iPaq Fun: Re-Flashing The OS, and UPS
Jun. 20th, 2010 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
softpawBack in November, I acquired an HP iPaq 210 to replace my ancient PalmOS PDA. Since then, I've used it very regularly, and it's become more important than my phone as a multi-function device. It's my organizer, mobile media device, navigation system, and mobile internet device. I even recently installed a car cradle for it to make it easier to use as a GPS.
Since it's basically a smartphone without the "phone" part, it runs a smartphone OS, and HP chose to use Windows Mobile on it. Personally, I would've preferred Android, but since Windows Mobile works natively with everything I use on my computer, I don't mind. My only real gripe about the OS has nothing to do with the OS itself, but rather the fact that most apps for smartphones/PDAs are typically developed in this order: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, WinMo, Symbian.
I do have an issue with HP though, and the fact that they don't seem to believe in software upgrades. Since the iPaq 200-series first came out in 2007, they've released exactly zero OS updates, while Windows Mobile has released three new versions since then. Microsoft is already on WinMo 7, while the iPaq (even new ones) are still stuck on 6.0. There was no update to 6.1 from HP, or an update to 6.5, and for some reason, Windows Updates have never worked on it, so I can't get them that way.
Since this is a relatively open device with no real ramifications for modding other than a void warranty (which is a big reason why I have a PDA instead of a smartphone), there's a pretty big mod community, and one of the things they've done is to port WinMo 6.5 to the iPaq. And this evening, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded the ROM package, re-flashed the OS, and rebooted, terrified that the process would brick my beloved PDA. But, it didn't, and everything seemed to work just peachy. Sort of.
There were a few minor glitches here and there, nothing unforgivable, but the whole thing ended up feeling very amateurish. But, if the OS is as awesome as the screenshots and articles indicate, it'll be worth it, right? Well, it wasn't awesome either. Aside from the position of the icons in the start menu, and some visual bling, I couldn't tell a difference in the two. The Today screen, which was one of my big reasons for upgrading, was exactly the same as in 6.0. On top of that, it didn't even look good because the transparency settings seen in the Start menu didn't apply to the Today screen, giving it solid bars top and bottom. It actually looked like I had reverted to WM5.0.
It also seemed like the colour depth was lower than it should've been, like it was trying to use 15-bit colour instead of 16-bit or something. It's a 16-bit screen, so smooth gradients are bound to have visible transitions to a small degree, but the effect was much more pronounced than I was used to.
On top of all that, WM6.5 left me with around 50mb of RAM free, compared to the 70mb I was used to with the older version. That's not a massive deal, but some apps consume quite a lot of memory, so I'd have to be more careful about my multi-tasking and background apps if I stuck with that version.
The dealbreaker was ultimately the fact that my TomTom software wouldn't run on it; the TomTom installer breaks the Bluetooth stack on HP devices, but the fix didn't work on WM6.5, so I had no way of using it. But, I was really disenfranchised by the whole thing by that point anyway. If HP ever releases an upgrade to 6.5, I'll probably jump all over it, but for now, I'll stick to the original OS.
There's a silver lining to all this, though. Since HP doesn't publish the original ROM, and there's no option to revert to a previous OS, I had to go download a copy of WinMo 6.0 for the iPaq. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the development community by that point, but they had a ROM that was basically the original firmware, but had been tweaked to consume less memory. So, I tried it out, and promptly reacted with a "o.o" when I booted the device: 95mb of RAM free. Compared to the 70-75 that's usually free right after a reboot on the original ROM. That's enough memory to run TomTom, Windows Media Player, and Opera (the most memory-heavy apps on the device) all at the same time. Definitely a "Yay!" moment :-)
Unfortunately, I now have to re-install and reconfigure a couple dozen apps, but I had been pondering a rebuild anyway to cut down on useless stuff, so I guess now's a good time for that :-P
=============
On a completely unrelated note, the UPS I acquired from Foxcub started acting up recently, due to the battery starting to die. Probably didn't help that we've had a lot of power outages lately. I finally had to unplug it when it didn't have enough power for the PC to even start up, and I had an idea. There's a second UPS living in my shop, which has been there for years, and never worked. It was also Fox's, and I'm not really sure how I acquired it, but it's considerably bigger than the little workstation model that's been under my desk forever.
So, I finally got around to buying the batteries it needed, and one somewhat-unnerving battery installation later (I've never seen such a huge spark o.o), it charged up perfectly! It has more indicators, too, like a battery charge metre and a load metre, so that'll be quite nice. Thanks, Foxie! :-)
Since it's basically a smartphone without the "phone" part, it runs a smartphone OS, and HP chose to use Windows Mobile on it. Personally, I would've preferred Android, but since Windows Mobile works natively with everything I use on my computer, I don't mind. My only real gripe about the OS has nothing to do with the OS itself, but rather the fact that most apps for smartphones/PDAs are typically developed in this order: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, WinMo, Symbian.
I do have an issue with HP though, and the fact that they don't seem to believe in software upgrades. Since the iPaq 200-series first came out in 2007, they've released exactly zero OS updates, while Windows Mobile has released three new versions since then. Microsoft is already on WinMo 7, while the iPaq (even new ones) are still stuck on 6.0. There was no update to 6.1 from HP, or an update to 6.5, and for some reason, Windows Updates have never worked on it, so I can't get them that way.
Since this is a relatively open device with no real ramifications for modding other than a void warranty (which is a big reason why I have a PDA instead of a smartphone), there's a pretty big mod community, and one of the things they've done is to port WinMo 6.5 to the iPaq. And this evening, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded the ROM package, re-flashed the OS, and rebooted, terrified that the process would brick my beloved PDA. But, it didn't, and everything seemed to work just peachy. Sort of.
There were a few minor glitches here and there, nothing unforgivable, but the whole thing ended up feeling very amateurish. But, if the OS is as awesome as the screenshots and articles indicate, it'll be worth it, right? Well, it wasn't awesome either. Aside from the position of the icons in the start menu, and some visual bling, I couldn't tell a difference in the two. The Today screen, which was one of my big reasons for upgrading, was exactly the same as in 6.0. On top of that, it didn't even look good because the transparency settings seen in the Start menu didn't apply to the Today screen, giving it solid bars top and bottom. It actually looked like I had reverted to WM5.0.
It also seemed like the colour depth was lower than it should've been, like it was trying to use 15-bit colour instead of 16-bit or something. It's a 16-bit screen, so smooth gradients are bound to have visible transitions to a small degree, but the effect was much more pronounced than I was used to.
On top of all that, WM6.5 left me with around 50mb of RAM free, compared to the 70mb I was used to with the older version. That's not a massive deal, but some apps consume quite a lot of memory, so I'd have to be more careful about my multi-tasking and background apps if I stuck with that version.
The dealbreaker was ultimately the fact that my TomTom software wouldn't run on it; the TomTom installer breaks the Bluetooth stack on HP devices, but the fix didn't work on WM6.5, so I had no way of using it. But, I was really disenfranchised by the whole thing by that point anyway. If HP ever releases an upgrade to 6.5, I'll probably jump all over it, but for now, I'll stick to the original OS.
There's a silver lining to all this, though. Since HP doesn't publish the original ROM, and there's no option to revert to a previous OS, I had to go download a copy of WinMo 6.0 for the iPaq. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the development community by that point, but they had a ROM that was basically the original firmware, but had been tweaked to consume less memory. So, I tried it out, and promptly reacted with a "o.o" when I booted the device: 95mb of RAM free. Compared to the 70-75 that's usually free right after a reboot on the original ROM. That's enough memory to run TomTom, Windows Media Player, and Opera (the most memory-heavy apps on the device) all at the same time. Definitely a "Yay!" moment :-)
Unfortunately, I now have to re-install and reconfigure a couple dozen apps, but I had been pondering a rebuild anyway to cut down on useless stuff, so I guess now's a good time for that :-P
=============
On a completely unrelated note, the UPS I acquired from Foxcub started acting up recently, due to the battery starting to die. Probably didn't help that we've had a lot of power outages lately. I finally had to unplug it when it didn't have enough power for the PC to even start up, and I had an idea. There's a second UPS living in my shop, which has been there for years, and never worked. It was also Fox's, and I'm not really sure how I acquired it, but it's considerably bigger than the little workstation model that's been under my desk forever.
So, I finally got around to buying the batteries it needed, and one somewhat-unnerving battery installation later (I've never seen such a huge spark o.o), it charged up perfectly! It has more indicators, too, like a battery charge metre and a load metre, so that'll be quite nice. Thanks, Foxie! :-)