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Crazy idea: CE 4.2 on a Jornada 728?

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Jax184 Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 6:42 PM
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I've been doing some reading, as well as poking through the CE 4.2 platform development software. It seems CE 4.2 was the last version of CE to support the StrongARM CPU the Jornada uses. Now, obviously you can't just stick CE on the Jornada as it has a pair of ROM chips to store the OS in. But it would be a trivial job to remove the ROM chips from the board and put new ones in their place, compared to say building a flash card from scratch.

So with that in mind, can anyone think of any reason CE 4.2 absolutly cannot run on the Jornada's hardware? I don't mean won't as-is, that's for a second list, but is there anything 100% preventing it?

It looks to me right now that with the help of a few developers to get the drivers right, and to modify CE 4.2's menus and such to conform to the Jornada's screen, it could work.

And then there's another idea while we're thinking crazy. If new ROMS with a new OS were created, that would be the perfect time to also create some form of boot menu that allows you to choose between booting CE normally, or looking to a CF card for a linux install. From what I know, linux would work a lot better if it didnt need to be booted from within CE. Can anyone confirm that this would be possible?

I'm all for doing this if it can be done. A proper way to run linux on the Jornada would be great for the fiddly folk who use it, and CE 4.2 is a big leap from CE 3 for the rest of us.
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 7:05 PM
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i dont think there's anything that would prevent us from building cenet for the jornada... the j728 is more suitable, cenet 4.2 can consume as much as 10mb to run and that with a NOR flash chip... nand would be much worse.
so we should get a NOR flash chip for the j720, and preferably for 728 too.
(the hpc2000 OS currently consumes only 2-3 MB out of the box)
it should work ok on 640x240, just look at the nec 900c.
the CPU should be ok too, just look at the simpads
and i'm all for this myself too! i don't get it why no one ever even tried to seriously contemplate this idea..

edit: the hardest part is to make the roms and to find the correct drivers

Edited by cmonex 2006-06-20 7:10 PM
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Rocketman Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 7:38 PM
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The first obstacle would be to build a new flash+ram daughterboard, to store the new OS image. Some enterprising Linux folks made a limited run of these a few years back, and I think the circuit board design files are probably still lurking around somewhere. If you were able to manufacture new flash boards, there would be a market for these, even without CE 4.20. Since you are going to have to manufacture new boards anyways, I would recommend adding lots more ram and flash memory, say 128 MB of each. There are a lot of people wanting to run Linux on their Jornada that are hampered by the lack of a flash-rom, requiring them to boot into CE3 to click a bootloader exe on a storage card. I would gladly pay $200+ for such a board, even without a CE 4.2 upgrade. If you can tackle this first issue, you could use the proceeds to fund the development work on the CE 4.20 image. The chief problem is going to find CE developers to write drivers to support all the hardware in the Jornada. You would also need to license the OS, unless you are fond of being sued. It might be easier to develope a quality Linux distro, instead!

One last thing I would say is don't trivialize or low ball this project. A properly done upgrade could be quite lucrative, but word of a poorly done upgrade will get around fast.
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790HPC
790HPC Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 7:56 PM
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I think this is a pretty good idea. So would this also get us the upgraded PIE?

Looks like there's four main areas to work on....

1. Boot Menu
2. Platform Builder
3. Drivers
4. Chip design/manufacture



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Jax184 Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 8:18 PM
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Building a flash board from scratch, and a compatible board connector would be a royal pain.
My idea was to simply skip it, and instead just burn the OS and bootloader to a new set of ROMs as is done now, and solder the new ROMs in place of the existing ones on existing ROM boards.

The Jornada can only address so much RAM and ROM, and while I don't know how much that is off the top of my head, it does mean that I can't just stick in as much memory as I feel like.

Now with that in mind, how many linux distros for the Jornada with fit in 16 megs? Not many, I bet. So having a flash board for linux doesnt make that much sense. That's why I was planning to burn CE 4.2 on the ROM, which won't ever need to be changed really, and a small bootloader which will allow linux to be started up from as big of a CF card as it needs. This would be a hell of a lot less work that building a flash board.

If this gets done, it won't be a shoddy job. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

As for CE licensing, we'll worry about that after we know it can be done.

And CE 4.2 has two web browsers, a newer version of PIE, and a slimmed down version of the desktop IE 6. Both are quite an improvement over what we have now.

You can see the slimmed down IE here, one of my experements with the platform builder's emulator.

Edited by Jax184 2006-06-20 8:21 PM
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 8:47 PM
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the jornada 72x has 24mb rom but i'm quite sure the cpu can address more. it can also address 128mb of ram (check out the simpad ram upgrade from 64 to 128).
this sure is enough for a quality ce.net image (16mb would not be able to hold too much of the programs, i know, i've seen a swisscom with a 16mb rom).

now the question where to get these rom chips. for testing you will have to use up a lot of them though.
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Jax184 Page Icon Posted 2006-06-20 9:01 PM
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I hope to do one of the less elegant solutions for testing, say booying CE 4.2 off a CF card the same way linux is, and then burn the final, working image to the ROMs. Wasting ROMs would be dumb, and those things are a pain to solder.

Can anyone confirm the ROM size of the Jornada? I've been told, 16, 24 and 32. The ROM chips themselves have the "MX" logo on them, model numbers that result absolutly no results, and "24MB" silkscreened onto all three chips. 24 seems the most likely, but I want to be sure of what I'm dealing with.

And if 128 is possible, I'll be modifying 720 ROMs since they're worthless with a pair of 64 meg chips and the ROMs containing CE 4.2, if this gets off the ground.
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chazco
chazco Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 3:09 AM
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Can anyone confirm the ROM size of the Jornada?

Reboot into diagnostics mode, and run a ROM test. It should tell you.

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say booying CE 4.2 off a CF card the same way linux is

I've been wondering if thats possible...
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 3:28 AM
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hmm the cf can be put in the place of the rom chip, the neta 985 uses this solution but that's an x86 chip, the strongarm has to support it if you want to do this. external cf? bootloader has to support that.
lol yes the hp diag says 24MB of rom.
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anrus
anrus Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 4:31 AM
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May be possible convert WinCE 4.2 (or only PIE 5.5) from Smartbook to Jornada 72x.
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eunix Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 8:02 AM
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You guys are re-igniting my interest in these things again. Should I blow the dust off of my 728s and start poking again....Not.

But if you do take on the project, I would gladly support you by purchasing whatever, just to breathe some life back into these machines. Or more functionality. I am in favor of the Linux option. BTW if you can upgrade the screen while you are at it I will send you my two 728 to rebuild!

Eunix
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 8:58 AM
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eunix: what was your problem with the J728's?

anrus: you can't copy the IE from the smartbook. but we have platform builder for this, so no worries. btw where did you get the smartbook (if you have one)?
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Jax184 Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 3:18 PM
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There's several hardware mods I can already do, or am working on for the Jornada.
If this works, I might offer a conversion, send me a Jornada 720 or 728 and I send back a machine that's been brought up to date with a new OS, more RAM, a recelled battery, improved screen, bluetooth built in, etc.
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matt-nzl Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 4:08 PM
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Even if the roms proove to be too difficult, just being able to run ce.net off a flash card would still be a HUGE improvement and inject some more life in to the 720/728.
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chazco
chazco Page Icon Posted 2006-06-21 4:54 PM
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new OS, more RAM, a recelled battery, improved screen, bluetooth built in, etc.

How would you do any of this? (except the battery)

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Even if the roms proove to be too difficult, just being able to run ce.net off a flash card would still be a HUGE improvement and inject some more life in to the 720/728.

I agree, it would be a nice additon, particularly for those who just want a web-browsing device.
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