BeBook One (V3ext) and OI ver 0.2.2, bugs

[ayoshak]

After unsuccessfully trying Tirwal tri-boot, I successfully installed OI ver 0.2.2, for V3ext. So far so good, after original BeBook One firmware.

It would be nice to have manual there, in a book, to learn new commands on old keys. It is awkward to go to PC every time I press a key and something unexpected appears. Let me see if I can copy/paste/coble something from the site.

I also noticed that green LED blinks furiously and irregularly almost all the time. That is sure to drain battery quickly. It might mean the processor sunk into some buggy loop. To early to tell. I will sure turn if off during the night.

Another small error, on starting it asks to input date and time, and than instructs to press “C” for cancel and OK for Apply. What “C” are you talking about? Maybe “Go Back” key?

And another major thing, when connected to XP SP2 USB port, it is recognised as RNDIS/Ethernet Gadget and of course no drivers. Under BeBook firmware this worked flawlessly. This is a big one for me, let me try ver 0.2 instead.

There was a claim on one of the forums OI is fast but I find 0.2.2 as slow as BeBook firmware.

Thanks

ALL SORTED

For how see further down the thread

[ayoshak]

I now installed OI V0.2.
It is faster than 0.2.2.
Setup menu item 5 is Version, not responding to key 5.
Again, when connected to XP SP2 USB port, it is recognised as RNDIS/Ethernet Gadget and of course no drivers. Under BeBook firmware this worked flawlessly. This rules out OI for BeBook for me, al least until this is sorted out.
Shame, I loved the feel of it.

[dottedmag]

Thank you for your valuable input.

[eMole]

I thought nightly builds are preferable over 0.2.x OI versions. I am quite happy with such a build for my V3. My small complaint is the reader software (FBReader), but that seems out of scope for OI itself.

[ayoshak]

OK, I am back, I found an older version of Tirwal firmware that works, but I still prefer OI. Tried Spanish and Russian version and the latest of BeBook, still OI wins in my book
I managed to find and install drivers for it and make it work

The setup is BeBook One V3ext, OI 0.2.0, XP SP2 with linux2.inf and WinSCP.

I find OI v0.2.0 faster and until I discover bad bugs I will stay with it.

Speed wise original BeBook firmware was much slower in reading SD card libraries, compared to the storage inside, here in OI there in not much difference.

Here is HOWTO for a new firmware installation.

1. If you do not have it, Get SDFormatter and install it. Get 500 to 1000MB SD card, format it as FAT (FAT16) and another 2 or 4GB SD Card for files. Do not use XP formatting rutines, only SDFormatter for this.
2. Find on the net your preferable Firmware issue and download it, or download them all and have fun. Unrar into named folders as all installation files have the same name, V3update.bin. Very easy to mix them up and overwrite.
3. Copy V3update.bin onto so prepared SD card. Nothing else, just that one file. Find tray icon “Safely Remove Hardware” and use it before removing SD from the PC slot. (Left-click and choose, you might have to know the Disk Letter, find it in Windows Explorer).
4. Make sure the BeBook battery if full.
5. CONNECT BeBook AND BACKUP ALL FROM BeBook INTO PC.
6. Disconnect, unplug, , turn off your BeBook, insert the card,
7. Press and keep pressed side VOL+ button Press ON button on the top and release it, but keep VOL+ pressed until it bleeps. Be careful not to touch any other buttons. The screen lights up and hardware scan begins, showing first a hardware version and below new firmware version. It asks to press OK to continue or any other key to exit. Press OK.
8. Some 5 min later it will bleep indicating it is finished. Click any button to reboot. It reboots with the new firmware.
9 Get some books onto the second, large SD card, variety of formats, something you had already read and know is OK, to try it out. Put it into BeBook and have fun. If not happy with this firmware repeat all with a different one. It you want to play with Tirwal multiboot versions, note that the config folder goes into the root of the second SD Card.



Here is HOWTO for connecting it to PC with XP


This is for BeBook One (V3ext) running OI v0.2.0 and PC running XP SP2.
Your mileage might very with different hardware/software.
I wrote this as a reminder for myself, as I will need to repeat this installation in a couple of months on another PC. Than I beefed it up so my wife can understand it.


1. Get Tools

Download linux2.inf and WinSCP into a known folder, you will need to find them shortly. Some browsers will allow you to right-click onto a link and choose where to download that chosen file. Sometime you will have to go into browser Setup to see where it all goes. Default location is somewhere into folder named "My Documents". That folder is located in C (the drive/partition you start XP from), the path is C:\Documents and Settings\your username.your computer name\My Documents.


OFF TOPIC You should avoid using My Documents folder on C as storage for your documents. You should avoid using C for your documents at all. Untweaked XP badly fragments C. Fragmented files are almost impossible to recover from bad disks, we are talking $$$$$$$$$. Also when you need to reinstall XP (no ifs here, it will happen) it will sometimes need to format C. That destroys your documents. Again recovery is difficult and $$$$$$$$. Get a second hard drive or at least create second partition on the one you have for your documents. HDs are dirty cheap today. Learn to use Windows Explorer. END OF OFF TOPIC


Get linux2.inf driver from
http://openinkpot.org/attachment/wik...ng/linux.2.inf

Get WinSCP program from
http://winscp.net/eng/index.php



2. Set Network Connection

It is advisable to rename your existing Network Connections to something other than what MS offers, just to avoid changing parameters on the wrong one later. Go Start/Settings/ and double-click Network connections. Window opens. Left column lists your current connections, right-click the name and choose rename. Enter new name (like Internet, Office..) press OK for each one.


When you plug in USB cable from BeBook to PC, computer recognises BeBook as RNDIS/Ethernet Gadget, the driver for it is linux2.inf you downloaded earlier. Answer the questions in a way to indicate you have the driver and know where it is. Your have to find a place, usually a folder on your hard drive named downloads, where your downloads go. Some browser will allow you to right-click onto a link and choose where to download that chosen file. Once driver is installed you might want to restart your PC to make sure all is well.

Open again Network Connections Window. You will find a new one, to recognise it, find the fourth column, Device Name, it will have Linux USB Ethernet/RNDIG Gadget there. Rename it to BeBook-OI. Right-click it again and choose properties. A New Window opens. In the middle there is a list of items. Find one called Internet Protocol(TCP/IP), use slider to show more. Click on the name but do not unmark the tick. Click properties button. A new window opens. Tick "Use the following IP address" and enter 192.168.111.2 as IP address, and 255.255.255.0 as Subnet mask. Default gateway and DNS server boxes are to stay empty. Click OK, this returns you to BeBook Properties window. Tick "Show icon..." and "Notify me..." boxes at the bottom, to have a tray icon shoving the status of this connection. Click OK. The Property window closes.

What all of this means? If you imagine a network connection as a cable running from your computer into your BeBook, you just defined where this cable plugs into (like socket 192.168.111.2).

If all is well you should see a network icon in your tray and if you hover the pointer there it will tell you the name and if connected.

As you unplug BeBook the icon disappears from the tray and BeBook-OI Network Connection disappears from the window Network Connections. That's normal, as you plug back in they appear back.

3. Set WinSCP

In order for this BeBook-OI connection to work you need a software that knows how to use it. Usual XP utilities will not do. Therefore install WinSCP , commander style, and start it up.

A WinSCP Login window appears, as a host name you enter 192.168.111.1, as user name use root, as password use zxc and for protocol choose SCP (192.168.111.1 is your BeBook socket for imaginary cable)


Save this, I used this name as I forget a lot, BeBook-192.168.111.1-root-zxc. Click Login. There might be errors with "groups" and "pwd" just click OK, it works anyway. A new window opens like Commander style, or like two linked Windows Explorers. You use this to transfer files to and from BeBook.


So, now in order to transfer to and from BeBook, plug it in, find and start WinSCP, choose BeBook session and press login, ignore those errors, a window appears, left pane is your PC hard disk folders, right pane is your BeBook files. Contents of the SD card are in /root/media/sd folder. Your BeBook storage for books is at /root/mnt/storage. Be free to add your folders but do not remove system ones. I usually start by having just one top folder inside storage (My Books or...) containing author folders. That is the folder that always stays there, you add and remove inside it.

That is all .

The next job will be a manual inside BeBook.



[BobC]

Originally Posted by ayoshak

And another major thing, when connected to XP SP2 USB port, it is recognised as RNDIS/Ethernet Gadget and of course no drivers. Under BeBook firmware this worked flawlessly. This is a big one for me, let me try ver 0.2 instead.

If you read the documentation you will discover that OI connects using SCP, so you need an SCP Client such as WinSCP - the docs also point you to the drivers you need.

Connection to a PC work differently than the original software but very effectively.

BobC

[ayoshak]

I installed back OI v0.2.2. The reason is simple, some of my epub files were unreadable on v0.2.0. Also it froze once on me.

It is not a lot slower than BeBook version, I can live with that.

As the complexity increases, it is expected for the speed to suffer.

Please just do not add email agent into it.

[red_dragon]

I use one of the daily builds from August this year and it works like a charm.

Regarding FBReader, there are two annoying bugs.

1) Empty lines are ignored and NOT displayed. As a workaround I make sure that something like <p>&nbsp;</p> is used.

2) In some epubs, all the text is centered. The workaround is to
- rename the epub to zip
- open the zip, find the css file
- modify the css file and add body {text-align: left; }
- zip all the files again and rename to epub

Kudos to the developers of OI, the firmware works absolutely great!

[eMole]

Recent builds come with a much improved CoolReader version. Also there seems to be some goings on with FBReader, according to its homepage.

[red_dragon]

Sounds interesting, maybe I should give CoolReader a try. In the past I much preferred FBReader, it simply looked better and the customization was easier.

[PKFFW]

My preference is the FBreader but any time I get that center aligned text problem I use CoolReader and it's displayed the text fine every time.

I'm using a daily build from December last year because when I tried the stock standard 0.2 and 0.2.2 both seemed very buggy and slow to me. Maybe it's time to try the latest build.

Any particular suggestions on which build seems the most stable and fastest?

Cheers,
PKFFW

[eMole]

Can you download older builds?
Anyway, I used a build from july until yesterday. I updated because the new CoolReder seemed to provide much better epub support then before (at least the Windows version I tested). I do hope FBReader gets updated sometime later this year.

[PKFFW]

Sorry for the late reply, didn't see your response.

As far as I can see it seems you can't download older builds. I'll be giving the latest one a try as soon as I get around to it.

[red_dragon]

Hi PKFFW,

Regarding the FBReader "centered text" problem: I have installed the Windows version of FBReader and before I copy a book to my device I first test it. If the text is centered I try to fix the epub (see above). If you don't want to edit it manually you can also install Calibre. Now convert the book into another format and back again into epub. This seems to do the job.

[PKFFW]

Thanks for the tip red. Might try that eventually but as I'm pretty clueless on editing css files and the like, I will probably only ever try it if the text displays poorly in both FBreader and Coolreader.

Overall OI does what I want it to superbly. And if I have to occassionally use CoolReader rather than FBreader, that is not the fault of OI so I'm not complainging.