dennis m parrott wrote:
The long answer is yes and the short answer is no.
A USB device is either master or slave.
the Zaurus is set up as a slave, a PC would see it as a device, not much
different from a hard disk or keyboard.
Or an Olympus C4000 digicam.
Masters can be made to talk to masters via a special cable
with electronics, but a slave to slave, Zaurus to Camera can't be done.
The USB driver for Zaurus came via Caldera, and I have seen
info on how they set up the Zaurus USB driver.
In theory, one could set up a driver that would be either slave or master,
allow one to set it to slave for syncing, master for dealing with cameras
or USB hard drives, USB keyboards or cameras.
But this would mean a lot of added software, as a USB driver has to have a
suite of added drivers to handle generic USB devices.
I guess you would have to delete the Z's games and other useless guff
to make room for that.
Anyway, not a trivial bit of programing and of course, the pathetic Z
battery would not power any USB devices very long.
And of course, some things, like cameras, are not very good with generic
drivers. Getting some of these things to work with a fully loaded PC
running Linux can be dicey.
Of course, one would then have to check the cabling which may not be
exactly standard to the Z cradle, and one might be able to add a
power connector to allow use of a power pack or transformer for jobs where
USB power draw may make the whole idea dicey unless you can get the task
done in less than a hour.
When I understood that all PDAs and handhelds work this way, (with a few
expensive exceptions such as Sony subnotebooks or the old Libettos
from Toshiba), I sort of lost interest in PDA's/Handhelds.
My Zaurus sits unused......
It would be sooooooo nice to hook up a USB keyboard or a
small USB 2 1/2" 20 gig diskdrive, or a camera, or a
an USB CDRW or CDrom to a PDA, even with power problems.
(take along an extra battery)
But that takes a $2000 subnotebook, you can't get by with a $400 PDA.
No sign of the OQO with its purported Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/USB
systems...
Of course, having said all this, I have utterly no idea what is going on
in the world of fancy $600 PDA's Sony or somebody may have heard pleas of
people like you.
But I wouldn't put $ on it.
--
When I shake my killfile, I can hear them buzzing!
Cheerful Charlie
