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Step 7Put it together
You are now ready to start using the Psion. Unmount the CF card:
umount /dev/XXX1
umount /dev/XXX2
Unplug the CF card and plug it into the slot on your Psion. Turn on the Psion, navigate to the D drive, and double click on arlo.exe to run it.
The Psion should present you with a boot menu- you can press 0 to boot up or wait 5 seconds for it to continue. You will then see a penguin logo and a lot of text scrolling past as Linux starts up. The boot sequence may complain of error in the filesystem- unless these are serious enough for the boot sequence to stop, they can usually be ignored. You will eventually see a boot prompt saying
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 tty1
(Root password is "root")
Psion login:
Type root as username and password, and you will reach a command prompt (root@Psion: ~#). See image 1.
Congratulations- you now have a very small and quite underpowered Linux palmtop. Drink a toast to your success with the remainder of your weak lemon drink. However, the command prompt is not a very useful place to be if you want to browse Wikipedia. Type xinit to start the X window system. You should see the screen turn blank for a moment, then a stippled pattern with a black X in the middle of it. If the screen remains blank for more than about 10 seconds, go to the bottom of this step to find the "No X startup" fix.
After the stipple background shows for a few seconds you should see a taskbar at the bottom of the screen- this consists of a CPU usage meter (useful for telling whether the Psion is thinking hard or not), a Menu button that holds the applications, and a clock (that will probably be wrong- ignore this).
See image 2
The parts below are for information purposes- if you are happy at this point in the install you can continue to the next step.
To turn it off:
To quit X, press Ctrl-Menu-Backspace to return to the command prompt. To turn off the Psion (for instance to change batteries or add additional content to the CF card), type shutdown -r now at the console, and press Menu-Esc after the Psion beeps, while the screen is blank or displaying the boot menu but before the penguin appears. You can now safely remove the CF card and batteries- when you want to use the Psion again, replace these and turn it on, and it will boot up Linux. Note that you do not have to shutdown the Psion to turn it off- just press Menu-Esc to make it sleep, and press Esc or tap the screen to wake it back up. It is only necessary to shut it down to replace batteries or the CF card.
To go back to "being a Psion":
To return to the Psion's EPOC operating system (but why would you want to when you have Linux?), turn the Psion off as above. Remove the CF card, and turn the Psion on. It will give three falling beeps, and return to the PSION Series 5 startup screen. To return to Linux, you will need to navigate back to arlo.exe on the D drive and run it.
No X startup?
I have found that occasionally, especially if the Psion complains of errors in the file system, it will refuse to start the X window system. If the xinitmmand just shows a blank screen, press Menu-1 to get back to the console. If it says "Touchscreen not found" or something similar, shut down the Psion as described above and restart it- this fixed the probem every time it occurred for me. Also, since running e2fsk on the linux file system while teh CF card was mounted on my PC has stopped the Psion complaining of file system errors, and the "Touchscreen not found" bug has not reoccured. YMM, as always, V
umount /dev/XXX1
umount /dev/XXX2
Unplug the CF card and plug it into the slot on your Psion. Turn on the Psion, navigate to the D drive, and double click on arlo.exe to run it.
The Psion should present you with a boot menu- you can press 0 to boot up or wait 5 seconds for it to continue. You will then see a penguin logo and a lot of text scrolling past as Linux starts up. The boot sequence may complain of error in the filesystem- unless these are serious enough for the boot sequence to stop, they can usually be ignored. You will eventually see a boot prompt saying
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 tty1
(Root password is "root")
Psion login:
Type root as username and password, and you will reach a command prompt (root@Psion: ~#). See image 1.
Congratulations- you now have a very small and quite underpowered Linux palmtop. Drink a toast to your success with the remainder of your weak lemon drink. However, the command prompt is not a very useful place to be if you want to browse Wikipedia. Type xinit to start the X window system. You should see the screen turn blank for a moment, then a stippled pattern with a black X in the middle of it. If the screen remains blank for more than about 10 seconds, go to the bottom of this step to find the "No X startup" fix.
After the stipple background shows for a few seconds you should see a taskbar at the bottom of the screen- this consists of a CPU usage meter (useful for telling whether the Psion is thinking hard or not), a Menu button that holds the applications, and a clock (that will probably be wrong- ignore this).
See image 2
The parts below are for information purposes- if you are happy at this point in the install you can continue to the next step.
To turn it off:
To quit X, press Ctrl-Menu-Backspace to return to the command prompt. To turn off the Psion (for instance to change batteries or add additional content to the CF card), type shutdown -r now at the console, and press Menu-Esc after the Psion beeps, while the screen is blank or displaying the boot menu but before the penguin appears. You can now safely remove the CF card and batteries- when you want to use the Psion again, replace these and turn it on, and it will boot up Linux. Note that you do not have to shutdown the Psion to turn it off- just press Menu-Esc to make it sleep, and press Esc or tap the screen to wake it back up. It is only necessary to shut it down to replace batteries or the CF card.
To go back to "being a Psion":
To return to the Psion's EPOC operating system (but why would you want to when you have Linux?), turn the Psion off as above. Remove the CF card, and turn the Psion on. It will give three falling beeps, and return to the PSION Series 5 startup screen. To return to Linux, you will need to navigate back to arlo.exe on the D drive and run it.
No X startup?
I have found that occasionally, especially if the Psion complains of errors in the file system, it will refuse to start the X window system. If the xinitmmand just shows a blank screen, press Menu-1 to get back to the console. If it says "Touchscreen not found" or something similar, shut down the Psion as described above and restart it- this fixed the probem every time it occurred for me. Also, since running e2fsk on the linux file system while teh CF card was mounted on my PC has stopped the Psion complaining of file system errors, and the "Touchscreen not found" bug has not reoccured. YMM, as always, V
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