OT-Repurposing PDAs

[Christopher Browne]

On 8/27/07, Jamon Camisso <jamon.camisso-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Now Linux may not be able to solve that problem, but damnit, if it runs
> on that old pda, or you can make use of it in some fashion, then do it.
> You'll get geek points and good karma.

The thing is, NO, Linux *WILL NOT RUN* on that old PDA.  Most of the
ones described are ancient Casio units that probably have 8 bit CPUs
and almost certainly do not have MMUs.  The "powerful" one has 256K of
memory, and the last I checked, Linux required more than 1MB just to
get a kernel going.

You might be able to run NetBSD on the Cassiopeia; there doesn't seem
to be an active Linux port for it.

The M130 is an old 8MB M68K unit with no MMU, so that there's barely
anything you can do with Linux on it.  uCLinux on Palm 68K has always
been a "proof of concept" thing as opposed to actually being terribly
useful for anything.

So NO, Linux is in no way a solution to any of this.

But we also know that the hardware wasn't all working, too; there are
dead batteries (can't be replaced without invoking all the "evil
pollution badness" that you suggested) and other dead hardware that
was pretty much designed not to be able to be fixed.

I rather expect that the difference between "disposing of things as
badly as possible" and "as well as possible" is NOT infinite, and
therefore should not be treated as if it were a wide-open infinite
factor to be avoided at all costs.  Avoiding disposal is *also*
costly, and pretending it isn't is just silly.

At some point, by the way, the attempt to "save the CRT" also
backfires.  CRTs consume a lot more energy than LCD screens, generally
speaking, and, as LEDs come into the picture (for backlighting), there
is fairly soon going to be a big conflict of interest in this regard.
Do you:
a) Keep the old CRT running, at the cost of heavy power consumption,
and, ultimately, pain to your eyes, as the screen degrades, or
b) Replace with an LCD screen that uses less materials and less power
and which fairly likely lasts better?

Disk drives have another "driving" issue, namely that a new one has
some *LARGE* multiple more space than an old one, whilst consuming no
more power and no more materials (likely less).  And an old one *WILL*
fail, of that you can be certain.
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists