A normal Jornada 720 contains a replaceable board containing ROM and RAM chips.
This makes it impossible to replace the operating system on these machines.
Some time ago HP started a project to port Linux to the Jornada 720.
During this project replacement boards were produced that had Flash ROM and RAM chips.
While a select few had access to these boards and were able to run linux,
most others had no chance to get them, as the hardware specifications were unavaliable at that time (they are avaliable
here now).
It turned out that it is possible to boot the linux kernel from Windows CE
3.0 using the hpcboot.exe bootloader from NetBSD. I have written a short
document on how to do so, avaliable here..
It was intended for people who wanted to take the concept further only, not for end users.
Later on some people took this work and turned it into something useful.
See this
post from Peter Gerwinski for a few pointers.
The problems with booting from Windows CE are the following:
- the power button can't be made to work, Windows CE allways boots
- there was an issue with running binaries with low ELF entry points (which is now solved)
This is however the only avaliable option for most people.
There is a problem with the framebuffer console - it only works when the kernel is compiled with gcc 2.95.2.
Jacek Lipkowski sq5bpf@acid.ch.pw.edu.pl