[Community] Status GTA04A5

[Sven Dyroff]

Hello,

> I am curious about the new ideas to appear in this community...

I just realized one. Due to upcoming holidays, I was faced with a problem, 
that has already been mentioned within this list: How to deal with lots of 
mails, if you're outdoor? Especially when they usually have lots of 
attachments, especially pdf?

At first: Up to now I haven't managed to get the GTA04 display pdf. Is it 
really true that QtMoko v55 doesn't include any pdf viewer? I cannot 
believe that...

But even if GTA04 could display pdf, there're still the known problems:
- Display is too small.
- Battery drains very fast, in this case while you're reading many mails 
and/or long documents.

Then some of the devious wishes, that already have been mentioned within 
this list, unexpectedly reappeared in my mind:
- eInk-Display.
- Device should be dividable into several modules instead of being one 
monolithic block.

This brought me to the idea:
Wouldn't it be possible to buy a simple low-cost eReader and connect it to 
the GTA04 over USB? If the eReader will be recognized as ordinary 
USB-stick, then the GTA04 could export all the downloaded mails and 
attachments to there as txt- and pdf-files. After that you disconnect both 
devices again, put the GTA04 to suspend and use the eReader for reading 
all the downloaded stuff comfortably and without any time pressure, 
because display is big, device is very light and batteries of eReaders are 
being called to last for months.

OK, best thing would be if the eReader would be a free and open Linux 
system, so that you can install a Thuderbird on it, that allows you to 
even write answers to your mails at once and need the GTA04 only for 
syncing again once after you're finished with all of your work. But 
because I had already heared that eReaders can be VERY (!!!) proprietary, 
I decided to already be happy if it accepts the GTA04 as host for being a 
simple USB-stick for it and then presents the files for reading.

A second sorrow was, if the GTA04 could encounter power problems when 
connecting both devices over USB. On the one hand, eReaders have their own 
battery. On the other hand, the eReader will most probably request 
charging current from the GTA04. What will happen?

In order to anticipate the primary result: YES, IT REALLY WORKS !!!

I bought the cheapest eReader I could get: A Kobo for 39 EUR. It had the 
right size and weight and according to the advertisement it cannot only 
handle proprietary eBooks, but also ordinary txt and pdf.

And exactly as being expected, immediately after unpacking the device, 
heavy pain begins...:

- Device tells you that it will do absolutely nothing unless you visit 
manufacturer's homepage, download binary closed stuff from there and 
install it onto the device.
- Manufacturer's homepage tells you that you're a looser because you dared 
to visit it with some other system than WinShit or Mac.
- The .exe that you're forced to download spans over 113 MB.
- After having installed the .exe on some old and offline WinShit system, 
it tells you that it will do absolutely nothing unless you connect this 
machine to the internet.
- Having found a connection to the internet, the program starts a longish 
download and you don't know what it's really doing.
- Then it requests an email-address and a password from you in order to 
register you at the manufacturer with an account you don't wanna have.
- After having finished all this, it allows you nothing other than buying 
eBooks from the manufacturer.

That's the point where you irrevocably get an outburst of fury. You tell 
the .exe to eject the device in order to throw it out of the window.

At this moment, the first part of the miracle happens:
Immediately after having removed the USB cable, device starts a reboot, 
which takes very long time. After eventually having finished that, it 
immediately starts a second reboot that takes the same time again. After 
that it presents you a nice surface, that allows you to do nothing other 
than reading a guide or buy eBooks from the manufacturer.

You get your second outburst of fury, repack the device into its box and 
at the next day bang it onto the table of the shop assistant.

Then the second part of the miracle happens. The friendly shop assistant 
shows you that...:
- Kobo's eReaders are the most open ones that you can get. All others will 
cause you much more pain.
- You just forgot to reconnect the eReader to your computer, open the 
folder of the presented USB device and feed it with pdf and/or txt files.

Being home again you can really verify this, even with a Linux system! 
:-)))

And your pleasure will be unlimited as soon as you get a proper working 
connection with your GTA04 and a fully accessible mount. As proof I 
attached GTA04's messages it gives you when accepting the eReader (serial 
number anonymized because connected to an account at Kobo that I never 
wanted to have).

The only thing I don't understand is why it attaches /dev/sg0 instead of 
/dev/sda1 and why you need to mount /dev/sda instead of /dev/sg0.

Best regards
   Sven



[  105.801330] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using musb-hdrc
[  105.956481] usb 2-1: device v2237 p4183 is not supported
[  105.956512] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=2237, 
idProduct=4183
[  105.956512] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, 
SerialNumber=3
[  105.956542] usb 2-1: Product: eReader-2.6.1
[  105.956542] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Kobo
[  105.956542] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[  105.966125] scsi0 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0
[  106.967529] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Kobo     eReader-2.6.1 0110 
PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[  106.997833] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 2761729 512-byte logical blocks: (1.41 
GB/1.31 GiB)
[  107.107238] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[  107.218261] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[  107.218292] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  107.328125] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[  107.438598] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[  107.438629] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  107.458129]  sda:
[  107.568847] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[  107.678588] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[  107.678619] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  107.678649] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
[  107.696228] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
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