Linux for the Casio BE-300

Screenshots:

More screenshots can be found here.

Before we start:

Linux can now boot on a BE-300 but it is still far from being usable as a replacement for whatever is actually running on your BE. I am writing this text with the hope of convincing more hackers to join our project. If you need help using these instructions, please email me instead of disturbing the gurus. ;)

Warnings:

You are installing Linux on your BE at your own risk! The members of the Linux4BE developement team cannot be held liables for any problems occuring from the use of our software. We recommend that you do not install Linux directly on your Nand Disk and that you backup any critical data before installing to your CF card. Now that this has been said, you have to know that CyaCE boots the kernel which includes a ramdisk into RAM and that Linux4BE is not yet able to acces your CF card or Nand Disk, so there is not much risk that it will trash any of your data...

Downloading the software:

You can download Linux4BE either as a tarball or a zip archive.

Uncompressing the archive:

To extract the tarball do the following:

tar -xvzf linux4be.tar.gz

To extract the zip archive do the following:

unzip linux4be.zip

This will create a directory named Linux4BE that you need to copy to your CF card.

Booting Linux4BE:

Now that you have the Linux4BE on your CF card, all you have to do is to go in the Linux4BE directory and double-tap Autorun.exe. This will bring up a window asking what kernel configuration you want to load. The default choice, linux4be, will boot Linux, lead you to a command prompt, and let you type commands with the hardware buttons using the driver antagonitz wrote. See using it section for more details...

The second choice, picogui, will boot the PicoGUI which is yet unusable since the touchscreen does not work but still cool to see!

The third choice is linux4be-serial which should allow you to use your BE in conjunction with a serial connection but I do not know how this works since I do not own such a cable.

More information on how to configure CyaCE can be found in Appendix #2 but you should not need to do this.

Using it:

Typing commands is quite easy, here is how to do it: you input characters by using a combination of the rocket button and the keypad. First, press the ok button so you get a shell prompt. To enter text, press and hold the rocket button and then up or down on the keypad to choose the character you want to input while holding the rocket button. When you have chosen your first character press "rocket + right" on the keypad to move to the next character. Here are the exact mapings for the BE's hardware buttons:

ok = enter
esc = tab
pwr = ctrl + alt + delete
up = up
down = down
right = right
left = left
Rocket + ok = space
Rocket + esc = backspace
Rocket + pwr = ctrl + c
Rocket + up = next alpha numeric char
Rocket + down = previous alpha numeric char
Rocket + right = select current alpha numeric and move to next
Rocket + left = overwrite previous alpha numeric char

I will not go into details about using PicoGUI since it is not yet functional nor will I explain how to use the serial driver since I do not know how to do it.

What now?

Well this is all I had to say, happy hacking with your BE300 and do not forget to join our team if you think you could be usefull in anyway... You might also want to check Appendix #1 for how to boot your kernel automatically.

Appendix #1: Booting automatically:

If you want the bootloader to be executed when you insert your CF card then rename the Linux4BE folder as "R4100", then create a folder named "CE" and put the "R4100" folder inside the "CE" folder.

Appendix #2: Configuring CyaCE:

You only need to read this if you want to change the default kernel or add your own one!

First of all, you have to know that any line beginning with a # is a comment: it is not used by CyaCE. The first important line in cyacfg.txt is the timeout line. It is set to 300 seconds (5 minutes) so you have more time then you need to choose which kernel you want to boot.

A CyaCE entry is made of two or three lines:

1. The first line is used to specify the name of the kernel image you want to boot.
2. The second line is used to give a name to the kernel image you want to boot.
3. The third line is optional and starts with append=$parameters, if you really need to use this line then you should stop reading the dummies section and make a jump to the hackers part of this site...

The default choice for CyaCE is the first one in the list so if you wanted to use PicoGUI by default you would move the two lines concerning picogui at the beginning of the file. You could also comment the two lines for the kernel with the input driver but that would disable it.

If you wanted to add your a new kernel image named new_vmlinux then you would add the following lines in your cyacfg.txt:

image=new_vmlinux
label=new_kernel