What are the differences between extended roms and normal roms?
Extended ROM is typically the hidden rom used by the Brand who is selling the device to put their custom stuff on the device, but it is also where the device manufacturer puts device finctions that are very necessary for the devices operation and functions of embedded programs/systems.
Up until I recently heard the Magician's ExtROM is different then the last few devices made by HTC, the ExtROM was hidden, but the gurus on this site created tools to unlock and make the ExtROM useable fr5om a read/write perspective. The Himalya and Blue Angel have ExtROM unlocking tools, which allows you more storage and the ability to install applications you want in this memory area, and you can delet those sometimes redundant and silly custom parts of the ExtROM placed their by the Brand Seller.
Access to the ExtROM on the Magician would be golden considering the limited memory. In my case I had PPC Techs crank my RAM up to 128 so I'm ok.
Related
Hi,
I want to clarify some concerns:
First of about the OS, the XDA or QTEK 2020 or i-Mate runs on Windows Mobile OS, is it possible to have any other OS like Linux installed on the PDA without much change in the hardware?
Also I'd like to know on the OS level (particularly for upgrading) what things should I actually take into consideration?
Second of about the software, this is connected to my first concern since I want to confirm that any software created for the particular processor/chipset should work without problems. How about software for system tweaks? (eg. registry hacks, or battery meters)
Lastly, the PDAs available have excellent features and functionality, which suits for most segments of the people. I would like to know can a PDA function for only a specific usage. For e.g. I would not require the emails, browser running, word processor etc, instead would have only my Inventory Control System running which is linked to an server and update the info from the PDA with the server thru’ IrDA, Serial Communication or internet. Can I develop applications that can customize the functionality and functioning of the PDA per my customization?
Also I’d like to know where would I find a generic PDA like HTC’s Himalaya on which I can built my applications and make customization? As I have come across, the PDAs available are branded product like T-mobile or QTEK or i-Mate, where could I find the contact of HTC or any other similar designer and manufacturers? If someone can point me in the right direction (whether it be websites, sections, or other posts) regarding these issues, will be much obliged
from the frontpage of this site
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/wiki/Xanadux
Hello,
I'm newbie, so plz don't get mad, in case I have a question that has been answered earlier. I did use the search function of this forum intensively, but couldn't figure out how to do what I'd like to do.
What I know so far (plz correct me if I am wrong):
1. The ROM consists of two sections. First the extendedRom and secondly the storage section. While the storage section is writeable, the extendedRom is read-only.
2. It is possible to transfer the extendedRom memory area to the storage area, so that we have more space to store applications and data (bigStorage).
The questions that I have:
a) There is a ROM version and a ROM date. I guess the ROM date depends on the ROM-version. If that's the case, I think it's useless to indicate the date if one already knows the version, isn't it?
b) What does the radio-version tell me about a system? I did search for "radio-version". But it's hard to get the appropriate information, if every third's signature contains the 'radio-version' of a user..
c) What is the protocol version about?
d) On desktops or NBs my core system is mainly determined by my 'c:\windows' folder and the registry entries. How does it work for PPC? I still have the O2 Active User Interface and I don't like it very much. But before installing any apps, skins and plugins I would like to format my XDA mini and reinstall the core windows mobile from the scratch. Just like reinstalling a new desktop system. Is that possible? What do u think?
Thx for all coming answers,
moses3k - yet another magician lover
Hi,
For details on the rom-layout you can consult the wiki.
The dates & version numbers are apperently not from the same scheme eg radio 1.13 appeared months before rom 1.13 which came with a 1.12 radio.
Reinstallation of your magician is a hard-reset camera&power&soft-reset pressed at the time. To skip O2's 'extra's' you'll need to soft-reset just before customization starts. That's right after you get the default WM background after finishing the init.procedure.
Cheers, M
Hello all,
Just looking around the upgrade section of the Magician (or O2 as ive got) had led me thinking about upgrading my O2 with custom software.
However, one thing sticks in my head. Which one ?
I've been doing some reading on the 2.03 which is commonly mentioned, however reading from peoples experience, there are things which have been left out - one user mentioned he no longer had things like O2, excell etc.
So i guess the point of this thread is to ask you out there and provide me with your opinion on what is the best upgrade. Of course its going to be a personal preference, however the more opinions i get the better informed ill be.
Things i need to consider:
1. Overall improvement of the O2
2. Speed - I need the O2 to run better for when im being a 'power' user
3. Improvement to existing applications such as camera, sound, bluetooth etc.
4. Minimal loss of current 'standard' applications. Im not totally experienced with my O2 and i dont really want to go start looking for applications that i already had on my O2 when i first got it.
5. New programs/applications - There must be things that O2 didnt plan on putting on the device that others have thought of.
Any help would be most appreciated.
doesnt anyone have any opinions ?
I tried 2.03 and didn't like it. The lack of transcriber annoyed me the most as well as the fact it is Russian and doesn't quite have 100% English compatibility. It did feel a bit quicker than the standard rom though. I think excel works now though, which is a plus
I flashed back to my original rom (1.11 i think it was), but did the soft reset before the extended_ROM installed, and installed just a select few options, which drastically improved the speed.
Not really aware of any other custom upgrades... are there others?
I installed 2.03 since 1-2 week and I like it very much: I have installed all the programs I need and I never saw any russian text (except Keyboard+ options menù, but I do not use it, and CabInst , easily replaceble by english version).
It is fast and free of useless standard programs like the ridiculous FileExplorer well replaced by the beautiful TotalCommander. It does not have Excel? Wonderful!!!! Pocket Excel (and Pocket Word too) is just something more than a viewer. without basically Office functions: use SoftMaker Office 2006 and you can finally really work with Word and Excel documents!
I am quite sure that if you want standard programs like transcriber you can find easily a valid substitute on the net or directly the CABs extracted from original ROM by someone.
Intalling into the "RAM" only the programs that really need speed (today plugins, input tools, profile manager, ecc), and the other ones between BigStorage and SD, I have a more stable Magician with very good performance and more than 30Mb of free RAM for loading programs!
Hi There
I have spent a few days researching and searching the net but I still haven't been able to find a solid answer to how you can create a hard reset resilient piece of software that is user installable rather than having to manually tweak extended roms etc.
I have a piece of inhouse software that is hard reset resilient on CE 4.2/5.0 devices but I need to port the application to some new WM5 & 6 devices and I am currently testing a few different models. I have looked at the excellent work in the Extended_Rom discussions on this forum and tweaking the config.txt and unlocking and adding my cab would be perfect for me apart from I need to do something that will do all of this on a simple user install. The user will install the cabs, the device will need to burn the app into the Extended Rom so that if the device is subsequently hard reset the software is still running.
I understand that I will have to write a different cab for different handsets (For slightly different reg settings), thats not a problem and using c# I am able to do most of this in a cab, but the questions I have are below:
1. Is extended_Rom a WM5 thing only or is it a device dependant thing? What do I do when there is no Extended_Rom, like with the Kaiser/TytnII? and is it a reliable method of doing this!?
2. Are the last 2 lines in the config.txt always the same (LOCKisabled
RST: Reset), so that I could reliably insert some extra CAB: lines ahead of them?
2. Is creating a RAMDisk a better option and is this something that would offer a more generic solution to me across all devices?
3. Is there a proper industry standard/MSDN way of doing this!?
There are pieces of software out there that are doing this like B2M mProdigy's device management client so it must be able to be done.
Any help or advice would be very much appreciated.
Regards
DaveK17
Any ideas....anyone?
I'm begining to think that this is not possible in the Consumer world of WM. I guess i'm too used to the rugged market where the manufacturers provide this kind of resilience themselves.
Would this be the right line of thinking?
Any help is appreciated
DaveK17
The extended rom is for some of the older phones made before the HTC Touch series and the TYTN II. It is uses across all Windows Mobile versions since the phones need it.
I think I can help you with the config.txt part as well. The last two lines are always there and yes you can put in the relevant lines above them which would be:
Code:
CAB: \Windows\path\to\your\cab
So provided you can make the cab file apart of the ROM then you should be good to go.
As for the RamDisk, I would recommend against it unless you'll be including the relevant software into you cab file. Window Mobile doesn't come with one by default.
I haven't looked into the msdn for this aside from Windows CE 6 so I can't help you there. But I hope my answer help you...
Regards,
Soul_Est
Finally with the help of Gregory's old Tornado kitchen I could identify the culprit which made the WM6.1 and especially WM6.5 Tornado Builds unstable. So find here the final result of the Tornado Kitchen evolution:
http://www.mediafire.com/?702i46jc477ey <-- Click Me!
The files there and their purpose:
all kitchen (WM6, WM6.1 and WM6.5) with ~93MB: tobbbie-OSB-Kitchen-Tornado-WM6,WM61,WM65-(Ger+Eng).7z
Note that is just 1.5-times the size of just one kitchen and you get 3 in a box
WM6.1 Kitchen (my favorite) with ~59MB: tobbbie-OSB-Kitchen-Tornado-WM61-(Ger+Eng).7z
All example builds are created with this one, names of the builds are like the configuration files, re-cooking is a snap here!
4 ready made builds (nk.nbf) to flash in 2 flavors each (Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger) with ~135MB (content of ~247MB): tobbbie-WM61-builds(nk.nbf).7z
Just the same 8 builds, but as os.nb0 files (so not Tornado encrypted) which makes them much better compressible. You get the same 247 MB of builds with just one file of ~39MB: tobbbie-WM61-builds(OS.nb0).7z
The tools you need to make your Tornado get that new stuff loaded. 2 Directories with the needed tools, just follow the obvious sequence. This includes nb2nbf_tornado.exe to convert os.nb0 to nk.nbf, of course.: tobbbie-Tornado-Flash-Tools.7z
Before I elaborate much on the details (and nobody would ever care), just pick what you need and get going. For questions, just come back here.
On the content:
The OEM parts are identical on WM61 and WM65 and the selected packages will auto-insert their relevant settings CPL via registry. This does not work on WM6 and there you have to take care yourself. 90% stem from the history of the Nitrogen Kitchen (which is built on others' contribution). Over time some panels were re-arranged and options added.
The SYS are for WM6 the original from Nitro's kitchen, the WM61 comes from the Rose (S740) and the WM65 from the Captain (S521).
Here the listed history of my kitchen:
there was the Nitrogen WM6 Kitchen - the first for me, as I was a late starter, only picking up cooking because wanted to get SDHC support in my beloved Candy-bar phone. Long time happy with that until there came the OS Builder framework which has really opened up so many new doors...
I ported that batch kitchen to the Hurricane with WM6 but left it there (still nagging me to get that ported to OSB, we will see...)
Then I picked up porting Aleut's WM6.5 kitchen for the Typhoon to Ger/Eng and finally also to OSB (with some special care on non-relocatable modules).
Finally I publish here the end of the story for Tornado including all builds and each of them tweaked to the limit (smallest XIP) but still portable and reversible from the dump. Play with it if you like!
Thanks go to:
cotulla and llnhhy for the SDHC on Tornado (I would not have started all this cooking without THIS contribution!)
Nitrogenious for his WM6 kitchen
Gregory for
the "format BINFS <size>" before loading the nk.nbf - this distributes the flash between ROM size and later available device storage on a 1MB granularity (and only works on the Tornado afaik - not Typhoon and Hurricane for sure)
letting me dig into his last Tornado kitchen (Tornllnhhy_last.zip, unpublished) which allowed me to find out what makes the difference between a stable reboot and such that occasionally lose Bluetooth, Wifi or both - always having wifioff.exe hang the device. The WM6.1 and WM6.5 kitchen would have never been published without this:
Code:
; from gregory's WM65 rgu
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Services\BTHLINK]
"Prefix"="BTL"
"Dll"="bthlink.dll"
"Index"=dword:00000000
"Order"=dword:00000008
"Keep"=dword:00000001
"Context"=dword:00000000
"DisplayName"="bth"
"Description"="bth"
It seems that adding that dll to the service initialization part will rectify the boot sequence in the way that a stable reboot is achieved. I have a mortscript do the reboot and symptom collect and could supply proof that hundreds of reboot can happen in a row without ever loosing BT and/or WiFi. Before that tweak the range of failure was 30-50%!
barin for OS Builder
ultrashot for parts of OS Builder and continued support for my questions in the context of understanding some more about the virtual memory concept and the paging pool.
The gained insight has made me drop UPX from the builds and be generous with granting paging pool size. There is no gain in hunting for free RAM on expense of the paging pool! Reserve ~25-30% of available RAM to the paging pool, but not less than ~4MB. More than 12MB on smartphone is no gain, so my builds have 8MB. You can alter this (without re-cooking) using the "Smart PagePool changer" which is part of each kitchen set.
many others at xda-developers that make this such an informative place to be
I know I have to add links to some references - this will come later.
Candy-bar smartphones for ever!
Just to let you know: The SDHC lets the device also read FAT32 formatted SDXC cards (e.g.64 GB). It even reads more than one partition (I have 2 on my Android) and mounts both of them (32k Cluster size used).
Not sure how well the performance will be when managing data there - but reading a large music collection should be ok