Thursday, January 12, 2006

Linux on Palm Z22 - not much luck so far

I bought a Palm Z22 device from Fry's for 2 primary reasons.

1. Use it as low cost PIM
2. Try out Embedded Linux, if possible

Reason why Palm Z22
1. It is inexpensive - $99 (+tax)
2. It is light weight
3. I had Plam IIIx for more than 4 years and it generally serves the PIM part well
4. Size fits into my pant pocket

I realized couple of new things while investigating to install Linux and was wondering if you want to help me in completing this part.
1. Palm Z22 is new device (Oct 15, 2005) - not much details in open source community yet
2. Pure Open Source Linux is not commonly/widely available - in a easily canned form (like what you get for PC)
3. Many sites Linux point me to Palm III series, Tungsten or Palm Live not to any of the Zire

This makes me to venture into giving it a shot my self - instead of having to wait for it to be already available in binary format. Would you be interested in helping in your spare time (as hobby)?

Friday, January 06, 2006

Embedded Linux

JTAG is normally used to flash the ROM in embedded systems. Jtag tools are dongle like stuff connected to parallel port of PC that basically serially sends the bios. The first thing to be loaded is the bios. One example is blob. Blob, the boot loader. Bios inturn loads the Kernel. Example Kernal Image is 'zImage'.
jFalsh (alt) is a software that uses PC Parallel port for jtag communication with embedded systems.

Blob - one of the version from UK site is ftp://ftp.arm.linux.org.uk/pub/armlinux/people/xscale/lubbock/blob/
busybox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable.

skyeye http://gro.clinux.org/projects/skyeye/ project seems to emulate/simulate ARM. Also give a way to use uClinux. Cygwin version requires TCL & X Windows to run.

ARM Tool Chain - cross compiler for Cygwin: http://www.gnuarm.com/

Eclipse IDE

Eclipse IDE seems to have taken the same or simillar approch the Turbo C and Microsoft Visual Studio has taken. Like make the IDE and rig up the compiles and other tools behind it (Reuse code and user experiance - hence user loyalty).

Eclipse comes with integrated Java development in it. Tried C/C++ Development Tools download - yet to get it to work on my Cygwin (gcc) version. I would like to get my arm cross comiler on it so that I get a ARM IDE through open source.

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