I recently undertook this project. I have a mobilepro 880.
The only problems are:
  I can't switch out of X (yes, I'm using wscons)
  The USB port is not supported, and the Xhpc Xserver doesn't support serial mice (fixable, I would think)
  sysinst is a *&%^%#^$#1!! pain.
  the whole disklabel thing takes getting used to.
  NetBSD doens't have a showkeys program.

As for the mouse in X, I would think a pcmcia USB card would fix that, or maybe a little cut and paste from the code of another X server that does support serial mice. The included serial cable is a null modem, and I've run slip networking over it. NFS didn't work on that, however. Maybe noisy UDP issues, or bandwidth/latency, I dunno. Another null modem should turn the cable into a normal one. I installed from cf cards, which works much better with two, via a pccard adapter, btw.

The cursor keys are a little rearranged, but I like it better (left/right/up/down). I haven't gotten pgup/dn/home/end to work, but the contrast keys seem to work as pgup/dn for many programs, but not all.

ext2fs isn't in the installed kernel (perhaps you've noticed I hail from linuxland!) I see now that I don't care so much about that, once its networked into my LAN. Wirelessly, even!

Suspend works fine. I haven't left it unpowered while in suspend for more then an hour or so, but it should last longer, unless my four year old batteries have issues. It used to last several hours like that while in WinCE.

I thought it was a little odd that I didn't have to set up a XF86Config. Just install Xbase/Xfont/whatever, and type startx. Oh yeah. xdm doesn't work. You sound as if you don't want X anyway. I use readline and zsh to get all the usual shell command line editing and completion necessities.

Have fun.
Chris Fuller

----- Original Message -----
From: Florian Cramer <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 20:01:04 +0200
To: NetBSD port-hpcmips <port-hpcmips@netbsd.org>
Subject: Mobile Pro + NetBSD as a commandline PDA?

> Curious question to Mobile Pro users here: Is NetBSD on that hardware
> a viable PDA solution for daily life?  
> 
> I am not talking of userland software, but the NEC hardware in
> combination with the NetBSD kernel.  What I am looking for is a portable
> device allowing me to manage appointments and contacts just with
> "remind" and "abook" on the commandline (instead of the pen-driven GUI
> PIM solutions on PalmOS and Zaurus/Opie I got fed up and frustrated
> with).  
> 
> I am already a happy owner of a z50 with NetBSD, but that machine of
> course is too bulky to be carried around as a PDA. How good is battery
> life, suspend/resume support and overall robustness with the Mobile Pro?
> 
> -F
> 
> -- 
> http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/

-- 
______________________________________________
Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org 
This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox.

Powered by Outblaze