NetBSD on MIPS based Windows CE PDA machines (NetBSD/hpcmips)

Scott Lawrence | 25 Jan 2008 19:43

z50 Install (and Hi!)

Hi all.

I've had a z50 for a few years, and finally got around to getting what I need to install NetBSD on it, to be a useful machine for me. (I also have two high capacity batteries, and get about 20 hours each of usable time on them).

I just picked up a 4gig CF card for about $25, onto which I'm going to install NetBSD this weekend.
(I also have a 512mb card, but I plan on putting X, some basic compilers and command line tools on it, so I figured I'd need more space).

A few questions and such;

Are there any side effects for using a large card like this? I've only seen a little bit of anecdotal information about using 8gig cards, and much about using the 340mb microdrives.

I at first thought that 1.5 was the newest i could put on it, but recently (through the archives of this list) have found that 4.99 works, so I'm going to try that out.

With such a large card, what are recommendations for partitioning?

I have a PC running windows here, and a bunch of macs. I'm guessing that for getting it configured, i'll need a Linux live CD for the PC to format the cf card and userland installation. Or am I mistaken?

I also got a D-Link DWL-G650 card. I had ordered the DWL-650, but got the G instead. It is a 32bit cardbus card. I'm assuming i should send it back, since I've found nothing that says that this card will work with the z50... The page that mentioned installing 1.5 also mentioned using a DWL-650, which is why I ordered it. Anyone have any commentary about wifi cards?

I'm really looking forward to diving into this. :D I've used OS X for years, and back in the early-mid 90s, i used a BSD 4.4 system (CCI Tahoe) extensively. (I know that not all flavours of BSD are equal, I don't claim to know much about BSD, i only know I like it, and that this lappy will suit my needs much more with NetBSD than it can with WinCE. heh)

-s

--
Scott Lawrence
yorgle <at> gmail.com
http://www.umlautllama.com

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elijah rutschman | 27 Jan 2008 01:07

Re: z50 Install (and Hi!)

Hi Scott,

Are there any side effects for using a large card like this? I've only seen a little bit of anecdotal information about using 8gig cards, and much about using the 340mb microdrives.

I have used 5gb, 4gb and 1gb drives. I don't imagine you'll have any issues with any sizes of flash card or microdrive.

With such a large card, what are recommendations for partitioning?

I have a PC running windows here, and a bunch of macs. I'm guessing that for getting it configured, i'll need a Linux live CD for the PC to format the cf card and userland installation. Or am I mistaken?

I've found that Disk Utility in OS X works pretty well, just create a 2 partition scheme with a small DOS partition for installation files. The other partition can be unformatted.

I also got a D-Link DWL-G650 card. I had ordered the DWL-650, but got the G instead. It is a 32bit cardbus card. I'm assuming i should send it back, since I've found nothing that says that this card will work with the z50... The page that mentioned installing 1.5 also mentioned using a DWL-650, which is why I ordered it. Anyone have any commentary about wifi cards?

The z50 has a 16-bit PCMCIA slot, so you can't use a cardbus card. \I use a Linksys WCF11 via a PCMCIA -> CF adapter, and it works great.

Have fun! I hope this helps. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, I have no experience with a Workpad z50, I am just making assumptions based on its similar specs to my MobilePro 780.

Regards,

Elijah R.

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Scott Lawrence | 27 Jan 2008 18:29

Re: z50 Install (and Hi!)

So, I've got NetBSD 4.0 running on my IBM z50 right now. It's just command prompt, no X11 just yet... installing the compilers now. YAY!

Thank you all for your suggestions, help, and previous work to make it possible for me to do this. Thanks!

I have only one issue at this point;
The faceplate of the microlappy says "Powered by Windows CE". Anyone know of a "Powered by NetBSD" sticker I can apply over that?

;)

-s

--
Scott Lawrence
yorgle <at> gmail.com
http://www.umlautllama.com

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pete hilton | 27 Jan 2008 22:50

Re: z50 Install (and Hi!)

On Saturday 26 January 2008, elijah rutschman wrote:

>
> The z50 has a 16-bit PCMCIA slot, so you can't use a cardbus card.  \I use
> a Linksys WCF11 via a PCMCIA -> CF adapter, and it works great.
>
> Have fun! I hope this helps.  Somebody correct me if I am wrong, I have no
> experience with a Workpad z50, I am just making assumptions based on its
> similar specs to my MobilePro 780.
>
> Regards,
>
> Elijah R.
Hi there,
              I use an Hitachi 3GB microdrive on my Z50 .... I agree with 
Elijah re partitioning.

WRT wireless cards, i use an aironet 11Mbps card directly in the pcmcia 
slot ... works straight out of the box.  Whe you hit the power button to 
hibernate the aironet powers down as well which is nice and it all comes back 
again when hit the power button once more ... ca veat make sure you hit the 
button precisely once each time and that you wait a moment or two for the 
interrupt to be services and power resumed/hibernate

cheers
pete

--

-- 
pete hilton
San Jose,CA

saruman <at> ruvolo-hilton.org

IsaBella --- ICE Explorer #1070

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Scott Lawrence | 28 Jan 2008 05:17

Using NetBSD on a z50

Okay. I've got it all working now, but i have some usability questions.

The power button seems to put it to sleep, but the backlight remains on. Is this normal? Or is there a more correct way to put it to sleep during travel.

Has anyone remapped the Application keys to something more usable in X11? I haven't found anything on the net that suggests how to do this. (Meta-1, Meta-2, etc) or are they already configured that way and i'm an idiot?

How can i exit from X11 cleanly? About the only thing I can do is exit from it, and then I have an unusable console.

I enabled wscons in /etc/rc.conf, but can't figure out how to change virtual consoles.

-s

--
Scott Lawrence
yorgle <at> gmail.com
http://www.umlautllama.com

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Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom | 29 Jan 2008 14:18

Re: Using NetBSD on a z50

On 01/27 11:17 , Scott Lawrence wrote:
> The power button seems to put it to sleep, but the backlight remains on.  Is
> this normal?  Or is there a more correct way to put it to sleep during
> travel.

this is normal. It's a limitation of the z50 hardware. Only Wince can fully
suspend it properly, because (as I vaguely remember) the power button sends
a hardware interrupt or something that jumps to a specific point on the ROM,
which is Wince. So in order to get this working properly, you'd have to
replace the ROM. (At which point, it becomes attractive to go look at a new
laptop... OLPC is almost as small, and is an x86 box).

I really miss the keyboard on my z50 tho... best laptop keyboard I ever had.

--

-- 
Carl Soderstrom
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com

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Forest Bond | 29 Jan 2008 15:31

Re: Using NetBSD on a z50

Hi,

On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 07:18:09AM -0600, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> On 01/27 11:17 , Scott Lawrence wrote:
> > The power button seems to put it to sleep, but the backlight remains on.  Is
> > this normal?  Or is there a more correct way to put it to sleep during
> > travel.
> 
> this is normal. It's a limitation of the z50 hardware. Only Wince can fully
> suspend it properly, because (as I vaguely remember) the power button sends
> a hardware interrupt or something that jumps to a specific point on the ROM,
> which is Wince. So in order to get this working properly, you'd have to
> replace the ROM. (At which point, it becomes attractive to go look at a new
> laptop... OLPC is almost as small, and is an x86 box).
> 
> I really miss the keyboard on my z50 tho... best laptop keyboard I ever had.

Yeah, the OLPC laptop is decidedly kid specific.  I can't touch type on the
thing at all.  My son loves it, though.

-Forest
--

-- 
Forest Bond
http://www.alittletooquiet.net

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Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom | 29 Jan 2008 15:57

Re: Using NetBSD on a z50

On 01/29 09:31 , Forest Bond wrote:
> Yeah, the OLPC laptop is decidedly kid specific.  I can't touch type on the
> thing at all.  My son loves it, though.

My roommate has one; and he likes it. You're right, I'd hate the keyboard.
I just buy subcompact x86 laptops these days. The new Apple ultra-thin
laptop will be available with a solid-state drive; so that's much of the way
to being a z50 replacement (aside from the size and the keyboard quality).

--

-- 
Carl Soderstrom
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com

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der Mouse | 29 Jan 2008 19:12

Re: Using NetBSD on a z50

>> The power button seems to put it to sleep, but the backlight remains
>> on.  Is this normal?  Or is there a more correct way to put it to
>> sleep during travel.
> this is normal.  It's a limitation of the z50 hardware.  Only Wince
> can fully suspend it properly, because (as I vaguely remember) the
> power button sends a hardware interrupt or something that jumps to a
> specific point on the ROM, which is Wince.

This doesn't sound right to me.  Wince must pass it back to NetBSD,
because the kernel prints something when I push the power button.  So
why can't NetBSD do whatever it wants then?

I think more likely it's just that NetBSD doesn't (yet) know how to
make the hardware turn off the backlight.  (There's a bit in an include
file that looks promising; someday, I mean to go poking around....)

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elijah rutschman | 29 Jan 2008 20:08

Re: Using NetBSD on a z50

> >> The power button seems to put it to sleep, but the backlight remains
> >> on.  Is this normal?  Or is there a more correct way to put it to
> >> sleep during travel.
> > this is normal.  It's a limitation of the z50 hardware.  Only Wince
> > can fully suspend it properly, because (as I vaguely remember) the
> > power button sends a hardware interrupt or something that jumps to a
> > specific point on the ROM, which is Wince.
>
> This doesn't sound right to me.  Wince must pass it back to NetBSD,
> because the kernel prints something when I push the power button.  So
> why can't NetBSD do whatever it wants then?
>
> I think more likely it's just that NetBSD doesn't (yet) know how to
> make the hardware turn off the backlight.  (There's a bit in an include
> file that looks promising; someday, I mean to go poking around....)

In the past, I have been led to believe that certain power management
functionality is simply not possible outside of WinCE, due to the way
that WinCE on the ROM is married to the chipset.  If one could get
NetBSD on the ROM, maybe things would be different. I could be wrong,
I don't really know what I am talking about.  When I asked a similar
question, I was given an answer like this.

Refer to http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-hpcmips/2006/03/06/0001.html
regarding the power management.  It discusses the MobilePro, but I'm
assuming that the z50 has a very similar architecture.

Refer to http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-hpcmips/2006/03/21/0000.html
for discussion about the LCD brightness control for the z50.  It seems
to suggest that it is possible to turn off the backlight, but would
require some programming.

Also, Scott, are you sure you are using the generic kernel, and not
the installation kernel?  You mentioned manually unzipping the NetBSD
tarballs to make your installation, so I'm guessing there is a
possibility you are still using the installation kernel to boot with.
It may be that the z50's backlight is now supported in the NetBSD
kernel, but the feature may have been excluded from compilation in the
installation kernel.  Just a thought.

And a good resource for the z50 lives at
http://webpages.charter.net/dbarnes3367/PC/Z50/
See the section on Hardware.

Cheers,
Elijah

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