Archives

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Booting Linux on HTC Typhoon-A Comprehensive guide

I ran into sooo many difficulties trying to taste Linux on my Typhoon.Followed Vivien's guide to no avail.Had a hard time because I'm a complete Linux noob.

Tools you require...
1)Htc Typhoon ;)
2)Memory Card Reader
3)miniSD card (min 16MB)
4)Linux miniSD Image
4)Linux Basics
5)Lotta Determination!

The Method ::
Step 1)Simply copy the image to the card using the following command(simply copying it to miniSD in Windows would not help!!):
# dd if=minisd.img of=/dev/sdx
This command should be run at shell prompt in any flavour of Linux(I'm using Ubuntu Dapper).This command 'dd' is used to create a bootable image on the disk(here miniSD).

We need to give the exact path of the miniSD image - for this,right click on miniSD image file on your Linux machine and click on 'Properties' and copy the path which starts with '/media/Pendrive/' for the 'if' block.For the 'of' block,we need to know the path of the miniSD card reader.Generally it is /dev/sdx -- here 'x' varied depending on the exact path.


(Thank you Apoorva(Linux Whizz) for the contribution)!!

Turn off your phone, install your miniSD under the battery. Press and hold the camera button (on the right), then press the power button (on the top) for half a second or so, then release the power button, and wait for a white screen to appear. If the splash screen logo appears instead you pressed the power button for too long, wait for the phone to boot then turn it off again and try again. The white screen should read:


SD MFG image
<- Press this key Start Download Download SD image?




You have 5 seconds to press the volume down button (on the left) to start loading the image. If you were not quick enough or something went wrong you will see the tricolor SPL screen. Power down your phone and try again.

Now the EOL bootloader should be loading (black screen written in white). If it sucessfully found 'IMAGE.BIN' on the miniSD, it will load it after waiting 5 seconds. If it does not, checking the few error messages you may get and trying to figure out what went wrong is your only option.

To turn off your phone again, you will have to remove the battery.

This method will not install Linux on your Typhoon.It is loaded on to RAM temporarily.To boot back into WM5 or WM 2003 SE,simply reboot!!

Stay tuned for a video demonstration of Linux on Typhoon.Will be posting it as soon as my Ubuntu is repaired on my Desktop!!

Note::This project is developed by Vivien Chappelier.Some text in this article is verbatim from his site.
Read More >>

Wednesday, October 4, 2006

HTC BlueAngel a.k.a Qtek 9090,O2 XDA IIs on Linux!

Was thrilled after seeing this video.It shows installing and running Linux on the HTC BlueAngel which is supposed to run on Windows CE!

If you are interested,you can further explore this project from the following URLs::
pof.eslack.org
handhelds.org
gnulinux.biz
linuxdevices.com
wiki.xda-developers.org
#htc-blueangel a irc.freenode.net (Logs)
Read More >>