I currently have a SL-5000 "developer's model" with the following accessories: Socket low-power ethernet card, Socket modem, Dlink wireless card, Linksys wireless card, Flexis keyboard, Panasonic 64MB and 256MB SD cards, Viking 32MB CF card and HP 16MB CF card. They all work great. I did have trouble with the following accessories and had to return them: Socket 10/100 ethernet card, Socket wireless card and Sandisk 64MB SD card. I recently got a CFXGA card which didn't work with the original Sharp ROM, this prompted me to flash a new ROM, something I've been putting off for ages. It went well and the card sort of works.
I used the Zaurus for a little halloween project.
I have now got a C860. It's an amazing machine. I did just the basic english localization and everything works like a charm. The CFXGA card works perfectly because of the higher screen resolution, I guess. I got it in Tokyo (Akihabara) from an outfit called Mobile something or other.
Besides the standard software and some nice stuff I found on the software index (see link below), I have on my Zaurus the following packages. Tcl, a great programming language (more about it below) and Pari/GP, a great mathematical package.
I started playing with the programming language Lua. Here is the
Lua interpreter compiled for the Zaurus.
It's just a binary, download it (perhaps by right-clicking on the link)
make it executable
and put it on your path. If you want documentation, examples and source
code, go to the Lua website. I compiled
the binary on the handhelds.org
development cluster.
Tcl works fine on the Zaurus, but the
graphics toolkit Tk only works if you have X11 in some
form installed. Options for that are the
debian environment,
the pdaXrom, GPE openembedded or, my favorite,
X/Qt. This
thread on the Zaurus user group has
instructions I wrote for installing X/Qt.
You can also mix
Debian with X/Qt.Apparently there are people (not me!) who are working on binding Tcl to Qt. There is a page on these issues now at the Tclers wiki. I had problems installing my old backup of the Tcl package linked to above and the site seems to be offline. I found an alternative that works very well, which is to use tclkit. You can also find several Tcl packages in the familiar feed, linked above.
I did manage to figure out how to use opie-sh, which is a command line program with a few widgets, together with Tcl. I wrote a little puzzle that uses both and serves as example of how to use them. See instructions below. This program is provided as-is and no guarantee is given. It's not working right on my C860 but I figured out how to fix it and may post the fixed script later, but my motivation has waned since I installed X/Qt (see above) which allows TclTk to run how it's supposed to.
Download the file pancake.tcl to the Zaurus and, if you want, put it in your path and make it executable. Then run it. Alternatively, call it as "tclsh pancake.tcl". It is a Tcl script, so just a text file and you can examine and modify the code. (The first time it runs, it creates a little shell script called .bb which is needed to make the opie-sh info widget work, since its output is a return code and is not directed to stdout. If you already have a file called .bb in the same directory, change the code).
The actual game consists of arranging a stack of pancakes of unequal sizes, originally in random order, in increasing order of size from top to bottom. The moves consist of flipping a substack starting from the top to somewhere in the middle. (This puzzle's claim to fame is that the current best solution is an algorithm due to Bill Gates and C. Papadimitriou). The program initially presents you with an input box where you enter the size of the stack you want to play. Enter a number (at most 11) and click OK. Then it will present you with a stack. Click on the bottom pancake of the substack you want to flip and click OK. The game will continue this way until you solve the puzzle and you will get a dialog box informing you of the number of moves you made and giving you the choice of quitting, playing the same stack again or playing a new stack.
Another Tcl program I wrote for the Zaurus is a converter from the vCAL calendar format to the Zaurus calendar format. (Update: The new Zauruses and the new ROM 3.* for the 5*00 use a different format to store calendar data and none of my stuff works for it! Is there anybody left using the old ROMs?). Unfortunately, the specs of the Zaurus calendar format are not available, so I had to guess. The program is therefore buggy. It will likely crash the calendar program and perhaps your desktop computer if try to sync. Only use it if you know what you are doing. If you happen to improve it or fix it, let me know. For what it's worth, you can download it here.
This page is maintained by Felipe Voloch
Other programs.
The penguin next to the Zaurus on the picture is a pottery made by Ms. M. Ascanio from the Acoma pueblo in New Mexico. She explained that she just likes penguins.