The latest version of U-Boot(as of 8/19/2010) adds the ability to use the screen and keypad on your Zipit Z2 to display a console(albiet sideways). U-boot also allows a splash screen on the LCD during boot up if a sideways console is not useful to you. Personal I like the console on my serial port anyways so a nifty splash screen would be a nice touch. Since I have a serial mod, I will provide instructions to add the splash screen via ymodem. First thing is first, you will need a bitmap file that is 320×240 and rotated 90 degrees counter-clock-wise. It also has to be 8 bit color depth. In order to save a BMP as an 8-bit file in Photoshop, you will need to change the mode to “indexed color”.
From your serial console, type in the following command:
loady 0x5c000000
Next, you will need to write that file to memory. Use the flinfo command to make sure your memory matches mine. The last two sectors are where we will store your file. Make sure your file won’t take up more than two sectors(it shouldn’t). The bmp file I’m using is only 79k or so which uses only one and a third of a sector or so. After you’ve checked your memory, use the following command to move your bitmap to a permanent location:
protect off all; erase 0x7e0000 +20000; cp.b 0x5c000000 0x7e0000 0x13034
The last number 0x13034 is your file size in hex. If you look up the screen a bit, your loady command should have outputted a file size in hex and decimal. Use YOUR file size instead of mine unless you are using my file of course. Now you can test your image:
bmp display 0x7e0000
Cool, eh? Now it’s time to make it load automagically on bootup:
setenv splashimage 0x7e0000
saveenv
Now when you reset, you should see your splash screen.
I see another few advantages to this hardware already. For one, this thing has a boot loader with a command prompt and console access. Already that blows away the WRT54G hardware. On top of that, if you flash a bad firmware, you probably won’t brick the device. I imagine you can just reflash it with the correct image and continue on your path.
in stock so I bought it and popped it in. Good as new and the battery door closes properly again.
would use up a AAA battery in 6-8 hours. Many days he was happy listening to his music all day so that could get fairly expensive. I started shopping around for batteries and purchased some random LaCrosse batteries and some high capacity Sanyo AA batteries rated at around 2900MAh but soon I noticed some of the same traits of self discharging again. These NiMH cells weren’t nearly as bad as the old NiCds were but I still couldn’t depend on them if they had been sitting for any amount of time.
. These batteries have a much lower capacity rating than some of the others but the almost always exceed the specified capacity when taking a charge. The Eneloop AA’s are rated for 2,000MAh and the 
are rated for 800MAh. According to Sanyo’s marketing material, these batteries can sit on the shelf for a year and still have 85% of their charge. They further claim that a normal rechargeable would be completely dead if it sat for a year. That sounds reasonable to me based on my experience.
with Eneloops. The baby monitor started out running a full day on stock cells and degraded to the point where it would only run 3 hours before the red light came on. With the Eneloops, the baby monitor ran for 3 days even when checking the screen a few times during the day when I first built the pack and a year later(after a very abusive charging cycle) it still runs a good day and a half or so.
routers this weekend. So far I have 
after you’ve put an aftermarket root fs on it. All of these settings will disappear when you reboot your device aside from editing the resolv.conf although if you are using a WRT54G series router, your edits to the resolv.conf will also disappear.
