Hacker [Sprite_tm] is one of our favorites. He continues to court our fancy with his latest hack, adding a USB host port to his GP2X. The GP2X is a Linux based handheld game system. It supports USB devices through its EXT port. Problem is: it doesn’t provide power and you have to use a dongle. The GP2X uses a MAX1566 DC-DC converter so Sprite_tm was able to get 5V from the chip that was otherwise unused. Once mounted in place all he needed to do was write a simple script to mount the USB device. The chip should provide 500mA, but it’s not guaranteed. High draw could lock up the GP2X so a powered hub should still be used if you are unsure.

Continue reading “GP2X With Built In USB Host Port” →

[Jeroen Domburg], one of our favorite hackers, has posted how to replace a cold cathode based backlight with white LEDs. He had recently purchased an HP Jornada 680 on eBay and the backlight was looking very pinkish. The Jornada has a QWERTY keyboard, CF slot, PCMCIA slot and can run Linux. Sounds like a pretty decent mini-terminal (now that we posted it you won’t be able to find one cheap though). In the space where the backlight was he was able to place 14 white LEDs. To get the  40V necessary to drive the series he built a boost-converter using an ATTiny13. The new backlight is just as bright and uses a 1/3 less power than the original. Half the Jornada’s power was being used by the original backlight, so this mod should give a decent increase in battery life as well.

Continue reading “CCFL Backlight Replaced With White LEDs” →

Trolltech’s Qtopia is the application platform/user interface of choice of Linux handheld device manufacturers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a phone, PDA, or single application device. Hacker NK has successfully ported the GUI to the GP2X. With USB host mode,he’s been able to surf the web with Opera while using a full keyboard, mouse and WiFi adapter. The Sharp Zaurus PDA uses Qtopia with an ARM processor too and users have reported success pulling applications from the Zaurus software repository and running them on the GP2X. Here are some photos of the action one and two.

UPDATE: Commenters say that the GP2X forums have a Windows trojan. I think you’ll be fine if turn off Java.

[thanks omarnawaz]

Continue reading “Qtopia On The GP2X” →

Reader [steve diraddo]’s Zire 71 had given up the ghost long ago, but with a strong desire to annoy his friend, he decided to resurrect it. Unfortunately, like most things that rise from the earth to feast on the brains of the living, Steve’s Zire has limited capacities. When he had originally disassembled the device it was because the camera had stopped functioning, it couldn’t sync, and failed to charge. If he was going to do anything with the device, he would need to get it charging again. The dock connector no longer worked, so he grabbed the pinout for the internal connector from pinouts.ru. By following the traces, he was able to solder a USB cable directly to the board and start the device charging. There are also narrow USB data lines on the board, but Stave didn’t trust his hands to solder them. Programs can still be loaded via IrDA or the SD card. Plugging the screen back in and loading up NoviiRemote he had an ugly, but still very functional toy-to-annoy.

On a related note, [Radu Privantu] sent along his write up: How to use a Pocket PC with a broken screen. Even though it doesn’t have a screen you could still use it as a thin client for streaming music, as a skype phone, a WiFi camera, or a dedicated development platform.

Continue reading “Palm Zire 71 Resurrection” →

Amongst PDAs, cellphones, portable game consoles, and digital audio players USB host mode isn’t that common. The lack of host mode is why you can’t plug your iPod into your PSP. The iPod camera connector is a partial work-around for this problem. The Linux based GP2X gets more interesting with this new development. Using the GP2X’s USB host requires building a special cable for its expansion port. The port features JTAG, serial, audio, and video pins as well. USB host mode opens the doors for any number of USB peripherals to be used with the GP2X: larger storage from a hard drive/iPod, full sized keyboard for use with a command line, WiFi provided by USB adapter. There is the potential to do anything that you could do with a standard PC. If I had known this I would have bought a GP2X without a second thought… so, after two thoughts I bought one and it showed up last Friday evening. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Continue reading “GP2X USB Host Mode” →

Reader [Jakeh] wanted a Bluetooth based game controller for his Axim. Unfortunately, the only commercial option didn’t fit very well. He decided to chop up the Bluetooth controller and wire it into an original Playstation controller. Wiring was slightly annoying because half the buttons in the Bluetooth controller don’t have a common ground. The final touch was modifying two mechanical pencils to provide clamping pressure on the outside of the PDA. Here’s [Jakeh]’s original post about the project and his Flickr photo set.

Continue reading “Bluetooth Playstation Controller For Axim PDA” →

I am amazed at how quickly Alex from hackndev was able to get Linux running on the LifeDrive. It looks like the majority of the work only spanned 2 weeks. The Linux system is started using Garux a bootloader that you run in the Palm OS. Garux unloads Palm OS from memory and boots the Linux kernel in its place. Alex has published GPE binaries of Familiar Linux that should be really simple to use. The touchscreen works, but since suspend isn’t working yet it’s still not practical as a stand alone environment.

[thanks andy]

Continue reading “Linux Running On PalmOne’s LifeDrive” →