Aaron,

  Thank you for this report.

  Older Sigmarion(s) use MIPS chip and there were guys who ported
NetBSD to those.  It doesn't look like there is no free unix ports for
Sigmarion III.

  If I have a unit, I can test what's going wrong...

-- Yoshiki

J Reichow wrote:
> 
> Hello- especially Ned-
> 
> I have aquired a Sigmarion III device as a review/demo unit. There is a
> lot of interest within some circles (HPC users, people who want an upgrade
> from their MobilePro or Jornada7xx), but being a japan-only device no
> good reviews have surfaced on the english mobile sites.
> 
> Replying to some comments by Ned when Yoshiki-san brought up the Sig3 and
> my own impresions.
> 
> The Sigmarion III is a newish Handheld PC-like device that runs WinCE 4.1.
> It is decently priced (as low as $360 in Japan) compared to anything else
> in its class.  It has the usual specs for devices like this these days-
> 400 MHz PXA255, 64 MB RAM, SD and CF slots.  That's about where it ends as
> far as the "usual" specs are concerned.
> 
> In addition to the above, the Sigmarion III is special in a few ways-
> 
> * A USB Host (1.X) *and* a seperate USB slave port: the former is for
> attaching USB devices, the latter for connecting the Sig3 to a desktop for
> syncing, usbnet, etc.  I don't know of any other XScale PDAs that have
> this, although I think some Toshiba PocketPCs have at least some
> capability in this respect.  You can get a CF card to a USB host port to a
> PocketPC or Zaurus, but they are pretty expensive (US$140), take up a CF
> slot (where does wifi go?!) and bulkier.
> 
> Reading various forums, people have been able to hook up a number of
> devices to the USB port- keyboards, mice, USB hard drives scanners, and cd
> burners (!).
> 
> * A 5" 800x480 touch screen. What is there more to say? A smaller DPI, so
> the screen is a bit taller on the vertical axis than the Zaurus is when
> they both have 480 pixels. Like the Zaurus C7x0 the screen is very sharp,
> packing a lot of pixels in a tiny space.  Not as bright of a screen as the
> Zaurus C7x0, but easier to read for me for longer periods of time, though
> that is probably the DPI.
> 
> * A touch-typable keyboard.  Very much like the one on the Jornada 720.
> Which means that the keyboard feel like a laptop keyboard, a laptop
> keyboard with very small keys, but the same mechanism. As opposed to the
> click-click TV remote control-style of buttons on the Zaurus C7x0.  I have
> pretty stubby hands and I have no problem typing on the Sig3's kb.
> 
> There are all sorts of cellular data services you can get through NTT
> DoCoMo if you are in Japan. I am not and have no clue what options there
> are- but they do look sweet.
> 
> As far as running Squeak, things are not perfect yet.  I have spoken with
> Yoshiki-san some about it, but nothing has been resolved so far.  Using
> the older, stable VM (which is pointed to on the WinCE Squeak website)
> there seems to be a limit on the size of image that works for me, even
> with 58 MB of RAM free, I can only load an image around 10 MB in size. I
> tried to use his beta VM that allow the user to set the size of the memory
> heap, but the slider control doesn't show up. I've had no problems running
> all sorts of standard image versions though.
> 
> 0 tinyBenchmarks yields: 18017133 bc/sec and 633568 sends/sec.  These
> numbers are very close to what the C7{5,6}0 get.
> 
> They can be ordered through various Japan-US importers.  The one with the
> best price (US$525) is Conics.net <http://conics.net/shp/pda/sigmarion3/>
> who also have some good photos up.  Other places that carry them include
> Dynamism (US$599) and www.Japan-Direct.com (US$699).
> 
> Regards,
> Aaron
> 
> --
> "Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were
> consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them."  ::  paul graham
> 
>