On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Jason Simpson wrote:

> Hi. I just recently got an IBM z50, pretty much exclusively to use as a
> motorless, wireless, silent internet terminal with NetBSD. I've got a
> 256M CF card for storage, the 32M memory upgrade, and a NetGear MA401
> PCMCIA 802.11b card.
> 
> I managed to get NetBSD with X installed and running with the 20010422
> snapshot and Greg Hughes' August 17 kernel, mostly following the
> instructions on Never Beige and Billy Ball's website.

that's great! the z50 is a really cool piece of hardware (although a tad
more expensive than the $89 QNX-driven Audrey i just snarfed from
tigerdirect.com)

> I can ssh and surf wirelessly with Mozilla (remotely from my Linux box)
> using the NetGear card (wow, was that easy! I'm VERY impressed with
> NetBSD's PCMCIA handling). It's way cool!

i agree... the developers have done a great job... i get some 'fifo
overruns' when using a serial I/O card, but the adaptec, nic, and wlan
support is great!
 
> But, there are some things I'd like to do or at least know more about:
> 
>   * How do you check the remaining battery level?

i saw code for this, but don't think (correct me if i'm wrong) it is
viable on the z50...

>   * Is there any way to get the brightness and contrast controls to
> work?

the *only* way i found is to 'preset' the brightness and contrast under CE
*before* booting NetBSD... the settings seem to be used while and
after booting a NetBSD session...

>   * How do you usually handle periods when you want to shut it off? I've
> just been leaving it plugged in and on since the suspend button doesn't
> shut off the screen, and I don't want to have to wait for it to reboot
> every time I want to use it, but that seems like a big waste of power
> and probably shortens its lifespan.

i've run it for days at a time, but when not in use i just shutdown, press
the power button (which then reboots to CE) and turn off from CE... the
great thing is that by using this approach i haven't needed a paperclip to
reset the z50 for several months now!

>   * Why are the arrow keys so whacked out under X? (Thanks Billy Ball
> for your instructions on getting them to work at all!)

perhaps because the server was developed for touch-screen HPCs? dunno... i
can't take credit for the cursor-key hack, as i found the command line on
a post somewhere... but at least the keys can work (not so for the Alt
keys)...

>   * Is there any way to emulate the middle mouse button under X?

perhaps the xclipboard client? (haven't used it for a long time, so i
can't remember if it would be a solution for pasting command lines or
URLs)...

>   * Is the X server in the snapshot using any video acceleration
> features of the hardware?

i'll leave that to the experts...
 
>   * I'd like to set up a cross-compilation environment under NetBSD/i386
> so I can try patching the kernel with the LCD suspend functionality,
> etc., but the documentation is either incomplete or very opaque to my
> non-BSD-aquanted eyes. Is there more a step-by-step HOWTO-style document
> for setting up the cross-compilation environment and compiling a new
> kernel for the foreign target?

again, i'll leave that to the experts... but i must restate that i
sincerely appreciate the efforts of the NetBSD hpcmips developers, and
especially greg hughes for getting the trackpoint to work!

billy ball
 
> 	Thanks a bunch for your help and your efforts so far!
> 	-jrs
>