first linux experience on jornada 7xx :)

Waiting for 720 Jlime will not make a difference as far as suspend goes. 720degrees (the other 720 distro) uses the same kernel. A NetBSD user did prove that he could soft-reset into CE by keeping 4mb of it in ram while running Linux, but I do not know if he could switch back. Linexec would also have to be modified to allow for this ability.

If you want it plain and simple, full suspend will not be happening on the 720, unless if a kernel developer pulls some incredible trick (finding just the part of CE that needs to be in ram for suspend, and have some sort of program pop back into Linux).

However, suspend improvements are being made. While Linux on the 720 may never be able to suspend fully, it should get to the point of being efficient enough to last for a good deal of time (especially with refurbished batteries, it can last a couple of days already).

Ah, a NetBSD user, you mean me. And I'm not a NetBSD user, but the most recent NetBSD kernel sources were actually available, so I used them. The CE state is left intact, so the next step would be to get Linux/NetBSD to resume CE rather than soft resetting.

Video of NetBSD soft resetting and rebooting automatically

i don't see why it would be impossible. i think isotherm's ideas should be taken more seriously and then someone could actually do it.

Concerning (true) suspend, I cannot say its impossible simply because I do not have access to the
wince rom code. Future will reveal if its possible or not, and we will make every effort.
If true suspend proves to be impossible we have several options still that although not as effective will still make the jornada 7xx nicer to work with.

We can do software suspend which in short turns off all unwanted hardware until user wishes to resume (thats what hp6xx does). So its safe to say that somekind of suspend/resume function will be available.

Kernel wise the 7xx will be massivly upgraded in the coming vanilla releases (2.6.19 -> 2.6.21) and I hope this will trigger further development.

Now concerning the coming jlime 7xx (mongo) release, its being activly worked on and we really only have one bug left before release is possible. It will basicly include everything donkey-1.0.0 includes.
Its not up on site yet and will be up once its ready (please direct any questions to nospam@home.com).

/Kristoffer

Ah, Isotherm - I did not realize you were Kirk.

Well, I would tend to assume that we will not get access to the wince rom code, unless if everyone decides to pull off what cmonex and others did with the 900 rom. I guess, given someone with plenty of assembly skill, it can be done.

Yes, the kernel has been getting massive improvements.

Hm? It's easy to pull off the ROM and disassemble it. I went through quite a bit of the code, and I found the point at which it branches among resume, soft reset, and hard reset, but that's just the beginning of what would be needed. In the mailing list archives of both Linux and NetBSD, it seems that some of the kernel developers of yore tried doing the same, and didn't have much success with that route.

Running a Windows CE program (let us call it "jumper") before running the bootloader would be a more doable idea. The main challenge then is getting the device to resume rather than soft reset when it jumps to 0x00000000. If you get it to resume, and you've left CE intact in RAM, then "jumper" will be ready and running when you resume, and you only have to respond to the power on event by jumping back to Linux. It then may need to undo any of the things CE did to the hardware during initialization.

Once that worked, then it might be worth considering how to do the trick without keeping CE resident in RAM the whole time. But there is still preliminary work that should be done (make it resume rather than soft reset when jumping to 0x00000000) before even moving on to the next step.

Edited by isotherm 2006-11-15 3:05 AM

yeah, programsynth, it is easy to get to the code.. it's just a matter of dumping the rom with a dumper (there's several of them - or you can use itsutils too) and load it in a disassembler

Kristoffer: i absolutely agree with what isotherm says. please look into it. i've dealt with bootloader code a lot and so i think it isn't impossible.

So when you tested it, you popped back into BSD, rather than restarting it? I could not tell from the video.

well as far as i can tell.. you can see the hp invent logo, that might not be avoided when resetting. but when i had to restart linux after removing batteries etc (a few times ), it usually wasn't a hard reset = didn't ask me to recalibrate or set time again. (and my installed programs of course stayed.) so i would say that's a real soft reset (of course it is easy for it to be a soft reset, when every stuff is persistent storage.. haha like wm5.)
of course when it is a real suspend-resume, that's different, i don't think we would see any CE stuff.

Hmm, it would be strange for a hard reset not to occur after running Linux... As far as I know, all of the kernels available right now use the full 32MB of RAM. If you attempted to soft reset / reboot from NetBSD, it would work (as a hard reset) but have very very high contrast which couldn't be changed by CE's display controls (but it could be set upon booting NetBSD again). For Linux, when I attempted to soft reset / reboot, the screen was fine, but it just hung at the HP logo and did nothing, requiring a battery removal and hard reset.

The video shows booting into NetBSD, pushing the soft reset button, the HP logo appearing in normal brightness and contrast, and hpcboot reloading NetBSD due to it being linked to in \Windows\Startup (which is still intact). To my knowledge nobody had done this before, or at least they didn't talk about it.

There is the possibility to run some program after the soft reset to go back to Linux, but a soft reset does so much hardware initialization that it probably wouldn't be the best plan. The HP logo doesn't need to display on a resume. There are two things in my above post that have to be researched and completed, and they may or may not be harder than they sound:

• "getting the device to resume rather than soft reset when it jumps to 0x00000000"
• "It then may need to undo any of the things CE did to the hardware during initialization."

If those are successfully implemented, then you have suspend/resume.

Edited by isotherm 2006-11-16 7:55 AM

Cmonex: That is very strange, and something I would not have noticed, as I never install anything on CE. I guess I could try.

Isotherm: I already told you that 2.6 reboots most of the time, just with high contrast. But I am pretty sure it hard resets - I am always asked to calibrate.

Yeah, I guess we would by those things. I don't know why yours soft-resetted instead of resuming when it switched into CE - perhaps we should find out why?

oh i meant it wasn't a hard reset for linux... linux didn't ask me to recalibrate or set time (for the first time i started opie it did ask). CE did.

Lol. Linux does not hard reset. When you shut down, it is just like on a computer - everything on the hard drive stays there.

i know shut down doesn't mean hardreset, i have wm5 and the zaurus so know that very well.. still it should be able to hard reset somehow if i want it to..

Erm..format and reinstall?

The entire philosophy of Linux is totally different than CE. Perhaps there is a way of going about that - restoring the filesystem to the way it was when first installed, but it would be a process similar to rolling back on Windows, not an instantaneous change. Unless if Linux is in rom, of course. Then you just format your cf card, fast enough.