I know this blog's title implies it is about running minimo on the Zaurus. And you are right. I was asked by mozilla.org if I would like to help get minimo up on Linux, and then port over to the Zaurus. And right this very minute, I am pulling mozilla on my RedHat system to get going on that.

But first, I wanted to see if I could revive my SL-5500 and see what it would take to get Konqueror installed and running under OpenZaurus. After much fiddling around, I got it to work. There were several sources on the net that were incomplete, but combined provided me with the information needed to do the job. Without them, it would have been hopeless. And so the intent of this entry is to document exactly what I did, and where I got my information.

Why install Konqueror? Well, I figured OpenZaurus/Opie is the best option for the SL-5500/5600 (GPE, the other UI, is just too vanilla, I expect most people will use Opie), and Konqueror appears that it is the main competitor to what we would be doing there with minimo. You gotta know your competition.

Why the 5500/5600? If we can't get minimo working on these two PDAs, then the whole point of doing this work is lost, minimo should run well on both if Konqeror does.

And so, the intent of installing Konqueror was to get me familiar with the pain/process involved, and give me an idea of what I was up against. I should also mention that on my Zaurus SL-6000 -- yeah, I know - I collect these devices, but pocket computers have always been an attraction, I have been playing with them since I was 16 (way back in 1980 I bought a Casio FX-702P; google if you are curious about that device), so you have to imagine that the marriage of Linux and a PDA was for me about as exciting as it gets -- I am happily running the Sharp ROM and Qtopia, and there, the browser is Opera. Note that Opera is not available specifically for OpenZaurus (I'm not saying it wouldn't install, but Konqueror is all you hear about online, so I suspect it is the only true browser for OZ currently). Opera simply couldn't run on the 5500 with the Sharp ROM without often running out of memory, the way it was setup under Qtopia. Which is one of the reasons to move over to OpenZaurus, which supports a wide variety of memory configurations.

So, here are the steps, including flashing the Z for OpenZaurus. I started with OpenZaurus 3.5.2, because the original instructions I had found for getting K installed were based on 3.5.2. But the networking support just isn't as nice, so I did this under 3.5.3, which is the latest offering at OpenZaurus.org anyway.

What you will need:

- An SL-5500 or 5600. You can get these really cheap on E-Bay, in the $200 or less range. The 5500 is commonly available, just checking now shows many refurb units for around $159. The 5600 has a much beefier battery, and runs at 400Mhz (the 5500 runs at 266Mhz). You'd be happier with the 5600, but the 5500 works just fine.

- A CF card, formatted FAT 16 (in other words, formatted the way it was when you bought it). Mine was a 128MB, but a 64MB card should do.

- An SD card. All Z have both Compact Flash and SD card slots. We will be installing K and the libs it needs to the SD card so that we do not consume any of the Z's RAM, which we will need for running the browser. If you don't have an SD card, skip steps 9 and 11 below. In steps 13, replace -d sd with -d ram wherever it is encountered. Your mileage, however, will vary.

- A CF wireless network card. I have a linksys model (Model No. WCF11, anywhere from $60 to $100 depending on where you buy it) that just works (frankly, wireless on the Z just works, whether its the Sharp ROM or OpenZaurus). On the SL-6000, wireless is built in, but really, it works just awesomely on the 5500 and 5600 with a CF wireless card. Or, you can use a standard CF ethernet card. I have a pretec CompactLAN card, but those are hard to find, I'm guessing just about any will do. Prices seem to be $100 or less as well. I'd go with the wireless card; the whole point of a device like the Z is to be able to just wander to some hotspot, pull the Z out of your pocket, and check your e-mail on AOL or yahoo or wherever. Though, having both cards gives you an out if you are somewhere that doesn't have wireless, but does provide a hub you can plug into.

- Some PC or device that can browse the web and be used to copy files to the CF card. I used my Zaurus 6000 for this, but I am spoiled.

First, we need to get OpenZaurus installed on the device. The following steps are for the 5500.

Step 1. Point your browser at http://www.openzaurus.org. Click on the Downloads link in the upper left hand corner (currently). Click on 3.5.3. Click on sl5000/sl5500. At this point, your path should be /official/unstable/3.5.3/sl5000,sl5500.

Step 2. Download opie-image-collie-20050407172817.rootfs

Step 3. Download zImage-collie-32-32-20050407102515

Step 4. Copy opie-image-collie-20050407172817.rootfs to the CF card, renaming it initrd.bin

Step 5. Copy zImage-collie-32-32-20050407102515 to the CF card, renaming it zImage

Note that the names of the target files on the CF card *must* be exactly as above, and these files must be in the root (toplevel) directory of the CF card.

Step 6. Now we need to "flash" the Zaurus. First, if you have any important files on your Z, copy them somewhere. Run backups, do whatever you need. Because we are about to destroy whatever was on that machine. Seriously. Once that has been done, insert the CF card containing the results of Steps 4 and 5 into the CF slot of the 5500.

Step 7. Plug the Z into an AC-adapter. Slide open the keyboard of the Z. Turn the Z over. In the lower right hand corner, there is a switch labeled "Normal Operation". Move the switch to the "Replace Battery" position. Carefully remove the battery cover. But don't remove the battery. Carefully, with your left thumb, press the C and D keys on the keyboard, and with the stylus, press the reset switch located on the bottom left edge of the battery compartment. Then release the C and D keys. The e-mail and battery lights on the front of the Z should both light. If not, repeat until they do, you probably didn't have the C and D keys depressed while activating the reset switch. Once the lights go on, set the Z aside for 5 minutes, it is in the process of flashing OpenZaurus onto the device. Make sure to keep the Z plugged into the AC adapter during this step.

Step 8. Once the Z has finished flashing, the e-mail and battery lights will go out. Using the stylus, depress the reset button again, replace the battery cover, move the switch back to "Normal Operation", and then power on the Z. OpenZaurus should then boot. Run thru the setup panels, and spend a little time playing around with OpenZaurus to get familiar with what it offers.

Now that Open Zaurus 3.2.3 is on the Z, time to install Konqueror.

Step 9. Insert the SD card into your Z. You should pretty much assume that this SD card will be dedicated to the device from here on out. Devices like the SL-C3100 with are much more capable than the 5500, with 128MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive; the SD card here will help us by providing storage space for the install and save us some room in the RAM department.

Step 10. Launch the Console app. It is found in the Applications menu or tab.

Step 11. Format the SD card for ext2 filesystem. Don't use ext3 (derived from http://www.kevinboone.com/openzaurus.html).

# umount /mnt/card
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/mmcda1

Step 12. Remove the CF card (if the slot is not already empty) and insert the CF Wireless Card. Make sure you are connected to the Internet (for me, plugging in the card causes the Z to get a DHCP address from my router, and the connection light on the card goes solid pretty much right after I insert it into the CF slot. No configuration required).

Step 13. Install Konqueror by typing the following into the console window (derived from http://serpent.laymusic.org/cgi-bin/lconrad/blosxom.cgi/pdas, but minor changes were needed to get the steps listed there to work properly):

# ipkg -d sd install libstdc++6 libpcre0 (that's a zero, not the letter 'o')
# ipkg-link add libstdc++6
# ipkg-link add libpcre0
# ipkg -d sd install
# ipkg -d sd install konqueror-embedded -force-depends
# ipkg-link add konqueror-embedded

(If you happen not to have installed and formatted an SD card, you might try replacing -d sd in the above commands with -d ram).

Step 14. Restart opie (from the menus, Settings->Shutdown, then click the RestartOpie button)

Step 15. Launch K by selecting Web Browser from the Applications menu.

That's it. Follow the above steps exactly, and you should be good to go.

For extra credit, you can get even more RAM for K by installing an image other than 32-32. And/or by installing Open Zaurus to a SD card. Information is available at http://www.openzaurus.org

Looks like my mozilla build just finished. Now it is time to turn my attentions there.