Subject: ELKS

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 09:28:52 +0100

> Don't suppose there is work underway for a Linux to run under the arm7
> Psion series 5? Is there talk of such a project?
Regards,
James

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From: David Alan Gilbert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 09:58:33 +0000

Hi,
  There is at present no known effort to port ARM Linux (or ELKS)
to the Psion or any other ARM7110 based machine.  There should
be very few technical problems however, and if one of these machines
was to find its way to one of the ARM Linux developers with a stack of
documentation about its hardware and a contact name for queries about
its internals then there would be a very high chance of it getting ported.

Dave

P.S. For Linux I reckon the new Geofox PDA (a Psion 5 cloneish - licensed
Psinos OS) is probably better, 16MB of RAM and a PCMCIA slot would make things
a lot easier.

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From: Martin Radford <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 13:07:56 +0100 (BST)

>> Psion series 5? Is there talk of such a project?

I thought about this too, and mailed Russell about it.  The only major
problem I see is getting the Psion 5's operating system to give up
control to Linux; however if we can get into Supervisor mode and
modify the page tables appropriately, this should not be a problem.
I've asked on Usenet and on the Psion forum on CompuServe regarding
how easy it would be to achieve this under Psion's OS, but not
received replies :-(

Additionally, the usefulness of the port would be limited by the
amount of memory available (max 8Mb).  Is it possible to use the
Compact Flash cards as swap, or is there a limit to the number of
times the memory cells can be written to?

BTW: I don't yet have a Series 5 (still saving up, tho' I may be able
to get one this month)

Martin
-- 
Martin Radford | [email-masked] 

"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff
  on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"  - Linus Torvalds

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From: Alan Cox <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 13:36:07 +0100 (BST)

> times the memory cells can be written to?

About 10,000 times

> BTW: I don't yet have a Series 5 (still saving up, tho' I may be able

Consider saving a bit longer. You can pick up 486 class machines that
are pocket sized and far higher spec for a bit more.

Alan