Also on that list of options is a notification queue editor on which I stumbled on. Being ignorant about Windows Mobile devices I though of it as a kind of notification log which just got full with entries. Unfortunately the notification queue – which is just called “Notifications” – in the UI, is not a log! ;)

This queue actually holds information about what actions to perform when a specific and/or perdiodic event occurs. Of course I didn’t know that offhand and right away “cleaned up” that notification queue by simply selecting all entries and pushing them to /dev/null so to speak. After some tinkering around I hooked the device up to the laptop via the USB cable and had to realize that it would not initiate the ActiveSync/WMDC connection and would just load the battery. The known device plug-in/out sound was audible, though. Then I established the ActiveSync/WMDC connection via Bluetooth and things worked fine. So something got screwed.

You have two ways to solve this:

1. Hard-Reset your device after making a backup of all your important data. Recommending PPCPimBackup here.
2. Restore the previously deleted ActiveSync/WMDC notification queue event handlers.

How do I know that a Hard-Reset fixes this? Well, ahem… After first messing with the WMDC installation installed device drivers  on Windows7 and then reinstalling Windows7 entirely and then getting no result, and then reviving the Vista installation and seeing that this also didn’t get the device connected via USB cable, I took the last measure. And of course, by not knowing that the deletion of the Notification Queue screwed things up, I managed to do just that again. Yesterday.

Restoring your deleted ActiveSync/WMDC notification queue event handlers:

1. Open up the Notification Queue editor in the Task Manager
2. Add the following items

Application: repllog.exe
Arguments: /remote /h
Type: CNT_EVENT
Event: <none>

Application: repplog.exe
Arguments: AppRunAfterRs232Detect
Type: CNT_EVENT
Event: NOTIFICATION_EVENT_RS232_DETECTED

Application: repllog.exe
Arguments: AppRunAfterRndisFnDetected
Type: CNT_EVENT
Event: NOTIFICATION_EVENT_RNDIS_FN_DETECTED

Note, that the “Event” types have to be guessed by the textual representation in the the event drop down, and that it is not possible in the UI to select an Event of type <none>. If have chosen the RS232 one for the first entry.

After all things have been set up, a Soft-Reset (recommending TD2 SoftReset) could be required (don’t recall) and you can happily connect via USB to your Windows computer again.

Sometimes one has to learn things the hard way …

It just drives me nuts that it always screws the MBR on installation :P

They could have done it “The right way” … this time.

After fetching the RELENG_7 source, updating the Haiku driver code and some small changes and stub additions to the Haiku FreeBSD-compat lib I got it to compile and even run! I am not sure if every change is they way it is to be done, but hey: It’s a start.

Booting up Haiku, plugging in the cable, waiting for an IP assignment via DHCP worked flawlessly. Nevertheless, the network stopped after one minute of inactivity. Replugged the cable and it was back again. Starting a Haiku checkout worked out, but after some time it hung. CTRL-C’ing the checkout didn’t work and opening a new terminal window either. Only initiating the shutdown process, with a then hanging shutdown process window was possible. So a KDL reboot was necessary. If I recall correctly, this is the same behaviour I observed at some time with the “bcm570x” driver from Haiku on the old machine. Anyways, here is a sign of network life:

I disassembled the machine once again in order to have a look for any “burned” parts but nothing to see on the graphics chip itself. From some pictures on the net I saw that the graphics memory is aligned across the die on the chip itself – all covered by a aluminium plate. Besides that, no replacement is possible, as the chip itself is soldered on the motherboard.

The “box” has accompanied me “through thick and thin” as a work horse development and spare time gaming machine. Despite showing its age performance wise, I’ve never had any issues and that is even more frustrating having the machine “leave” this way. So, farewell and have a nice time in the new companions’ packaging …

The next hurdle to take was the placement of the files when you drag them onto the removable device shown in Rhythmbox. By default, the files would be placed in the root of the device. As the folder for mp3s is actually “mp3″ on the Memory Stick, we have to open the prevoiously created “.is_audio_player” file and place the following content into it:

audio_folders=mp3/
folder_depth=1

This tells Rhythmbox to place any files into the “mp3″ folder of the Memory Stick and create a “<Artist>-<Album>” directory where the songs are stored. Specifying “folder_depth=2″ would actually create a folder for the artist and below that one a folder for the album. But that’s not my preference.

So, all in all I am quite confident with this now. But the question remains why one has to search the net for such information, hand craft a file and put obviously undocumented – or at least not easily findable – configurations in there? Rhythmbox has support for the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) which could make live easier, but this doesn’t account for pure USB mass storage devices. So at least that part should be configurable within the music management application itself. Room for improvement.

For some time, I’ve been sharing my Mozilla Thunderbird profile from my NTFS partition for openSUSE Thunderbird installation. Everything worked very well and I could manage (as in mostly read) my mails from both, XP and openSUSE. But then out of sudden, XP decided that the partition needed a checkup. And bang: A small amount of 10k mails from a mailling list got lost. Ok, of course, these mails weren’t important at all, but what happens if some more important mails get lost? So I was looking for a solution.

As my webhoster does provide IMAP, it looked like a good catch all account, unfortunately the server-side filtering was kinda restricted. So I tested out my gmail account (which has been lurking around unused for quite some years since my first invitation) and explored the possibilities. Things got set up very quickly, and I am quite confident with the all in one collector account which receives and sorts/filters all my mails into predefined tags/folders/labels from all the different mail accounts which forward into the gmail one. Remote management via IMAP and Thunderbird is fine, when you have mastered the first hurdles (mails not being placed in the trash can; not all folders synched on start). And reading all your mails when you’ve got no mail client handy is a breeze with the web based frontend. I am caught by big G. ;)

A big improvement has been made in the package management system. It’s incredibly fast, and is the total opposite to the pain in the a** 10.2 incarnation with poping up status windows. 10.3 got better, but now, it’s fast and usable. The package management tools have undergone a revamp and it’s some clicks away just adding new repositories while browsing the currently available packages. Thumbs up!

The second area I’ve had a more intense look at was the Bluetooth integration. I was surprised how easy it was plug my Bluetooth dongle in and browse my mobile with Nautilus. Once again, a total opposite to my Windows experience with bloated legacy Broadcom software not even providing explorer integration. The only downside is that I am still not able to transfer/copy files directly via Nautilus. I’ve read that other people have problems too. OBEX file transfer seems to work when the mobile is not connected, but I rather place the files where I wan’t and not let the mobile decide itself. Either the phone is not cappable of the operations I wan’t to perform, or there is still something fishy. (Bluetooh-Oliver: Any ideas? ;)) But even this issue doesn’t bedim my positive impressions from this release.

And overall: I like the dark-greyish-green new look. ;)

Enjoy.

Thumbs up!