.

[AFCArchvile]

Revel all you want, Linux-PDA lovers, but you still can't play Quake on a Linux PDA. And I doubt that you ever will at a decent framerate.

Re:However, the Linux iPAQ still can't play quake.

[sunils]

And why would anyone want play Q3 on an iPAQ ? I rather love my P3 with the blazing graphics card

T R O L L Alert! (plus iPaq+Linux+Quake)

[opkool]

Attention!

The site ( http://www.comp-u-geek.net/ ) linked to by the top post of this thread My favourite site from AdminMan is a TROLL site!

It opens lots and lots of windows with not-my-kind-of-explicit-s-e-x-images.

Do not loose your time with it.

Why there's all this stuf going on at Slashdot comments?I do not understand.

Slashdot provides great hi-tech news. It's all about sharing information, being nice and learn a little bit more every day.

BTW, the iPaq hand-help small-computer (it's too cool to name it only "agenda") looks very good. I saw one using twm . It looked terrific!

Now, we need the Quake-for-iPaq, but running under iPaq-Linux this time. That will be something!

Have a nive Week-End!

CILUX and Oxygen: blatant project plug...

[Duncan Cragg]

Now that The CILUX Project has a release (0.1.01), I'd like to point readers interested in this kind of stuff to the main CILUX web page.

If a moderator gets there and likes it, can (s)he mod me up a bit for the general Slashdot populace?

Thanks!

Duncan Cragg
------------------

Re:root...

[arnald]

Aphex Twin... very nice. Any favourite tracks?

Java: Kaffe

[harmonica]

The GPL'd Kaffe VM seems to be a good idea for the Java part. It has been ported to many platforms and is aimed at embedded systems.

Re:Java: Kaffe

[gattaca]

Yup, I agree. As far as I know, it doesn't run on embedded QT, does it? This is my problem - I would like Java and a browser; as far as I know the only one around at the moment is Konqueror, so I can have one or the other, but not both.

That's all well and good ...

[SuperRob]

... assuming you can FIND one. The damned things are sold out everywhere. My boss has been lording his over us, teasing us as he walks around our office with his PC Card backback and his Cisco 802.11 card, checking his e-mail from the break room. I've been looking everywhere, to no avail. It makes me want to cry. :(

itsy

[SubtleNuance]

See here for a good presentation on the Itsy

Re:porting other OSes

[Xuther]

I think you're incorrect about that. NT was booting and running natively on the Alpha platform for some time. NT also had ports out for PPC and a couple other platforms in the 4.0 release. Windows 9x of course hasn't been known to work with other architectures to my knowledge (but then I haven't seen DOS ported to other platforms either.) CE is based on the NT kernel, and NT is NOT FreeBSD based, there is an interesting article at "http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Arti cleID=4494". The NT kernel was written by the guy who had worked on DIGITAL's VMS. As far as licensing, the BSD license allows use of BSD derived code in commercially available software as long as the clause "contains software written by the university of berkely, california" appears somewhere in the advertisements or as a disclaimer to the link where the software is distributed.

At school we have iPaqs!!

[Skyppey]

Unfortunately they are not the all powerful iPaqs mentioned in the slashdot but very crappy Compaqs that have pretty much everything on board and cost waaaay too much. It's a shame we get Compaqs and some elementary schools 20 minutes away get some brand-spanking new SunRays.

*sigh*

Oh well I am sure my time will come. You can't surf the "web" on a 486 forever...

-s

Linux and the Palm/Handspring Handhelds - CORRECT

[mholve]

Linux also works very well with the Palm and Handspring handhelds. There's a good article on this subject, entitled "Using the PalmPilot Under Linux" on this subject.

This is the correct URL. Jeez. I gotta lay off the caffeine...

Useful identification

[dgb2n]

A Palm device used to identify geeks pretty accurately. With over 3 million PDA's sold last year, this is a useful new tool.

Now we can just look for the IPAQ/Linux combination for a clearer identification ;-)

Another wireless feature..

[Kevbo]

Compaq is improbving upon its Remote Lights-out Board technology, so that it can be controlled via Compaq iPaq. I haven't read many details, but the next release of their RILOE firmware (due out early Feb, 2001) is supposed to have a preview of this option. It will be interesting to see, and could prove quite useful, especially when deploying machines without a console or KVM attached.

iPaq hype is great, but what about other PocketPCs

[t3rr4h4wk]

Yes, I too could not get the iPaq due to the availability issues, so i bought the hitachi sh3 based hp jornada 548. Yeah, yeah i know it's only 133 mhz, and yes it still has ce 3.0 on it. So does anyone know of a linux port or any other pertinent info about my hp? I really prefer hp over compaq anyhow.

hrmm... did you say linux on ipaq?

[Rick Lehrbaum]

Hey, we've created a whole series of technical articles about running linux on the iPAQ. So far . . .

• Exploring Linux PDA software alternatives (Part 1) -- this is the intro to the series and explores the history, status, alternative architectures, and future developments of Linux on PDAs and handheld devices. Introduces the Microwindows, Trolltech, and Transvirtual support too.

• Hacking the iPAQ with Linux, for fun and profit (Part 2) -- In this installment, we prepare for future exploration of three "off-the-shelf" iPAQ PDA distro's, by obtaining, installing, and testing the "generic" iPAQ Linux support from handhelds.org.

• Installing Microwindows on the iPAQ (Part 3) -- This installment explains how to download, install, configure, and test the Microwindows Development Toolkit by Century Software. Learn how to install the full X-based simulation of the iPAQ ScreenTop environment on your desktop Linux box -- that way, you can develop and run iPAQ apps while you're waiting for your iPAQ to arrive (or if you aren't ready to buy one)!

Part 4? It's coming "real soon" -- it's on the Trollech stuff . . . -- Rick

iPAQ H3100

[Sensei_knight]

Why is the H3100 not availible in North America?