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Sharp Zaurus

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Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 running OpenZaurus and OPIE, with docking cradle and stylus
Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 running OpenZaurus and OPIE, with docking cradle and stylus

The Sharp Zaurus is the name of a series of Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) made by Sharp Corporation. The Zaurus was the most popular PDA during the 1990s in Japan and was based on a proprietary operating system. The first Sharp PDA to use a variant of the Linux operating system was the SL-5000D. The variant was Embedix Plus.

The name derives from the common suffix applied to the names of dinosaurs, and was chosen to convey the idea of strength.

Contents

Zaurus history

In September 1993, Sharp introduced the PI-3000, the first in the Zaurus line of PDAs. Featuring a black and white LCD screen, handwriting recognition, and optical communication capabilities among its features, the Zaurus soon became one of Sharp's flagship products.

The PI-4000, released in 1994, expanded the Zaurus' features with a built-in modem and facsimile functions. This was succeeded in 1995 by the PI-5000, which had e-mail and mobile phone interfaces, as well as PC linking capability. The Zaurus K-PDA was the first Zaurus to have a built-in keyboard in addition to handwriting recognition; the PI-6000 and PI-7000 in brought additional improvements.

During this time, Sharp was making significant advances in color LCD technology. In May of 1996, the first color Zaurus was released; the MI-10 and MI-10DC were equipped with a five inch (127 mm) color thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD screen. This model had the ability to connect to the internet, and had a built-in camera and audio recorder. Later that year, Sharp developed a forty inch (1 m) TFT LCD screen, the world's largest at the time. In December, the MI-10/10DC Zaurus was chosen as the year's best product by Information Display Magazine in the United States.

Sharp continued to make advancements in display technology; the Zaurus gained additional multimedia capabilities, such as video playback, with the introduction of the MI-E1 in Japan in November of 2000. The MI-E1 was also the first Zaurus to support both Secure Digital and CompactFlash memory cards, a feature which would become standard on future models as well.

Although the MI series was extremely popular in Japan, it was never released in either the USA or Europe - probably largely due to the strictly Japanese UI, which was never translated into any other language. As a result, the machines released outside Japan were the Linux based SL series, the first of which was the SL-5000D "developer edition." This was shortly followed by the SL-5500; both used 'Embedix', an embedded version of the Linux operating system developed by Lineo combined with Qtopia the Qt toolkit based embedded application environment developed by Trolltech.

The development of the MI series in Japan was continued for a while, but the MI-E25DC has been officially declared to be the last MI-Series Zaurus.

Sharp has continued development of the SL series in Japan releasing the SL-C700, C750, C760 and C860 models which all feature 640x480 VGA screen resolution. They are all based on faster 400 MHz Intel XScale technology, although the SL-C700 was flawed and the apparent speed was the same as the 206 MHz SL-5500. All four of the SL-C models are clamshell type devices with the unusual ability to rotate the screen. This allows the device to be used in 'landscape' mode with the keyboard, much like a miniature notebook PC, or in 'portrait' mode as a PDA.

In October 2004 Sharp announced the SL-C3000 - the world's first PDA with an integrated hard disk drive. It featured a similar hardware and software specification to the earlier C860 model, apart from a 4GB microdrive and a USB Host port. This was followed in March 2005 by the cheaper SL-C1000 which replaced the hard drive with 128MB of flash ROM. In June 2005, Sharp released the SL-C3100. This combined the flash memory from the C1000 (which speeded up application loading) with the 4GB hard drive from the C3000. The latest model called SL-C3200, which is comparable with the SL-C3100 but with a 6GB microdrive, upgraded dictionary and slightly different colors, was released in March 2006.

While the SL series devices are no longer sold by Sharp in the US or EU there is an active market on the internet. Devices from Japan are converted to English language and offered for resale through internet merchants.

Regional distributors offer services which sell Zaurus units together with support facilities at a premium: since the newer models are not sold by conventional channels outside of Japan, these companies organise defective units to be conveyed to Sharp in Japan under the standard warranty which is usually only available within Japan.

There are currently a number of companies that act as import agents for people outside Japan who want to buy a Zaurus. This is legal but the buyer is liable for sales tax in their own country.

Zaurus models

A Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000, displaying Midnight Commander.
Enlarge
A Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000, displaying Midnight Commander.

Zaurus software

SL-C1000 screen with NetFront Browser on Qtopia desktop (converted to English)
Enlarge
SL-C1000 screen with NetFront Browser on Qtopia desktop (converted to English)

With the switch to the Linux operating system the Zaurus became capable of running variations of a wide variety of proprietary and open source software, including web and FTP servers, databases, and compilers. Some developers have created a replacement Linux distribution for the Zaurus called OpenZaurus, which uses the OPIE or GPE graphical user interfaces and is designed for the power user, but it does not include the proprietary software that comes with Sharp's distribution.

Software provided by Sharp includes basic PDA packages such as a datebook, addressbook, and todo list. These PIM applications are fairly unsophisticated, and a number of individuals and groups have developed alternatives. One popular - and free - alternative that runs on the Sharp ROM and OpenZaurus as well as Windows and Linux is the [KDE PIM/Platform-independent] set of applications. KDE PIM/PI is based on PIM applications from the KDE desktop suite for Linux. KDE PIM/PI includes KOrganizer/Platform-independent (or KOPI), KAddressbook/Platform-independent (or KAPI), K-OpieMail/pi (or OMPI), and PwM/PI, a password manager with strong encryption.

There is also a distribution of OpenBSD for the Zaurus.

Possibilities

The Linux based models in the Zaurus range are popular with users who enjoy the ideas of experimentation and extensibility the platform provides. With all these models, it is possible to supplant the original OS entirely by reflashing the ROM. Examples of alternate ROMs developed by the Zaurus development community include OpenZaurus, Cacko and pdaXrom.

OpenBSD, a security focused BSD operating system is also available on the SL-C3000, SL-C3100, and SL-C3200 with development continuing in order to expand support to C860 and C1000, with the possiblility to further support the SL-5500 should developers so desire. OpenBSD however does not entirely replace the original operating system nor does it come as a ROM image, instead it uses the original Linux install as a bootloader and installs the same as OpenBSD would on any other platform.

Except for changing the operating system , it is also possible to replace only the Linux kernel which gives a better performance while maintaining compatibility and retaining installed software that comes with a "stock" Rom.

External links

ROMs and Distributions

 

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