.FLYINGHEAD SOUPING UP YOUR PALM III
.TITLE Palm III flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY The Palm III is the hottest new member of the PalmPilot family. Right out of the box, it’s got 2MB of onboard memory, double that of the PalmPilot Professional. But the Palm III also includes 2MB of flash memory, used to hold the operating system. In this article, PowerBoard Hostess Claire Pieterek reviews a software product that allows you to gain access to an additional 800K of flash memory to hold applications. You can move up to almost 3MB for fifty bucks!
.AUTHOR Claire Pieterek
For the third year running, I bought a new PalmPilot as a birthday present to myself. This year’s model is the Palm III. Among other significant enhancements, the Palm III features 2MB of RAM and 2MB of flash memory. Since my old production machine is a 2MB PalmPilot Professional, the initial transition was easy. Because I like to test a lot of new applications, I soon started experiencing RAM cram once again.
On April 15, Technology Resource Group (TRG) released their 8MB Super Pilot memory board. I was seriously tempted, but just couldn’t face spending another $300 right away. Knowing that PalmOS 3.0 occupies only about 1.2MB of the Palm III’s flash, I wanted to find a way to take advantage of that extra 800K. (OK, it’s really 768K, but what’s a few K among friends?) So, I spent $49.95 and bought an online-fulfillment copy of TRG’s FlashBuilder III from PilotGear.
.H1 What is flash memory, anyway?
Flash memory is non-volatile–it doesn’t lose its contents when the power is turned off. The Palm III is the first PalmPilot to use flash memory to store the PalmOS operating system. In contrast, older Pilots and PalmPilots use a read-only memory (ROM) chip to store PalmOS.
.H1 What is FlashBuilder III?
FlashBuilder III is a combination of utilities that allows Palm III users to add and delete third party programs from the 800K of flash memory not used by PalmOS 3.0. It is a modification of the FlashBuilder utility used by all TRG board owners to install a copy of PalmOS onto their new TRG boards. TRG boards do not come with PalmOS preloaded. 3Com is currently the only source of PalmOS, although TRG is working on licensing it for resale.
One piece of the product, FlashBuilder III, resides on your PC. The other part, TRGFlash, must be installed on your Palm III. Sorry, Mac users, TRG does not yet plan to support you. As stated in TRG’s (http://www.trgnet.com/Palm/TechSupport/spmb2faq.htm) SPMB II FAQ, "At this point there is not sufficient market demand to justify the costs for developing a Mac version . Wintel PalmPilot users outnumber Mac users by at least 10 to 1 in the latest surveys." If you’re a Mac user and this ticks you off, by all means, let them know it.
.H1 What does it do? What doesn’t it do?
FlashBuilder III allows the Palm III user to add third-party programs to the unused space in the flash memory. This process is called "burning". It also enables Palm III users to hide built-in applications that they don’t use. For example, I use Zoskware’s ExpenzPro instead of the built-in Expense program. FlashBuilder III allows me to put ExpenzPro in flash, and prevent the Expense icon from appearing on my Palm III. After burning the flash, I can delete the associated .prc files from RAM, and recover that space.
FlashBuilder III does not, however, actually delete the Expense application from the PalmOS. This enables me to restore my Palm III’s flash to factory defaults, if I should ever want to do so. Based on the documentation for the flash chip used in the Palm III, I suspect that 3Com protected the sectors where PalmOS is stored. There might be an opportunity for some enterprising programmers here!
.H1 How does it work?
After installing FlashBuilder III on your PC, start it by clicking on the FlashBuilder III shortcut that has been added to your desktop. Click on the Next button to continue, as shown in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Click on the Next button to continue.
The first time you run FlashBuilder III, you will need to run the Wizard to install TRGFlash.PRC onto your Palm III. You will need to do this step only once. As shown in Figure B, Click Next to run the Wizard and install TRGFlash, click Skip Wizard to bypass.
.FIGPAIR B Click Next to run the Wizard and install TRGFLASH.
If you have HotSync in your system tray, FlashBuilder III will ask you whether you would like it to close HotSync. Click Yes to close HotSync, as shown in Figure C, and continue.
.FIGPAIR C Click Yes to close HotSync.
If your Palm III is not already in the cradle, put it in the cradle and start TRGFlash, as shown in Figure D.
.FIG D Put your Palm III in its cradle and start TRGFlash.
Click Test to proceed, as shown in Figure E.
.FIGPAIR E Click Test to proceed.
When you see the "Test Passed" message, click Next.
The next screen will display the current contents of your Palm III’s flash, as shown in Figure F. If this is the first time you’ve burned your flash, you will see only the PalmOS 3.0 items, like Address Book, Date Book, and so on.
.FIGPAIR F This screen displays the contents of your Palm III’s flash.
Highlight the built-ins you don’t want to see on your Palm III, then click Delete, as shown in Figure G.
.FIGPAIR G Highlight the built-ins you don’t want to see, then click Delete.
Find the files you’d like to add to your Flash and highlight them, then click Add, as shown in Figure H. I put the files I want to flash in a directory called "Rom" for simplicity.
.FIGPAIR H Add your chosen files to your Flash.
FlashBuilder III will then add the icons for the files you want to add to flash. Click Next to continue, as shown in Figure I.
.FIGPAIR I Click Next to continue.
You are now at the point where your flash will be updated. Click Upload to reburn your flash, as shown in Figure J. Be patient–as the screen says, this will take a few minutes. With 89% of flash full, this process took about 3 minutes and 43 seconds on my Palm III.
.FIGPAIR J Click Upload to reburn your Flash.
When you see the "Upload Complete!" message, click Next, as shown in Figure K.
.FIGPAIR K When you see the "Upload Complete" message, Click Next.
You are now done burning your flash. FlashBuilder III will soft-reset your Palm III. If this doesn’t happen, reset your Palm III yourself. If, by some chance, your Palm III doesn’t boot properly, click the Recovery Mode button, as shown in Figure L.
.FIGPAIR L Click the Recovery Mode button if you need to.
I’ve never had to use the Recovery Mode button, but it’s nice to know that it’s there.
Finally, go into the Launcher and delete the programs you just flashed from RAM. I currently have 910K available RAM, and 43 apps installed. Fourteen of these apps–totalling 742K–now reside in my Palm III’s flash.
.H1 Why buy it?
FlashBuilder III gives you the use of about 800K of flash for $50. This will cost you 13% less than having TRG upgrade a stock 3Com board with 1MB of RAM. Although it’s not a huge savings, it is a great deal, considering that you can reburn your Palm III’s flash and change the apps that reside there any time you want.
The Palm III uses a 3 volt Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) AM29LV-series flash. AMD guarantees a minimum of 1 million program/erase cycles, which should be more than enough for even the most ardent FlashBuilder III user. For all the hardware and programming details on the Palm III’s flash chip, see http://www.amd.com/products/nvd/techdocs/21358.pdf.
Also, anyone who’s experienced a hard reset would appreciate the ability to put their most often used third party programs in flash. There are a couple of caveats to this, though. Programs like certain games or hacks that need to be able to modify themselves or write variables to RAM won’t be able to run from flash. The same is true for data files (generally, files with the .pdb extension), unless the programs that use the data open the files in read-only mode.
An example of a .prc/.pdb combination that works fine in flash is WordBox and its dictionary. Kanji Hanabi didn’t work at all with any of its components in flash. HackMaster itself works fine in flash, too. HandStamp Pro also failed after I tried to flash it, and errored out with a Fatal Exception even after reinstallation into RAM. I am currently working with SmartCode’s tech support to resolve the problem.
TRG provides a compatibility list at http://www.trgnet.com/Palm/Products/compat.htm, which you might want to check before burning your flash. This list doesn’t cover every version of every application, so don’t be afraid to try the application you’d like to flash. The worst that I have experienced is having to delete the apps that don’t work and burn the flash again.
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.H1 Summary
FlashBuilder III is very easy to use, and works well. I find FlashBuilder III a worthwhile investment, and highly recommend it to those Palm III owners that want to make the most of their available memory for a minimum price. However, I would like to see an upgrade that would allow Palm III users to truly delete unwanted built-ins after saving a backup copy of the factory defaults to disk.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
The SuperPilot memory board is available from Technology Resource Group at http://www.trgnet.com.
FlashBuilder III is available at http://www.trgnet.com/Palm/Products/flashb3.htm.
Zoskware’s ExpenzPro is available at http://www.zoskware.com.
Find out more about AMD AM29LV-series flash at http://www.amd.com/products/nvd/overview/20531.html.
Hackmaster is available at http://www.daggerware.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Claire Pieterek is a LAN/WAN designer at Whittman-Hart in Denver. A PalmPilot fanatic since the first days of the 1000 and 5000, she currently uses a "production" Palm III and a "hot spare" PalmPilot Professional.
.DISCUSS http://www.component-net.com/webx?13@@.ee6bee7
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