Alpha 400 another "almost HPC" netbook

Does your battery monitor work with ard's kernel? I don't seem to get a reading other than full.

Jake

Edit: the battery monitor works fine. The seemingly epic battery life fooled me: I thought the thing was stuck on 100%.

Edited by Jake 2009-12-25 5:36 PM

Honestly i don't know about that kernel and the battery monitor. In theory it should have no effect, however i haven't changed my kernel yet. Still using the uImage that was preinstalled. The uImage (kernel) is flashed/installed to a seperate partition, as is the bootloader (which we don't touch at all), and the operating system. Either way don't worry about it all too much. Also the battery monitor only works in incriments of 100%/75%/50%/25% and 0. Once the battery gets down to about 10% a pop up will display warning you to save your work and power down. This still leaves you will about 20 minutes before the battery is completely drained. You should get on average 3-4 hours or so with wifi enabled.

If your boot screen changed to a skytone logo and you are able to adjust brightness, then you did indeed flash to Ard's kernel. Nothing to worry about.

Cheers.

Edited by RTFM 2009-12-25 5:49 PM

Yes, I did get the skytone logo, and I have display adjustment. About a ten-second increase in boot-up, but the brightness control is worth it (very weird that isn't factory-issue. Does the CE version have it?). But both kernels have very fast shutdown.

For the record, the battery monitor does work with ard's kernel.

Is there any file search utility? I can't seem to make ROX look through the whole machine for a specified file.

I installed the spell checker for abiword, downloaded from cnm site.

Did you know that until December 31, Textmaker/etc is free for both Linux and Windows desktop? On these machines, do you think we'll ever see a word processor other than abiword?

All best,
Jake

Edit: oh, one thing. Is it possible to build a playlist with the mp3 player? Right now, I'm only able to play one song at a time.

Edited by Jake 2009-12-25 9:14 PM

My razorbook CE does have a control for brightness, however i can slide it either way and it doesn't change at all. If you are just searching for a binary use 'which'. Example: which xchat ...will show you the directory that xchat resides in. I'm probably going to make a package for updatedb/locate in the near future otherwise.

Open Office is just too heavy i'm afraid. There is Siag Office ( http://siag.nu/ ) however and its fairly light. Might go on my to-do list.

Yea making playlists is quite easy. Hit the H key for help, or check this out: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/howto-use-cplay-like-a-pro/

Cheers

Thanks for the mp3 player link; that's a great page.

Re: word processor--have you seen the free 2002 Textmaker standalone for Linux? It's about 6mbs, but I don't know if that works within this OS. It's available at the Puppy Linux site (I'm traveling and not near my files for another month, otherwise I'd email it to you).

Jake

Sadly there is no mips textmaker for linux. Puppy is standard x86 based.

Of, course. MIPS--I forgot that. A question about cplayer: I've got everything working on it, except I can't shuffle the playlist. I tab into the playlist, then use small "s" for the shuffle and I get "Shuffled playlist .... oops!" and no shuffle. What am I doing wrong? (it's 300 mp3s on the sd card) Even "random" won't work.

Jake

RTFM--

My Skytone Alpha 400 has gone to pieces before my eyes. After a proper shut-off yesterday, when I rebooted, I have neither wifi nor touchpad (but I do have the working side buttons). A USB mouse works, so I guess I can live without the touchpad.

But the lack of the machine's recognition of internal wifi is a killer. "ifconfig eth0 up" loads (but still "no wifi device available" in Wifi Wizard). How can I configure that manually just to see if it's the app and not the hardware.

Compounding these problems further is the weirdness of the usb ports. My usb mouse ONLY works in the back USB port. A USB key works on the side. My worry is that I only have one working port for high-powered devices, which further bankrupts the machine.

Starting w/ "Have you ever used usb wifi on the side USB ports?" and working backwards to solving the internal wifi problem, I'd be much obliged for any of your pointers.

This is very strange (I thought of disconnecting the battery, but find its harness pretty set and don't want to break anything. Also, I've reset the machine and installed your OS and the basic recovery image, both from your site, without joy),

Jake

Battery isn't a big deal, Ive taken it out 3 or 4 times, just don't be super ruff, never had that type of hardware problem with my RB400 linux though.

Edited by thcrw739 2010-01-05 6:33 PM

Jake: Odd indeed. Haven't heard of anybody with that issue in the forums yet. Sounds like a possible hardware issue.

Hmmm, so to test your wifi try this:
echo 1 > /proc/jz/iwifi (turns on the wireless)
wifiup (might be in /sbin or /usr/sbin) (some proprietary app that came with the default distro that i borrowed to enable wifi)
You should now see that the wireless utility in the dock bar in the corner shows that wifi is on vs off when it displays 'no card'.

Good luck.

When I type /usr/bin/wifiup, I get "Interface name is mandatory." Not quite sure what that means. As an aside, have you gotten a usb wireless adapter to work out of either of the side USB ports?

Jake

Addendum: it appears both side ports are dead. I can't get a usb drive to show up on either one, and I have before. Though the usb mouse glows red when plugged in (but has no response). The machine seems to have suffered a massive hardware failure.

Jake

Edited by Jake 2010-01-05 11:48 PM

I should have said 'wifiup eth1'.
If both your side usb ports are dead that'd explain why the touchpad doesn't work as it's wired into the usb, as is the internal wifi.
I've never tried a usb wifi stick as i never had a need to with the built in wifi (don't own any either)

Maybe you just have a loose connection internally? They are after all just connected by those paper thin ribbon type connectors.

Cheers

After using /usr/bin/wifiup eth1, I get "This is not a valid wireless interface."

I'll open the bottom and see what's up, but since I am getting red light from the mouse when connected to a side port, my amateur feeling is that this is something more than a loose connection.

I've had machines quit on me before, but never so quickly and so thoroughly--one hour it worked, the hour it didn't.

Jake

No go on the dissection. Opened it and found the ribbons all tight, and anything else is beyond me.

Jake