Novacom on Windows

Windows lacks an "xterm" program. So no full blown terminal program is available for windows to communicate with the Pre via novacom.

Never the less, Palm has provided all the tools you need to access the linux on your Pre from windows without any additional software.

1. Install the Palm Pre SDK accepting all defaults
2. Open a command session. You will be at some C:\> directory -- which one doesn't matter
3. type

cd \program files\palm\sdk\bin   

Your prompt will change to

C:\program files\palm\sdk\bin\>

1. Type

novacom -t open tty://

Your prompt will change to root@castle:/# ←[J

1. Type

cd /tmp

your prompt will change to root@castle:/tmp#

1. Type

wget http://gitorious.org/webos-internals/bootstrap/blobs/raw/master/optware-bootstrap.sh

You will see a reply that looks like this:

wget http://gitorious.org/webos-internals/bootstrap/blobs/raw/
master/optware-bootstrap.sh
Connecting to gitorious.org (87.238.52.168:80)
optware-bootstrap.sh 100% |*******************************| 20968  00:00:00 ETA
root@castle:/tmp#

1. type

sh optware-bootstrap.sh

Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your Pre.

You may see a warning that when you enter a password for your new user, that the password is too weak. Simply ignore this warning and type the same password again. The program will accept whatever password you use, it just warns you about weakness.

Eventually you will see a message

Setup complete
root@castle:/tmp#

Press CTRL-C to exit from the novacom session and close your dos window.

If you have not yet downloaded putty.exe, get it from the offical putty download. this is a bare exe, there is no install. Save it to any directory where you will know where it is.

Run putty.exe and open a connection to your pre