The state of the Zipit
Things in the Zipit world have been quite interesting in the last year. Not only do we now have a very nice u-boot bootloader and installation script courtesy of marex, mozzwald and geordy. We also have working USB host on u-booted Zipits courtesy of GPSFan, mozzwald and myself (although I only had a small part in it's creation and perfection) as well as two nice serial mods from Foxx and geordy. I've been slaving away on my forks of IZ2S, IZ2Se and EZ2S as well as writing a few utilities and scripts for the Zipit in general and porting a few interpreters and compilers to ARM and the Zipit (OpenCOBOL, 4tH, lua, bwbasic, blassic...). mozzwald, wicknix and wejp has made some nice rootfs for the Zipit. mozzwald and wicknix's are based on ubuntu and debian respectivly and have versions for both u-boot+mainline and blob+.29 bootloader+kernel. wixknix's z2sid comes in two flavours, console only and X and mozzwald's z2buntu is X only. wejp's is for u-booted zipits only and is based on a buildroot rootfs and is console only. A couple of  nice things about wejp's rootfs is that it is really small and it comes with a really nice audio player based on SDL called Gmu. On the hardware side of things, Dom a French Zipit Owner and user has made a nice cable for charging/powering your Zipit from a USB slot on your computer or via an external battery pack. He is selling the cables and it costs 7 euros (about $10 incl postage) to have one sent to the USA. Dom is also working on other nice hardware additions to the zipit like screen protectors and a USB hub that can also charge/power the zipit too. Another #zipit channel user zashi has written a nice key binding utility for .29 kernel upgraded and u-booted zipits called ebindkeys which I am trying to get working in IZ2S/IZ2Se/EZ2S, so far i've not had much luck but i'll keep trying, I suspect I need to do some more fiddiling with kernel modules and /dev nodes
[Update: ebindkeys does work in IZ2S/IZ2Se/EZ2S. As i suspected it required loading a module and creating nodes and some fiddiling, we can't use it for the green power button but it does give us access to all the "normal" keys plus home, options etc. ]
Well that's all that I can currently remember about what's going on in the Zipit world, i'm sure i've forgotten a few things but i'll post about them in the fullness of time.
Happy New Year Zipitians
For Sale: Apple hardware and VPN hardware
A friend is selling some apple hardware pretty cheap.
1 x Mac Pro 8 core 3.0ghz xeon (2008) SOLD
- ati card
- 8g factory installed ram
- 2x 300gb WD velociraptor drives
- 4 port esata card
- optional Blackmagic design Intensity pro HDMI input card
- optional 10.6 server unlimited (never used)
$1700 negotiable
1 x iMac 8,1 2.8ghz core 2, 24" SOLD
- 2g ram
- 300g drive
$500
1 x Macbook Air 1st gen
- 64g ssd
- usb lan
- $600
As well as $20,000 worth of VPN hardware for $2000 (2 checkpoint appliances and about 7 gateway devices). If you are interested contact me and i'll put you in touch with him.
New tutorial for upgrading the kernel and running debian on a ZipitZ2
designate72 from the #zipit irc channel has written a new tutorial on how to upgrade the kernel on a ZipitZ2. It is more up to date than the other tutorials for this on the web so I recommend that it is the one to follow at the moment. There is an easier way using wicknix's (from the #zipit irc channel) z2sid but the tutorial is good anyway.
Personal Solder Slave
When I was younger I had reasonable soldering skills but 25+ years of letting them slowly rot and a combination of ill health and old age have given me the shakes and terrible eyesight. I can still cope with larger items like resistors on perf board and the removal of the power socket on the Zipit Z2's mainboard but for anything more fiddily i've got no hope. Luckily Foxx from the #zipit irc channel not only lives quite near me but is also a soldering master and i've turned him into my personal solder slave. I tell him how great he is and he does my soldering tasks for me 
. He's especially very good at doing the serial mod on the Zipit Z2 and making USB connectors for the rear expansion port of the Zipit Z2. He's told me that he's willing to do the serial mod, usb connectors or any other soldering tasks for people for the cost of parts, postage (or travel if you are in the NYC area and want him to do it in person) and a reasonable fee (depends on the difficulty of the soldering task). You can either contact me or look for Foxx in the #zipit irc channel.
