Minimo, mplayer, Fanoush kernel: Should I upgrade to 2007HE?

[RobbieThe1st]

I recently acquired a very-good-condition N770 for $41, including shipping. It came with an older version of 2006.
I tested it out, and after realizing that A, the video player wouldn't play anything I tried(FLV videos from Youtube of several sorts), and B, the browser was not all that great, I then upgraded to 2007HE.
Now, after messing with -that-, I have to say I like the Minimo browser better then the older opera-based one, although the video player would -still- not play FLVs. I installed a number of things, although I couldn't get Mplayer to do much with these same FLVs.
Now, at this point I found my torx screwdriver set, promptly disassembled my N770, and did a SDHC-mod on the RSMMC slot. I now have an 8GB SDHC card, with the case removed, mounted inside my N770, and an unusable RSMMC slot.
I then looked about for a version of the Fanoush kernel which would support my new card, but dispite Fanoush's page saying that there is one availaible for 2007HE, I could only find them for 2006.
So I grabbed that, installed the latest version of 2006, and the Fanoush kernel... and it worked! My SDHC card was seen, and I could access files.
Which brings me to yesterday. I took my newly-installed n770, and installed a bunch of software on it, including Mplayer, flash 9 and Minimo(or trying to, anyway).

Which brings me to my main problems:
1. Minimo does not work at all. When I open the webbrowser, under the 'hidden' sub-menu, I see Mozilla, Opera and Webcore, Mozilla is selected. Changing the "change now" value simply results in a crash, and looking up the user-agent of my browser shows me to actually be running Opera.

2. Under Opera, Flash 9 runs slowly, and has no sound. The slow part is understandable, but the lack of sound is a problem. I;d be content with EITHER getting sound running in opera, or having it run in Minimo. I'm not picky.

3. Mplayer works very poorly in some cases:
h264 = "unsupported video codec"
avc1 @ 352X264, -nozoom with mp4a audio = Smooth video for about one second, then the video freezes. Audio plays fine. Pressing "menu" brings up the menu with a single different frame, but the menu is frozen and won't respond.
avc1 @640X360, -nozoom with mp4a audio = Black screen with good audio. Pressing pause brings up the menu, with a single frame behind it(whatever -should- have been there), and the app freezes same as before.

In a few cases, it seems to work fine:
mpg1, 224X176, 44KB/sec = perfect(to be expected, intended for a Rockboxed H320 with a lot less power, so...)
flv1, 320X240, -nozoom with mp3 audio = works fine!

Is there anything I can do to improve performance, or at least make it -display- the frames its decoding?

3. If upgrading to OS2007 will fix either of the above problems(I assume it might help with #1 at least, because of the default Minimo browser which worked the last time I used it), where can I find a Fanoush kernel for it?


Thanks,

-Robbie

[johnpad]

Hi Robbie,

Sounds like you are already finding the limits of the old 770.

1. I had a 770 and after trying every browser on 2007 I always settled back on Opera. 2008HE is a bit of fun to get going but was stable enough for me to use (although I seem to remember having audio problems). 2008HE would give you access to Tear (among others) which is a webkit based browser which should be pretty efficient on a 770. 2008HE would also give you access to a much larger range of s/w.

2. Flash also runs slowly on the N8x0 as well. In my view it is not worth using flash other than to annoy iphone users.

3. The hardware is still a limiting factor on playing videos. My recommendation would be to transcode videos to something like mpeg1 and play with the resolutions.

I do miss the solid cover on the 770 but I don't miss all the other weirdness such as the clock losing time, stability woes and lack of memory. I was running this kernel kernel-sdhc-48MHz-3.2006.49.tar.gz from fanoush (http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/) with a 2GB Kingston with great stability. Moving to an N810 gives a huge speed increase as well as a welcome stability improvement.

Cheers,
John

[RobbieThe1st]

Hi Robbie,

Sounds like you are already finding the limits of the old 770.

1. I had a 770 and after trying every browser on 2007 I always settled back on Opera. 2008HE is a bit of fun to get going but was stable enough for me to use (although I seem to remember having audio problems). 2008HE would give you access to Tear (among others) which is a webkit based browser which should be pretty efficient on a 770. 2008HE would also give you access to a much larger range of s/w.

Well, Opera may be fine for most things, but last I tried, I couldn't get onto my bank's website "use a supported browser"; I tried changing the useragent, but I couldn't make it work.
Minimo I -know- works; I was able to use it when I was on 2007HE.

2008HE may be possible, but isn't it slower and more resource-heavy than 2006 or 2007?
Also, no matter what I do, I have to make sure it works with my SDHC card - but aside from Gregale/2006 working with Fanoush's kernel, and 2007HE -not- working out-of-the-box when I tried it, I don't know much about SDHC support other than that.


2. Flash also runs slowly on the N8x0 as well. In my view it is not worth using flash other than to annoy iphone users.

Yea, thats fair enough. Really, I was just hoping to be able to play slow flash-games that will work slowly, and hopefully animation-type flash files one-at-a time on a blank page to reduce resources. It -seems- like I can do this already, but only in "low" quality mode, although I have no sound(big problem for this).


3. The hardware is still a limiting factor on playing videos. My recommendation would be to transcode videos to something like mpeg1 and play with the resolutions.

Fair enough; at least I know its not my setup in particular causing it.


I do miss the solid cover on the 770 but I don't miss all the other weirdness such as the clock losing time, stability woes and lack of memory. I was running this kernel kernel-sdhc-48MHz-3.2006.49.tar.gz from fanoush (http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/) with a 2GB Kingston with great stability. Moving to an N810 gives a huge speed increase as well as a welcome stability improvement.

Yea, I'm using the same kernel, and it seems to work fine. I had a bit of a scare today, when the OS suddenly stopped reading from the memory card and it wouldn't auto-mount(corrupt or damaged card), but a restart fixed that problem.

Surprisingly, I haven't had any OS crashes, just program crashes - Mainly the web-browser.

And, yea, I know I could/should have gotten a newer model, but eh - It more-or-less does what I want, and the price couldn't be beat($41 shipped!)

-Robbie

[RobbieThe1st]

Disregard most of the above:
When googling, I ran across a post explaining that the kernel is the same between the latest os2006, 2007HE and 2008HE, so the same Fanoush kernel will work.

I just installed 2007HE, and the Fanoush kernel - It seems to work fine.

However, the maemo.org repositories disappeared(404 error) about 10 minutes after I installed it. They seem to be back now though, so we shall see what happens.

[johnpad]

This might also interest you as an avenue to a lot more interesting s/w.
talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=13925
I have easy debian installed on my n810 and it is great.
If you do go down the 2008HE path I would highly recommend keeping a bootable version of 2007HE around as well as, if my memory serves me correctly, 2007HE was much more stable for day to day use.

$41 ... bargain

-J

[bunanson]

...
If you do go down the 2008HE path I would highly recommend keeping a bootable version of 2007HE around as well as, if my memory serves me correctly, 2007HE was much more stable for day to day use.

$41 ... bargain

-J

Agree, and with normal sound!

bun