Well, the AirPort has risen from it's own ashes and appears to be working now. It's been up for 13 hours now without any problems. It's really cool how the bridging "just works" for my network. Now all I have to do is flash the firmware on my wireless network cards(later this morning) and I can use my iPAQ for everything it was meant to be used for. I'm pretty excited. I should be getting the serial cable in a few days so I can try installing Linux on it. I wonder if there's a way to put Linux on a CF card instead of writing to the iPAQs flash... Hmm, that's how I boot Linux on my WorkPad z50. I'll have to look into that.

Not a whole lot going on in the programming front lately. My driver for the TrackIR is at a standstill(waiting for some more hardware from ECT so I can get multiple devices working). The code is very simple, so there haven't been any bugs to fix in a while.

Living on the plains some times really sucks. I haven't been able to ride my bike at all this week because of storms or harsh winds. Oh well, it can't last forever.

Won an iPAQ 3650 from eBay last week at a good price($509) and received it this weekend. Struggled all day Saturday and part of Sunday trying to get my WaveLAN wireless cards to work with it. Emailed WaveLAN and they say I need to upgrade the firmware on the card itself. I've always used these cards in Linux so I never needed to upgrade their firmware. Hopefully that fixes the iPAQ. I also had won an Apple AirPort but it appears to be DOA. :(

Has anybody installed Linux on an iPAQ before? I don't really like CE on the iPAQ and to synchronize most of the things(like the Notes, which I'll probably be using the most) it appears I need to buy Microsoft Office, which I am NOT going to do.

Well, it looks like ECT is going to be sending me a presenter's kit and some stuff to do 3D motion capture with their TrackIR devices. This will let me get my driver working with multiple devices without having to shell out $100 for each device. Very nice of them. It's getting really nice and warm here. Tomorrow will probably be the first day I'll be able to ride in to work(about 10 miles). I'm looking forward to getting back in some semblance of shape. Need to get a trainer so I don't get fat over the winter again.

Well, I've finally released it. My first ever Linux kernel driver is up at my homepage. It's a driver for the TrackIR device I've been talking about in my previous diary entries. I hate to be a beggar, but maybe some developers will look at the source and maybe give me some certs. :)

Well, my TrackIR driver is working and appears to be producing correct data. Now all I have to do is figure out how to write the non-blocking interface(not sure how the data is returned to user-space yet) and write an ioctl for sending control messages to the device. I'm really happy with everything I've learned from this project so far. If you've got a TrackIR or just want to look at the driver(hey, I wouldn't mind, I'd like to know I'm doing things right or wrong), email me at tmilker at radiks dot net. I wish there were a utility to keep up to date on Advogato entries, there's just not enough time in the day to keep up with them from the site. :(