Xorg With Breakout Box

[TKF15H]

I don't see Firefox as a good reason to port X11. Qtopia + Opera do an ok job on FW2.0. As for the games that require X11... are there that many? Will the few existant work at 320*240? The only game I really like that requires X11 is that 3D Lightcycles game (Armagetron was it?) but there isn't much hope of seeing that running on the 2X without plenty of work.
Perhaps chucking GCC+Code::Blocks onto an SD card and being able to code on the run is a good reason.

 

[danboid]

I wasn't really advocating X11 on the GP2X for firefox- I was just using that as an example as its an X11 prog that most people have heard of and might be interested in running. I'd much rather run gpe-minibrowser, minimo or another lightweight browser like gtk-webcore on the gp2x. I'm certainly not promoting this idea in order to get more games on the 2x- that would be silly- SDL is much better suited for that. The whole point of porting X11 to the 2x is so we would get some decent applications running on it- Qtopia doesn't have 1/10th of the amount of apps available for X.

 

[Anhaedra]

But most of the apps available for X will use up the 32MB (actually less when you have X running) RAM that the GP2X has available very quickly.

 

[TKF15H]

The whole point of porting X11 to the 2x is so we would get some decent applications running on it

I can't think of any that would run on that hardware and be of much use. Maybe XMMS?

 

[Loubear]

Plenty of Zaurus and PPC users run their OSs' off SD cards without any problems. I was thinking of having a Linux bootloader program that you would run as a util on your GP2X and then it boots off a USB2 hard drive which serves as your root disc. Hard drives will die eventually too of course.

I was thinking about this, but I'm wondering if you might take a performance hit, accessing a page file/swap partition over USB2. Totally guessing of course, I can't really get my head around the calculation required to work out whether the bandwidth and speed would be sufficient over a single host controller also running input peripherals.

As for window manager, to each their own, but I think Enlightenment with transparencies might be pushing it a bit though. I think I'd look at FVWM2, with all that scriptability you could emulate the functionality of E and get a lot of flexibility out of the various buttons.

Huh..But isn't the ext usb thing onlyl usb 1.1 host? The usb2 is a slave I think...

 

[slygamer]

Huh..But isn't the ext usb thing onlyl usb 1.1 host? The usb2 is a slave I think...

Correct. Any external hard drives will be communicating at USB 1.1 speed. You cannot connect a USB hard drive to the USB 2.0 port because it is slave only.

 

[Orkie]

I've got an X server running on the GP2X but I can't test whether or not a USB mouse will work or not (something seems to be wrong with my set up as none of my mice will light up). I've uploaded a package and you'll need to extract the enclosed x11 folder to the root of your SD card, then run runx.gpu either from the menu or (preferably so that you can post any output) from the command line. Included is another script as well, called runusbtest.gpu which you may want to try if the mouse doesn't work on the first one. Another thing you could try if that doesn't work is to add 'ln -s /dev/usbmouse /dev/mouse' to the top of both the scripts then try to run them both again.

By default, a basic screen with xeyes should be created.

Hope this helps somewhat

X Server: http://www.orkiesrealm.co.uk/x11.zip

 

[kardasan]

damn and I have to make some report for tomorrow...grrr I have to try get joystick input running ><

 

[Parkydr]

I've got an X server running on the GP2X but I can't test whether or not a USB mouse will work or not (something seems to be wrong with my set up as none of my mice will light up). I've uploaded a package and you'll need to extract the enclosed x11 folder to the root of your SD card, then run runx.gpu either from the menu or (preferably so that you can post any output) from the command line. Included is another script as well, called runusbtest.gpu which you may want to try if the mouse doesn't work on the first one. Another thing you could try if that doesn't work is to add 'ln -s /dev/usbmouse /dev/mouse' to the top of both the scripts then try to run them both again.

By default, a basic screen with xeyes should be created.

Hope this helps somewhat

X Server: http://www.orkiesrealm.co.uk/x11.zip

This is excellent. You could use the GP2X controls as a mouse, either by writing a driver or making a separate program to generate mouse events from button presses.

Edit: I just tried building with the X libs. A couple of things
1) I don't think they're build with -msoft-float
2) Static libs would be nice

 

[Racer445]

This is great!

An X server running on the GP2X? Dang I gotta see the source...

 

[Parkydr]

This is great!

An X server running on the GP2X? Dang I gotta see the source...

Here would be a good starting point. The only real problem is what to settings to use in the def files.

Here's Firefox running on my PC but displayed on the GP2X X server - uses about 4 Meg of memory on the GP2X but 28Meg on the PC. As you can see, there's a bit of an issue with screen space.

and I'd like to run Matchbox which would look like this:

 

[Orkie]

This is great!

An X server running on the GP2X? Dang I gotta see the source...

Here would be a good starting point. The only real problem is what to settings to use in the def files.

Here's Firefox running on my PC but displayed on the GP2X X server - uses about 4 Meg of memory on the GP2X but 28Meg on the PC. As you can see, there's a bit of an issue with screen space.

and I'd like to run Matchbox which would look like this:

Nice to see somebody got it working Has anybody managed try a USB mouse yet?

TinyX/kdrive is also included in the main XFree86 (probably xorg too) tree. I've looked at the code for its mouse routines and it doesn't look like it would be to hard to modify them to use the GP2X joystick, but I'm not promising anything yet (I'm currently having troubles with my build environment and I'm trying to work out how to statically compile the binary and use the -msoft-float flag which is proving to be quite tricky to work out since XFree86 has its own build system, though any help is welcome).

 

[Parkydr]

Nice to see somebody got it working Has anybody managed try a USB mouse yet?

TinyX/kdrive is also included in the main XFree86 (probably xorg too) tree. I've looked at the code for its mouse routines and it doesn't look like it would be to hard to modify them to use the GP2X joystick, but I'm not promising anything yet (I'm currently having troubles with my build environment and I'm trying to work out how to statically compile the binary and use the -msoft-float flag which is proving to be quite tricky to work out since XFree86 has its own build system, though any help is welcome).

I can't help with the USB mouse, but I'll have a look building XFree86. I'd already downloaded the code then got side tracked.

 

[Orkie]

Nice to see somebody got it working Has anybody managed try a USB mouse yet?

TinyX/kdrive is also included in the main XFree86 (probably xorg too) tree. I've looked at the code for its mouse routines and it doesn't look like it would be to hard to modify them to use the GP2X joystick, but I'm not promising anything yet (I'm currently having troubles with my build environment and I'm trying to work out how to statically compile the binary and use the -msoft-float flag which is proving to be quite tricky to work out since XFree86 has its own build system, though any help is welcome).

I can't help with the USB mouse, but I'll have a look building XFree86. I'd already downloaded the code then got side tracked.

I think I've sorted the problem now by using CDEBUGFLAGS="-static -msoft-float". I'm on about my 10th recompiling today now (hoping this will be the last)

EDIT: It is now working, I'll post up how I did it when I get chance.

 

[kardasan]

at least you haven't got your whole dev environment screwed like I did...now I can use code::blocks only in linux, which isn't that bad, but I have to set up the toolchain, which I'm too lazy to do...ok right now, mayby in two days...there is so much cold beer in the fridge

 

[Parkydr]

I've managed to direct mouse and keyboard events to the GP2X using x2x

 

[danboid]

Excellent work Parkydr/ Orkie!

I've not checked this thread in a couple of days and look what progress has been made from nothing!

Its a shame to hear that the 2x doesn't have usb 2.0 host. So under what conditions can I get USB2 speeds out of the 2x? Copying files onto its SD/internal memory via a USB cable?

How are people plugging usb devices into the 2x at the moment? I'm presuming that until the BoB gets released you have to make your own EXT cable for USB host or can I plug an externally powered USB hub into the 2x USB port?

What is the screen refresh rate like under gp2x X at the mo? As we can see of the pictures, 320x240 is very limiting so somebody really needs to get TV output working so we can get 640x480 or something more useable. Is this going to be difficult?

 

[Orkie]

Excellent work Parkydr/ Orkie!

I've not checked this thread in a couple of days and look what progress has been made from nothing!

Its a shame to hear that the 2x doesn't have usb 2.0 host. So under what conditions can I get USB2 speeds out of the 2x? Copying files onto its SD/internal memory via a USB cable?

How are people plugging usb devices into the 2x at the moment? I'm presuming that until the BoB gets released you have to make your own EXT cable for USB host or can I plug an externally powered USB hub into the 2x USB port?

What is the screen refresh rate like under gp2x X at the mo? As we can see of the pictures, 320x240 is very limiting so somebody really needs to get TV output working so we can get 640x480 or something more useable. Is this going to be difficult?

I don't think 320*240 is so bad. You can run X on an iPAQ 3600 and that only has a 320*240 resolution. I don't think the likes of GNOME and KDE will every really be that usable regardless of the screen size, maybe something like GPE or OPIE, but not large desktop environments.

I have now got the server compiling properly and can now start to move onto the mouse but looking at the mouse code, it may take a while. If you want to have a go yourself, you need to look at the xc/programs/Xserver/hw/kdrive/linux/mouse.c file. My initial attempts have resulted in either the server rapidly switching between different mouse protocols or a segfault.

 

[Parkydr]

Excellent work Parkydr/ Orkie!

The credit should go to Orkie, I've been trying to get my head round the X build system and it's not an easy task. All I've done is a bit of configuration and used the X server as a remote display. I've not had to write a single line of code.

I've not checked this thread in a couple of days and look what progress has been made from nothing!

Its a shame to hear that the 2x doesn't have usb 2.0 host. So under what conditions can I get USB2 speeds out of the 2x? Copying files onto its SD/internal memory via a USB cable?

How are people plugging usb devices into the 2x at the moment? I'm presuming that until the BoB gets released you have to make your own EXT cable for USB host or can I plug an externally powered USB hub into the 2x USB port?

USB client is 2.0 so anything attached via the USB socket will be full speed i.e. copying files/usb network/usb serial.
USB host, via the EXT port is USB1 and the BoB will connect through this so any client devices mouse/keyboard/storage will be USB1

What is the screen refresh rate like under gp2x X at the mo? As we can see of the pictures, 320x240 is very limiting so somebody really needs to get TV output working so we can get 640x480 or something more useable. Is this going to be difficult?

The screen doesn't flicker but I've tried displaying supertux from my PC onto the GP2X and the cursor movement is jumpy. I don't know where the bottleneck is. I only have USB1 so it could be the network or just be the processor usage of the X server. The applications like Firefox work fine.

Using soft-float may help and it may be possible to use the second processor (like the HW accelerated SDL library). TV out should be possible.

I have now got the server compiling properly and can now start to move onto the mouse but looking at the mouse code, it may take a while. If you want to have a go yourself, you need to look at the xc/programs/Xserver/hw/kdrive/linux/mouse.c file. My initial attempts have resulted in either the server rapidly switching between different mouse protocols or a segfault.

I haven't got it to build yet. Please could you post your the config settings you used.

 

[danboid]

Well then- thanks Orkie and best of luck in your deliverance of a new computing platform! B)

So, I presume then that you have USB keyboard working fine now, but not the mouse?

I was never expecting to run GNOME or KDE on it, but we CAN run the Equinox Desktop Environment

http://ede.sourceforge.net

or the ROX desktop on it with either the ROX file manager (my fave)

http://rox.sourceforge.net/

or with the xfe file manager if you prefer

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xfe

So, it would seem that 2 big obsticles remain now

*Hi-Res TV output under X11 and console/fb

*Kernel access to all 64MB RAM

Has anybody tried this with wifi yet? You have to have a wifi adapter with the zydas 1211 chipset as listed on

http://zd1211.ath.cx/

Can't wait to run Debian on a GP2X!!

EDIT: What about sound?

Orkie- I hope you've got a fast machine re-compiling X all the time- I remember X used to take A LOOOONG time to compile- only thing I remember ever taking anything like that length of time was QT but I can't say I've ever compiled GNOME...