For students learning Japanese (such as myself), the key attraction of the Zaurus (particularly the SL-C3200 model) is that it has Japanese handwriting recognition (through the stylus and touchscreen), and built-in Japanese dictionaries (広辞苑 is widely regarded as the authoritative 国語 dictionary, and Genius is a decent Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary). The additional language aids such as e-book reader, English-Japanese text translation (offering comparable quality to Altavista or Google web translation services) and English lessons are also useful to students learning Japanese (even though they are intended for students learning English). Additional software such as the Japanese atlas and rail/plane timetables are useful for those intending to visit Japan. And all this in a tiny little package that can be taken anywhere (it easily fits into a medium size handbag).

The aim of this document is to illustrate the steps that I took (minus all the wrong ones, and there were many) to get a successful GPRS data connection using my Sharp Zaurus, a Nokia 6310i, a Socket Bluetooth card and an O2 (UK mobile phone operator) GPRS data account. I'm making the assumption that you already have a Sharp Zaurus (Z) (or are intending to buy one) and that you are OK with using Linux on the command line.

This Baracoda CompactFlash card eliminates proprietary cables and allows mobile users to connect to mobile computing devices wirelessly and effortlessly.

AmbiCom's Air2Net Wireless CompactFlash Card (with free PC Card Adapter) brings wireless functionality to laptops and portable WinCE devices and is designed to use with your Personal Area Network (PAN).

Tips, tricks, feeds...

If the HDDis totally blank without any partitions, the SL-C3100 won't boot up.And this is how a SL-C3100 HDD partition table should look like:

So you have installed another ROM on your Zaurus such as Cacko, pdaXrom or OpenZaurus, and wish to return to the original Sharp ROM or restore a Fig Labs Full English backup? Don't worry, just follow these steps carefully and you'll be back up and running

If you need to restore our shipping-state (f.e. if you made a total reset), you may download a suitable backup from here.

Titchy is a complete, fully-native Debian GNU/Linux distribution for the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000, SL-C3100 and SL-C3200. It boots directly from the internal microdrive, and completely replaces the existing operating system.