z50 for everyday life?

[Emanuele Santoro]

Hello @ all,
i've just subscribed to this list.

I'm about to buy an IBM WorkPad z50, planning to use it with NetBSD 4.0.
Well, i have to ask some questions before buying.

- How much extended  battery life lasts? I red that extended battery
  allows up to 16 hours of life. Is this true ? If not, how much the
  battery *really* lasts using it with NetBSD (possibly 4.0) ?
  Are suspend to disk and similar processes supported?

- The z50 i'm going to buy has only got 16 megs ram, and i plan to
  search for chipset-compatible ram bay, or for an old and original
  z50 ram bay. NetBSD 4.0 with Xhpc is usable? is reactive, slow
  or... ? (i know it depends on the clients i use)

- I've searched for microdrives. I've found IBM microdrives and some
  other-bran microdrives with up to 6.5/8 GB capacity. The question is:
  shall is use only ibm (up to 1 gb) microdrives or can i use theese
  bigger microdrives ?

- I plan to use a 4 GB compact flash card. Will it be supported by the
  z50?

- I've read that serial cable and InfraRedport aren't currently
  supported by NetBSD on the z50. Is this true ?

- I've read that the z50 has a 16 bit cardbus slot, and i can only use
  16 bit pcmcia cards. I don't really know if it's a problem: i want to
  search for a 802.11g compatible pcmcia card... are there any 16 bit
  cardbus 802.11g pcmcia card? or i'll be able to use only old 802.11b
  cards?

- Using wireless, are there any limitations? I plan to use it at home
  (wpa/tkip pre shares key) and at school (open network! :-D), but not
  only: can i do wireless sniffing, packet capturing and similar things
  with a pcmcia wireless card?

- I thougt to use the z50 to connect to my home network sometimes,
  using somthing as OpenVPN or Vtun, and to sync my data with rsync or
  something similar. Do you think it is possible?

- Using OpenVPN or Vtun, i plan to mount a remote NFS resource (a shared
  hard disk on my home server, about 250 GB). Would it be possible ?

- I think i'll use remote X client from my home net to enlight the load
  on the z50. Do you think it is possible ?

- May I use GNU Emacs on the z50 or is it too heavy? I can use vim, but
  emacs is more comfortable...

- and (this is the last :-P)... for all the things i've mentioned, do
  you think i can use the z50 or should i search for an HP Jornada or
  a Nec MobilePro?


Tha fact is: i don't really like the way the "nettop"concept is growing
up: eeePc, Acer One and similar, just crappy commercial shit.
Their price is high, performance is high, battery life is low.

I just want something to get connected (read and send my emails (with
mutt, using gnupg for privacy) and sometimes surf the web (with elinks
or if needed, with dillo and sometimes chat in IRC or play nethack and
connect home to see if it's all ok).
I want it to be very low price: i should not damn myself if someone
steal it, or if it breaks off.

May the ibm workpad z50 be good for this pruposes?

Thanks, and excuse me for the *LONG* e-mail.
Emanuele Santoro

--
Il regno dei cieli non è per tutti | Heaven kingdom is not for everyone
                          Ing. Giuseppe Russo

[der Mouse-3]

> - How much extended battery life lasts?

I don't know.  The battery I use is one from some online shop (my
memory says batteryrefill.com, but I don't know how accurate that is).
It is physically the same form-factor as the battery I got it with, but
gives me some 6+ hours of battery life; the one I got it with gave me
only about two.

> - The z50 i'm going to buy has only got 16 megs ram, [...]

Mine had 48, but the 32M addon I was using broke.  (It was Kingston,
and I sent it back to them, but they said it was unrepairable.)  If you
find a reliable source for z50 RAM, I'd love to hear about it.

>   NetBSD 4.0 with Xhpc is usable?

No idea.  I've never even tried 4.0 on my z50; 4.0 has been problematic
enough to integrate into my local setup that 3.1 is the latest I run,
except for one 4.0 i386 machine which is my guinea pig for 4.0.

I've also never tried Xhpc; to the extent I've been working on X, I've
been looking at digging up enough info to build a ddx layer for the
(R6.4pl3) X I'm using on all my other machines.  (For a server, that
is.  Client-side X Just Works for me.)

> - I've searched for microdrives.  [...]

I have a Seagate "8GB" microdrive (actually more like 7.5G) which has
never given me any trouble.

> - I plan to use a 4 GB compact flash card.  Will it be supported by
>   the z50?

If my experience is any guide, it will be fine.  But I haven't tried
very many CF cards; I could have just been lucky.

> - I've read that serial cable and InfraRedport aren't currently
>   supported by NetBSD on the z50.  Is this true ?

In my experience, the serial port works but the infrared does not.  But
I haven't really put any effort into making the IR work.

> - I've read that the z50 has a 16 bit cardbus slot, and i can only
>   use 16 bit pcmcia cards.

I thought "16 bit cardbus" was a contradiction in terms; I thought 16
bit was PCMCIA and cardbus was 32 bit.  Perhaps I'm confused.

I do know that when I was looking for USB cards for my z50, I found a
number of cardbus cards which fit physically but were not even
recognized as present by the (3.1) kernel.

As for wireless, I've found some wireless cards which work, but I don't
know whether they're 11g or 11b or what.  I've never cared enough about
wireless to bother.

/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML mouse@...
/ \ Email!     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

[Scott Lawrence-4]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 10:45 AM, Emanuele Santoro <santoro@...> wrote:
> Hello @ all,
> i've just subscribed to this list.

hello!

> I'm about to buy an IBM WorkPad z50, planning to use it with NetBSD 4.0.
> Well, i have to ask some questions before buying.
>
> - How much extended  battery life lasts? I red that extended battery
>  allows up to 16 hours of life. Is this true ? If not, how much the
>  battery *really* lasts using it with NetBSD (possibly 4.0) ?
>  Are suspend to disk and similar processes supported?

On mine, with the lid opened or closed (doesn't matter) I get 11 hours
of time on the extended battery.  That's either with or without use.

> - The z50 i'm going to buy has only got 16 megs ram, and i plan to
>  search for chipset-compatible ram bay, or for an old and original
>  z50 ram bay. NetBSD 4.0 with Xhpc is usable? is reactive, slow
>  or... ? (i know it depends on the clients i use)

I have 48mb in mine and it works well.  the biggest slowdown on it is
the slow access times to the CF card. I believe it uses PIO.  Any disk
accesses are painfully slow.

> - I've searched for microdrives. I've found IBM microdrives and some
>  other-bran microdrives with up to 6.5/8 GB capacity. The question is:
>  shall is use only ibm (up to 1 gb) microdrives or can i use theese
>  bigger microdrives ?
>
> - I plan to use a 4 GB compact flash card. Will it be supported by the
>  z50?

I've got a 4GB CF in mine, works well.


It's great for uberportable simple programming or note taking or text editing.
I *LOVE* the keyboard on it.

I also put a handle on mine to make it easier to carry.
http://www.umlautllama.com/gallery/hector

-s

--
Scott Lawrence
yorgle@...
http://Scott.ij2fi.com

[Khoa Tran]

Speaking frankly, I think that NetBSD on the z50 is good (and quite fun) to tinker with, but its "everyday" use is a bit more limited. Xhpc works, but is slow, and the suspend routine is buggy and will crash your machine about 10% of the time. Compiling packages is painfully, painfully slow (we're talking days here), unless you have another machine you can set up with distcc to take the bulk of the cpu load, but even then we're still talking days, just fewer days.

I have also run into instances where I completely lose keyboard/mouse focus functionality. I've never figured out why that is (window focus gets messed up). I usually have to do a re-install and restore from backup to get things back to normal, and this also takes hours to do.

I've had success with a 16-bit WPC11 card. 32 bit cardbus cards do not work. Period. Also, be careful, certain revisions of the DWL-650 don't work. In any case, do a google search if you've narrowed down to a card, and

Now, if I haven't scared you off yet, I do have mine working with centerim for IM, elinks/links-gui/dillo for web browsing, and Ted for basic word processing. The blackbox window manager runs quite well on it, and there aren't too many dependencies to have to compile and install. It's very cute, and I like the fact that old hardware like this can still be used with a modern OS. You just have to understand that it's not going to be user-friendly, and you'll have to devote lots of time to get things up and running. But I guess that's where half the fun lies, since I've learned quite a bit working with NetBSD and the z50. Just consider yourself warned going in, though.


Khoa Tran
_________________________________________________________________

[elijah rutschman]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 9:45 AM, Emanuele Santoro <santoro@...> wrote:
> - I've read that the z50 has a 16 bit cardbus slot, and i can only use
>  16 bit pcmcia cards. I don't really know if it's a problem: i want to
>  search for a 802.11g compatible pcmcia card... are there any 16 bit
>  cardbus 802.11g pcmcia card? or i'll be able to use only old 802.11b
>  cards?

There are no 16-bit 802.11g PC Cards, so you'll have to use either a
supported 802.11b PC Card or a supported 802.11b CF Card with a PCMCIA
adapter.

> I just want something to get connected (read and send my emails (with
> mutt, using gnupg for privacy) and sometimes surf the web (with elinks
> or if needed, with dillo and sometimes chat in IRC or play nethack and
> connect home to see if it's all ok).
> I want it to be very low price: i should not damn myself if someone
> steal it, or if it breaks off.
>
> May the ibm workpad z50 be good for this pruposes?

The IBM z50 will probably work well for this purpose, although I have
never used one.  I have used a MobilePro 780 in a similar fashion, and
it worked really well for that.  I recommend that you install and try
out the system before you track down a RAM upgrade for the device; I
hear this can be expensive or hard to find, and you might not end up
needing it for your purposes.

Elijah

--
http://elijahr.blogspot.com/

[Miles Nordin]

>>>>> "dm" == der Mouse <mouse@...> writes:

    dm> found some wireless cards which work, but I don't know whether
    dm> they're 11g or 11b or what.

AFAIK all 11g cards are cardbus and won't work.  the card which works
is the prism2 or orinoco.  but there seem to be some newfangled cards
called ``orinoco'' which are not eight years old and thus will not
work.  these will:

  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370082893974
  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110286570375

they are incorrectly calling it ``16-bit cardbus'' too.  it's pccard,
ISA bus, extremely slow.  I am planning to replace my current netbsd
2.0 PRISM2 AP (which is crashed every couple days by the modern
wireless stations) with openwrt/atheros-SoC and flip it to 11g-only
mode soon, so your card will not work in my house.  many places I
think it does work but not all places.

also, in a low power machine know that wireless can suck a lot of
energy, workable but not negligible compared to microdrive or display.
it's ok but, big.  I am not sure how these wifi celfones handle it.  I
bet they have special wifi chips that can't be obtained unless you
negotiate with terrorists.

don't buy this machine unless you are trying to impress someone or
build a fantastic basement museum of squished dreams.  It is a
completely impractical useless fucking pain in the ass.  At least it
has the gerbildick and not that idiotic resistive touchscreen and
plastic poking-wand, iirc, but aside from that, just forget it.  It is
barely able to flip ssh keystrokes onto 802.11.  It's not the last
MIPS/arm/superh laptop ever made---we are surrounded with the things
now.  But with no built-in radio, no camera, no realistic dozing-modes
support and no all-day battery, no outdoor-viewable screen, no
bluetooth...it can never become any more interesting than it once was,
only more annoying.  

how about nokia n800 instead?  Supposedly there are ongoing OS
releases for it, _from nokia_ but under GPL so you get both regression
testing AND software freedom, and it supports enough proprietary
software to watch youtube.  I've never had one, but it sounds about
fifty times better than a workpad and stilll moderately cheap.

[Emanuele Santoro]

On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 01:28:02PM -0500, elijah r. wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 9:dd45 AM, Emanuele Santoro <santoro@...> wrote:
> > - I've read that the z50 has a 16 bit cardbus slot, and i can only use
> >  16 bit pcmcia cards. I don't really know if it's a problem: i want to
> >  search for a 802.11g compatible pcmcia card... are there any 16 bit
> >  cardbus 802.11g pcmcia card? or i'll be able to use only old 802.11b
> >  cards?
>
> There are no 16-bit 802.11g PC Cards, so you'll have to use either a
> supported 802.11b PC Card or a supported 802.11b CF Card with a PCMCIA
> adapter.
>

Thats bad.

> > I just want something to get connected (read and send my emails (with
> > mutt, using gnupg for privacy) and sometimes surf the web (with elinks
> > or if needed, with dillo and sometimes chat in IRC or play nethack and
> > connect home to see if it's all ok).
> > I want it to be very low price: i should not damn myself if someone
> > steal it, or if it breaks off.
> >
> > May the ibm workpad z50 be good for this pruposes?
>
> The IBM z50 will probably work well for this purpose,

That's good.

> although I have never used one.  
That's bad.

> I have used a MobilePro 780 in a similar fashion, and it worked really
> well for that.  
That's good.

> I recommend that you install and try
> out the system before you track down a RAM upgrade for the device; I
> hear this can be expensive or hard to find, and you might not end up
> needing it for your purposes.
>
That's bad.

> Elijah
>
> --
> http://elijahr.blogspot.com/
Don't you write on your blog about your adventures using your
MobilePro ? ;-)

Thanks,
Emanuele Santoro
--
Il regno dei cieli non è per tutti.
Ing. Giuseppe Russo

[der Mouse-3]

> the card which works is the prism2 or orinoco.

For example, my "D-Link Air" DWL-650, which is is the former:

wi0 at pcmcia1 function 0: <D, Link DWL-650 11Mbps WLAN Card, Version 01.02, >
pcic0: port 0x400-0x43f
pcmcia1: card irq 5
wi0: 802.11 address 00:40:05:de:40:13
wi0: using RF:PRISM2 MAC:HFA3841 CARD:HWB3163-SST-flash
wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (0.3.0), Station (1.3.4)
wi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

(these messages from 3.1 i386; it is not convenient to get out the z50
at the moment).

> don't buy this machine unless [...]

If anyone wants to take this advice, I'll be happy to take your
"completely impracticel useless" z50 off your hands!

/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML mouse@...
/ \ Email!     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

[elijah rutschman]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 6:03 PM, Emanuele Santoro <santoro@...> wrote:
> Don't you write on your blog about your adventures using your
> MobilePro ? ;-)

I have't had many adventures with the MobilePro since I got an EeePC
last year, and the blog doesn't quite go back that far.  I might still
turn the MobilePro into an ssh terminal & file server (I have a
PCMCIA->IDE adapter I've been meaning to try out), but as far as a
mobile computer goes, the Eee is more suitable for my purposes.  So,
maybe sometime I'll have something to write about, but right now I'm
trying to revive an old world G3 PowerBook with GNU/Linux.  I do
however have some NetBSD/hpcmips binaries available for download at
http://www.neiu.edu/~edshawr/hpcmips/ if you want to save yourself
some compiling - though I am not sure they are compatible with NetBSD
4.

Cheers,
Elijah
--
http://elijahr.blogspot.com/

[Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom]

On 09/08 01:06 , Scott Lawrence wrote:
> It's great for uberportable simple programming or note taking or text editing.
> I *LOVE* the keyboard on it.

Therein lies the part I miss most about mine. IBM had the *BEST* keyboards
out there. The z50 had a keyboard that was better than any laptop I've felt
in years.

Even IBM laptops went to average-grade keyboards several years ago tho.
I'd love to find a modern equivalent to the z50... ultra-slim, fantastic
keyboard, low power requrements, but with hackable hardware and modern
processor and interfaces.

the z50 with the handle is a very cool idea.
http://www.umlautllama.com/gallery/hector?page=3

--
Carl Soderstrom
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com