Crazy idea: CE 4.2 on a Jornada 728?

because the low level people are very rare. it is not about willingness. i would be willing BUT i don't have the knowledge to write a bootloader or drivers or get the bsp.

I went to the people who do have the ability. Even offering them a free Jornada 728 and a small pile of money wasn't enough to get them interested. They were too busy porting Tetris to their casio databanks and figuring out how to make extra emoticon things for their webcam software.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't know where to start and having looked at some of the driver source in PB42, I wouldn't want to go near it. I just don't have the low down knowledge or the time to get into it.

One person's name does spring to mind from the jornada linux mailing list is Mark Gollahon, who seems to have the knowledge on how to build a bootloader, assemble the card and potentially get a boot loader on there... Let me know if you'd like his contact details.

who are you talking about? where did you find them?

I went to several windows CE/pocket pc forums, IRC channels, etc, along with ones devoted to programming in general, and the Jornada Linux variants.

Well, I DO have quite a bit of ARM assembly under my belt, as well as low-level programming skills on various systems. I've never done anything with Jornada or CE though, and can barely solder two wires together. I'm not sure if I can be of much use, but i'm willing to try, given some assistance. Take it or leave it :-)

Hmm...the idea of putting CE4.2 on jornada is interesting. Looking to the hardware, it seems that the CE4.2 will fit perfectly (except for the sound and the software modem maybe). Why we don't try to do something less drastic! We saw linux booting under the native CE3.0 using a bootloader. Why we just can't modify this bootloader to boot an CE4.2 image stored on a CF card? It's much easier, isn't? I think that the low level guys will have much fun doing this thing

I'll take it. Jax, it's time to let go of the idea of swapping our ROM's currently. The technology to burn new ROMs can be had, but has been done by only one or two very knowledgeable people on one or two specific devices. Flashing a FlashROM can obviously be done, ala 900-900c, but that's not an option here. The Jornada ROM is permanent like a CD-R, as we’ve established.

But bootloaders have been done. And in perfect honesty, I like playing with Linux on occasion, and I have plans to buy a 690 to play with the new release of Donkey. The bootloader works, installs, and then loads up on top of CE when you reset. If we are to complete such a project, let's focus on foundations that are in place and accessible, rather than reaching for the stars at first go.

I once heard a CEO doing a panel discussion, talking about his internet startup in the days of Dialup. He talked about his maxed out personal credit cards and loans from friends. His advice to the crowd was this: Always start with version one. If you try to start out with v.2 or even v.1.1, odds are, you'll never get there.

We need to bring everything down to its least common denominator and go from there. Soldering on ROM chips isn't it, if fact, I'm going to go off the deep end and say we try for CE 5.0. It's my understanding that 5.0 has a great deal more scalability and is easier to configure. Either way, brainstorms are welcome, as it your help, AntiPasta.

I agree with oflash! It's better if we start from the begining, and as I said, with a bootloader like the linux one... Cmonex, do you have the images of CE4.2?? We can start playing around with this...

Yeah, we'd need the 4.2 platform builder to even start thinking about the feasibility.

Mind you, does CE even support booting from a CF card? From the CPU's point of view, the mode of operation is different from hardwired ROM - as far as I know, the SA1111 doesn't handle this transparently.

not only do you need platform builder, you need licensing terms from MS. I don't think that 4.2 licenses can be had nowadays if I recall correctly from the newsgroups...

Please just bear in the back of your minds how you will legally jump that hurdle if/when we get to it.

Best thing to do for now would be to get the bootloader working. Has anyone spoken to Mark Gollahon?

Valid points. Maybe CE 5 is the way to go. Chiark, would you like to spearhead communication with Mark?

My research suggests that CE 4.2 is the last version that can be made to run on the Jornada's hardware.

I had a copy of the CE 4.2 platform builder, but got rid of it when I abandonned this project.

I'm not sure if CE 4.2 can be loaded from a CF card. If not, it's honestly not a huge deal to make new ROM chips.

hey, that's cool!!! could you please register on this forum as a start not mandatory of course.. and it would be good to have some contact info of yours (email? irc? IM?)



CE (3.0, 4.2) can definitely boot off a CF card. only the bootloader has to support this additionally. both the nec 900 and 900c bootloaders do, for example. their bootloaders call it RAM OS. i should dig in platform builder to see what it has to say about this format.
as for the sa1110-1111, the smartbook has same strongarm 206mhz, and its bootloader can load "shadow" OS'es (thats how smartbook calls it), which is again a non XIP OS, as far as i understand, it is flashed in ROM by the bootloader and then loaded from ROM into RAM. i guess for performance reasons? the default is XIP on all the smartbooks i've ever seen.
this is of course not the same as booting off CF but it is interesting.



it's not just a question of having some cenet 4.2 images



CE 5 no longer supports the strongarm by default, but maybe there's a way around this



oh i think even the eval 4.2 allows for flashing homemade bin's, but of course redistribution is limited. (not 100% limited though)

if you tell me his email address i'm willing to contact him. thanks!


i have a suggestion too, what about talking in a more real time way, for example irc for a start, #hpcdev at efnet irc server could do, or any other channel / server of course (i have another server in mind that i could recommend).

Edited by cmonex 2006-11-05 3:55 AM

Voila! My registration was long overdue anyway :-)
Drop me a line on MSN (see profile), or my username at google's mail thingie.