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I felt like re-living old times by playing some Gameboy roms on the Zipit so I compiled the ohboy emulator with OpenWrt buildroot. 

Ohboy is actually a frontend for the Gameboy emulator gnuboy, but it combines the two into one binary. The menu system is a very nice addition to the SDL based emulator and runs well on the Zipit.

I created an OpenWrt package of ohboy that should run on any of the current builds floating around. I'm running slug's in-flash gmenu2x build on my main Zipit right now with my overlayfs scripts that puts packages on the SD card. If you are running the overlayfs scripts you can download and install the package with:

After much experimenting with overlayfs in OpenWrt I've finally settled on a solution that works well. I have decided to call this project 'ovpkg' as in 'overlay package'. You can still use my old instructions if you have an ext2 partition on your card, but if you want to use a completely fat formatted card you can try out this new set of scripts.

You'll need to make sure you have the following packages installed:
losetup, fdisk, e2fsprogs
There seems to be a problem with the e2fsprogs package hosted at the chainxor.org repo that prevents these scripts from working. Install my e2fsprogs package instead of using the one from the repo (opkg install /path/to/downloaded/e2fsprogs_1.41.12-2_pxa.ipk).

Update: I just got a form submission with a good tip on the power button mod:
"I recessed my power button by removing the keypad and with a sharp narrow chisel blade in my x-acto handle removed the little center tip on the underside of the green key. Now I never have unintended turn on. No need for all that tedious gluing. The key still functions albeit with a firmer push."

Last month I got a wiggler jtag clone from ebay and brought some dead Zipit's back to life again. Now I find myself using more than one quite often and decided to do another soft keyboard mod so I don't get yelled at for clicking while the wife is sleeping. I also find myself putting the Zipit in suspend mode and carrying it around the house. The power button seems to always get pushed while in my pocket.

Gmu player

wejp's gmu player has been available on the Zipit for some time. His latest version is 0.8.0BETA1 which I have compiled for OpenWrt. You can get the makefile and patches from my github if you want to compile it yourself or install the package below.

gmu_0.8.0BETA1-3_pxa.ipk

The Zipit Z2 has been around for a while now and is showing some age compared to the newest flashy ARM devices like the beagleboard and the soon to be released Raspberry Pi, but there's still plenty of life left in the Z2. You can now get a Z2 for as low as $10. In December 2010 rkdavis did a little blurb about what went on that year in the land of the Zipits. This is my blurb for what happened in 2011.

Early on in 2011, fanoush brought us a properly rotated uboot screen on the Zipit lcd as well as a more reliable uboot keypad driver. To go along with these changes I released a new flash that included fanoush's uboot patches and a "RecoveryOS" which contained a small/basic linux initramfs with some tools that (barely) fit into the Zipit's flash memory.

Update: It's come to my attention that Windows will not see a Fat partition on a card if the first partition is ext2. I have changed the instructions below to so that the fat partition is first on the card, thus allowing you to use it with Windows.

I've been playing around with the OpenWrt RecoveryOS a bit recently. I like it because it's small, fast and there's a good amount of packages available in Projectgus' repo. The problem with all these awesome packages and the RecoveryOS, though, is that there's not much space left in the Zipit's internal flash to store these goodies. 

WARNING: Do not run the z2uflasher script from z2lite. The flash script is not working properly with it. Until I figure out what the problem is, I recommend using z2sid or openwrt to flash an already u-booted Zipit. 

UPDATE: anarsoul has merged the linux 3.2 kernel into projectgus' OpenWrt repo. This means that the package repo from chainxor.org will no longer contain 3.0 kernel module patches for this openwrt recovery os. The recovery os itself will still work fine, but you should not try to install kernel modules packages with opkg. I will either make my own repo or rebuild the recovery os with the newer 3.2 kernel.

For some time now the EWoC script has been unable to accept SSID's with spaces in them. I have a modified version which allows for spaces.

ewoc-z2sid.fixed

I compiled the Linux 3.0.0+ kernel with some USB Wifi drivers. This should allow for some interesting things on the Zipit (hostap, wifi bridging, monitor mode, etc). Here's a list of the chipsets:

Broadcom 43xx (+legacy)
Atheros Based
Ralink rt2500, rt2501/rt73, rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx, rt2800usb
Realtek RTL8192CU/RTL8188CU
ZyDAS ZD1211/ZD1211B

You'll also need firmware for some of these. If you're using z2sid you can install them from the repos with apt-get. Here's a list of the Debian packages:
http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firmware&searchon=names&suite=unstable&section=all

I only tested with an Ralink rt73 stick and the Debian Sid firmware-ralink package. Have fun!

UPDATE: I packed up my current rootfs for anyone who would like to test it. If anyone has suggestions please post some comments. I'm really looking for a good panel type app that is light, has a menu and can display stats (cpu/batt/wifi). Autologin is setup for the username "user" with the password "user". Root has the password "root".

z2sidX_v7_rc1.tar.bz2 (mirror) Jul-7-2011 (md5sum 826d74c7a37a3d747a7a08aa1500a8da)