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Posts: 874 | Thanked: 316 times | Joined on Jun 2007 @ London UK
#291
The Viliv 7 has been announced and the price of $600 is OK. It looks like it is a superb device but I would rather wait for about 9 months for the second generation Intel hardware to be incorporated and for Windows 7 to be installed.

Furthermore that will also allow time for Mer to show what it is capable of.

In the meantime, a SmartQ 7 for the PayPal amount of $251.80 delivered will see me through nicely. I have ordered one today and look forward to joining the groundswell of Mer support for the device.

Also it is likely to be only a short matter of time before it gets Android support and I suspect that will satisfy me too. WinCE is coming but that doesn’t really interest.

Isn’t it great to have such choice and potential though? This is more like it. And I can finally wave bye bye to Nokia! Exciting times for sure.
 
Benson's Avatar
Posts: 4,930 | Thanked: 2,272 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#292
Originally Posted by rogue_ronin View Post
Installation problem was the format on the card. Really strange -- I used cfdisk to make a new FAT32 partition, then mkfs.vfat to make a FAT32 file system.

Xubuntu saw the card, automounted it, copied files, etc. But when I redid the cfdisk, partition was missing. No matter how often I remade it, I couldn't keep a partition table.
Sounds like you may have been making a filesystem on the whole-disk device, instead of the partition.
SD cards can be formatted with a naked filesystem (like a floppy disk traditionally is) or with a partition table and one or more partitions with filesystems in them (like a hard disk), with only minor usability implications for most purposes, but some special cases depend on having it one way or the other. If you do something like
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sdc
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc
you put a partition table on, but then immediately overwrite the partition table with a whole-disk filesystem.
You should do something more like:
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sdc
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1
to put the filesystem in the partitioned space.
 

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Posts: 19 | Thanked: 18 times | Joined on May 2009 @ Texas, USA
#293
Originally Posted by Rebski View Post
In the meantime, a SmartQ 7 for the PayPal amount of $251.80 delivered will see me through nicely. I have ordered one today and look forward to joining the groundswell of Mer support for the device.
Thanks for jumping in with your purchase of the SmartQ 7! The more folks who get involved, the stronger the base.

You may want to check this thread for information on hardware, software, and accessories: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48771.

I definitely recommend buying the listed 16GB MicroCenter SDHC card as a starter because of the very limited storage on the Q7.
Besides it's only $30 plus shipping.

I can vouch for this 16GB card but I'm not sure about the 32GB cards. Some users are having difficulty with them.
 
rogue_ronin's Avatar
Posts: 24 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Honolulu, HI
#294
Originally Posted by kekegg View Post
I just realized that other devices have arrow keys but there are no such on Smart Q7. Is it possible to map '+' '-' to arrows or add them on top of soft keyboard?
It's matchbox-keyboard, right? If so, no problem to add arrow buttons...

Matchbox-Keyboard README

In fact, the new Q7 firmware has arrow keys on the keyboard (matchbox).

Last edited by rogue_ronin; 2009-06-13 at 15:41. Reason: info about Q7
 
Posts: 874 | Thanked: 316 times | Joined on Jun 2007 @ London UK
#295
Originally Posted by celtica96 View Post
Thanks for jumping in with your purchase of the SmartQ 7! The more folks who get involved, the stronger the base.

You may want to check this thread for information on hardware, software, and accessories: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48771.

I definitely recommend buying the listed 16GB MicroCenter SDHC card as a starter because of the very limited storage on the Q7.
Besides it's only $30 plus shipping.

I can vouch for this 16GB card but I'm not sure about the 32GB cards. Some users are having difficulty with them.
yes I take your point. It is probably best to keep this forum for Mer discussion and mobileread for discussion specific to the SmartQ.

See you over there.
 
Posts: 1 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Jun 2009
#296
The Q5 seems like a very interesting device - considering the price and all. But, I haven't been able to find any conclusive and/or in-depth reviews of the device (especially the hardware), leaving me with a lot of questions.

First of all, what's the status on hardware support under Linux at this point, specifically the audio/video acceleration parts and the 2D/3D acceleration parts? Should we expect good sound quality from this device, similar to dedicated MP3 players (Cowon comes to mind)?

What's the battery life on this thing? What's the runtime when using the Q5 exclusively as an MP3 player?

Does it feel flimsy or not? Any issues with the build?

The Q5 and Q7 would benefit greatly from having a central, english-speaking forum or wiki of some kind, some place where all available information could be gathered.

Also, thanks for working on Mer for the Q5. It certainly looks great!

 
Posts: 42 | Thanked: 18 times | Joined on Sep 2005
#297
Originally Posted by Matan View Post
Try mplayer as follows:

Copy from original firmware three files:
/usr/bin/mplayer
/lib/modules/*/s3c-mfc.ko
/lib/modules/*/s3c-pp.ko

run ldd /usr/bin/mplayer
See what libraries are missing, find to which packages they belong, and apt-ger install them (all are available).
After every boot insmod the two modules, make sure the device files are accessible to the user, and then you can use mplayer.

If those instructions are not enough, I'll add the details in a few days, when I get the chance to do it again.
Not enough for me - i need graphics
libs missing by download pack names (then you use "sudo apt-get install):

libxss1
libenca0 (last letter is zero)
libmad0 (last letter is zero)

I've done everything and i think mplayer works but i'm not a xterm person (i get the help text then a type mplayer in xterm)...

smplayer and gnome-mplayer doesnt see my mplayer install - so - howto fool ubuntu to accept my handmade install...

Last edited by bezeen; 2009-06-12 at 23:40.
 
Posts: 5,795 | Thanked: 3,151 times | Joined on Feb 2007 @ Agoura Hills Calif
#298
Originally Posted by B_Lizzard View Post
The Q5 seems like a very interesting device - considering the price and all. But, I haven't been able to find any conclusive and/or in-depth reviews of the device (especially the hardware), leaving me with a lot of questions.

First of all, what's the status on hardware support under Linux at this point, specifically the audio/video acceleration parts and the 2D/3D acceleration parts? Should we expect good sound quality from this device, similar to dedicated MP3 players (Cowon comes to mind)?

What's the battery life on this thing? What's the runtime when using the Q5 exclusively as an MP3 player?

Does it feel flimsy or not? Any issues with the build?

The Q5 and Q7 would benefit greatly from having a central, english-speaking forum or wiki of some kind, some place where all available information could be gathered.

Also, thanks for working on Mer for the Q5. It certainly looks great!

You saw the YouTube presentations, right, and the discussion on the Mobilread forums?

I just wrote to the site that sells 'em, and they were incredibly prompt with a response. I hardly had time to drum my fingers impatiently.

Of course a central english-speaking forum or wiki would be great. (Someone start a www.smartqtalk.com site and I will be there!) But if you wait till that happens, you will miss out on some of the fun.
 
rogue_ronin's Avatar
Posts: 24 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Honolulu, HI
#299
Originally Posted by Benson View Post
Sounds like you may have been making a filesystem on the whole-disk device, instead of the partition.
SD cards can be formatted with a naked filesystem (like a floppy disk traditionally is) or with a partition table and one or more partitions with filesystems in them (like a hard disk), with only minor usability implications for most purposes, but some special cases depend on having it one way or the other. If you do something like
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sdc
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc
you put a partition table on, but then immediately overwrite the partition table with a whole-disk filesystem.
You should do something more like:
Code:
cfdisk /dev/sdc
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1
to put the filesystem in the partitioned space.
That sounds like the answer. 'Course, a couple of times, I didn't mkfs.vfat at all, I did it in gparted and trusted it to handle things. It was definitely a pain -- but I'll keep what you say here in mind for the next time. Between this, and the SmartQ5 rename thing, it was a bad couple of hours...

m a r
 
Posts: 42 | Thanked: 18 times | Joined on Sep 2005
#300
Originally Posted by bezeen View Post
Not enough for me - i need graphics
libs missing by download pack names (then you use "sudo apt-get install):

libxss1
libenca0 (last letter is zero)
libmad0 (last letter is zero)

I've done everything and i think mplayer works but i'm not a xterm person (i get the help text then a type mplayer in xterm)...

smplayer and gnome-mplayer doesnt see my mplayer install - so - howto fool ubuntu to accept my handmade install...
mplayer - no sound - no video
i have the player going on on xterm (video and mp3) - seeing
starting playback...
A:153... and so on...

and yes - i've done insmod...

And i copy smplayer bin from smartq7 firmware and did the ldd - it needed
libqt4-core
but as i'm stuck with non working mplayer (and i cant get smplayer to work - the install doesnt see mplayer) i think i could be something missing in your (Matan) install instruction
 
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