This is the next attempt to make my HP iPAQ h5450 friends with Linux. Last time I tried Familiar Linux, and though I had some success with it, it seemed too raw to be human-usable, as got neither wifi, nor usb working, so no networking. This time I’ve decided to try The Ångström distribution.

The first difference from Familiar distribution — it has a live-image, so you can run and try it without installing linux on your device. Although after running the image, pocket pc has the hard-reset effect (you are warned), this live image was rather impressive, so i’ve decided to install it to my (device’s?) ROM.

How you usually start similiar actions with such fragile devices? Backup!

Start is familiar to Familiar users: install BootBlaster, backup original and upload custom bootloader to device. Everything is clear here: copy bootblaster’s .exe to the pocket pc, backup original ROM and bootloader, download to some safe place (desktop, or an sd-card would be nice), upload custom bootloader to the pocket pc. In BootBlaster, menu Flash->Program find downloaded pxa image and program it. Success signal is the dialog window, containing something like this:

mach_type set to 203 = 0xcb
-> OK ->
You appear to have a valid OHH Bootloader 2.21.12 in flash. 
To access this Bootloader on the serial port, hold the joypad center and reset.

Note on the serial port here. When using this bootloader for the first time, i couldn’t reach it for some time. To connect you need: serial port connection (i had no success with USB, so used RS-232 (COM) instead), terminal client (minicom under *nix/hyperterminal on windows) tuned for 115200 8N1. Reboot iPAQ, holding the joyapd (soem buzzing is expected here), launch terminal client and you should see boot> prompt. If you’ve already got here, then bootloader is successfully installed and is ready for your commands. If you don’t see the boot> prompt — try pressing few times; maybe you have connected after the text was shown. So now we are ready to upload new firmware to the device. We say load root to bootloader and send corresponding *.jffs2 file, using ymodem (in minicom — Ctrl+A — S). Now you can have you tea/coffee while waiting the firmware to be in place.

At last, the firmware is ready:

boot> load root
partition root is a jffs2 partition:
expecting .jffs2 or wince_image.gz.
After receiving file, will automatically uncompress .gz images
loading flash region root
using ymodem
ready for YMODEM transfer...
91DA40D56241099A6E14CD8ED6898F8D  Angstrom-x11-image-glibc-ipk-2007.12-h5000.rootfs.jffs2
01600000 bytes loaded to A0000400

programming flash...erasing ...
Erasing sector 00040000
............
Erasing sector 01FC0000
writing flash..
addr: 00040000 data: 20031985
............
addr: 01630000 data: FFFFFFFF
verifying ...
formatting ... done.

ordering bootloader:

boot> set linuxargs "root=/dev/mtdblock1 rootfstype=jffs2 console=ttyS00,115200"

and it happily answers:

setting param <linuxargs> to value <root=/dev/mtdblock1 rootfstype=jffs2 console=ttyS00,115200>

Finally boot. Now you see OS boot process details, which finish with:

Starting GPE display manager: gpe-dm

.-------.
|       |                  .-.
|   |   |-----.-----.-----.| |   .----..-----.-----.
|       |     | __  |  ---'| '--.|  .-'|     |     |
|   |   |  |  |     |---  ||  --'|  |  |  '  | | | |
'---'---'--'--'--.  |-----''----''--'  '-----'-'-'-'
                -'  |
                '---'

The Angstrom Distribution h5000 ttyS0

Angstrom 2007.12 h5000 ttyS0

h5000 login:

And that’s all. The screen is blank. This is a known bug, that the device is not booting, while cradled. Get it out, press reset button and eveything is ok!

After this, as usually, calibrate the touchscreen, setup roto password, create non-root user account, set time and.. we’re inside: “Welcome to GPE!”

To be continued.

Some links:
Angstorm WinCeQuickInstall
Angstorm iPAQ 5550 Installation