ROMTool

[handquake]

Forgot to say with Sprint 1.12a as my starting ROM I am successfully running only 1 language (English). What do you call a person who only speaks 1 language? English! Had about 50 French Canadians tell me that joke when I lived in Montreal. They were GREAT and sometimes get a bad (off topic) rap! 

[handquake]

Actually the punchline to that joke is American but I can't edit as I'm in mobile mode! (what an idiot!)

[AllGamer]

yes indeed... all those extra languages in the ROM are such a memory hog... 

at least 2+ meg wasted there 

[ghostofcain]

Sorry a bit late to this discussion but the new ROM Tool is MUCH more user friendly than Shadow's tools, and especially if not downloading a ROM works much quicker KFU to all involved

[jamesgangut]

Can anyone confirm if the following can be put into ROM ?

aDSTKeepter (and applicable files)
AvantGo
AGConnect (file name is MobiLink)
BackupBuddy
CardExport
CardKeeper
Chime
Crash Pro
Contact 5 [Address Book] (and applicable files)
DOCUMENTS TO GO (and its related files)
Graffity Anywhere
KBLights
KeyGuard Time+ (and related files)
KsDatebook
KsToDo
LaunchThis
LookAtMe
Matrix (screen saver)
mReset
mSafe
PolyNote
PSMemo
Toolbox lib (driver for other Palm apps)
- and other apps drivers like MathLib, Zlib, libmal, Jpeglib -
POCKET TUNES
Radio Control
Ringer Switch basic
SnapCalc5
SnapperMail (and any applicable related file)
Today (the free one)
VolumeCare
ZLAUNCHER (i guess any other PRC related to ZL as well)

...TCPMP player, after it reaches stable version, LOL   


BTW: can any of the Mod, set this topic as a Sticky ??   

Ptunes version 3.1.1 does work from ROM.

There is a pretty good list to check here, though not updated anymore:
http://discuss.treocentral.com/showpost.php?p=865221&postcount=75

[ChasTreo]

Ptunes version 3.1.1 does work from ROM.

There is a pretty good list to check here, though not updated anymore:
http://discuss.treocentral.com/showpost.php?p=865221&postcount=75

And the gist of that link is:
"Recent Understanding Seems to Be:
Add Nothing to Rom, except what is Absolutely Necessary.
(Although Opinions Vary)"

It must depend on what each of us want to get out of our Treo, but for me DB Cache is king, so I'm striping bits out, and adding nothing back except FAT32 

[nlg]

Any reason why I lost my Rogers phone splash screen when I updated my ROM with this tool recently? I did not use a custom ROM from anywhere else -I downloaded my recently updated 1.20 ROM, removed langs, Real, VM, etc., added FAT32 and FB,  and that was about it. The 1.20 upgrade I did from Rogers about a month or so back actually changed the splash to include a Rogers logo instead of the original basic Treo splash. Now that I've used the ROM tool I'm back to my original splash.

Not that I'm all that upset over loosing my Rogers splash, I'm curious more than anything else.

Sweet tool by the way. I'd always wanted to do this but couldn't be bothered to spend the time figuring it out in the pre-ROM-tool days!

[hpspringer]

And the gist of that link is:
"Recent Understanding Seems to Be:
Add Nothing to Rom, except what is Absolutely Necessary.
(Although Opinions Vary)"

It must depend on what each of us want to get out of our Treo, but for me DB Cache is king, so I'm striping bits out, and adding nothing back except FAT32 

I guess for the most part I agree with putting as little back in as possible, but there does have to be some balancing point where the effectiveness and efficiency of clearing ROM space is maximized.

I think it's sorta like the "chicken and the egg" discussions.  From what I've read on TC there seems to be some differences of opinions.

  i.e.  One user says it's best and his Treo screams with a custom ROM (with and original partition of 8.4) and his stripping and reducing the partition size to 7.1.  OK so he stripped out 1.4+MB of ROM and then reduced his partion size by 1.3MB.  Where's the gain?  Other than more Free RAM.

Then another user strips the an 8.4MB partition to 5.4MB, and puts 1MB back in, his gain is still more than 2MB Wasted (Free ROM), still a bigger gain than the other fellow who used the gain to reduce partition size and Free mor RAM.

Whose is more efficient???  To quote mmastrac, right here in this thread:

The general guideline is to make your ROM partition as small as possible to increase your available NVFS space and to store as little as possible in ROM to increase your available DBCache (aka storage heap).  When you are talking about applications totalling less than 500kB (rough number), you can probably skip some of these guidelines for the convenience of having applications always around. 

It's basically all about balancing DBCache/free NVFS/etc.   

and then...

The biggest advantage to custom romming is that you can delete the carrier-specific crap from your phone and reclaim memory by deleting unused applications. 

This tool is designed to use your current ROM as a starting point.  From there, you can delete stuff (like the carrier files I mention above) and replace stuff (like FATFS->FAT32).

I started with:
Software: Treo650-117-CNG      
Firmware: 1.51   
Partition Size: 7.1MB



The I started experimenting and I've ended up with a much faster, more efficient Treo, with a MAJOR improvement in audio quality and clarity.  I didn't even have to put VolumeCare back on because the clarity and volume is better now than it was with the Cingular Software and VolumeCare.  Evening with increasing the ROM Partition size and changing to a FAT32, after installing all of my app back to the Treo (minus the ones I added to ROM) I still have more free space in ROM and RAM than before.

I think as mmastrac said, It's basically all about balancing DBCache/free NVFS/etc.

and ended with

Software: Treo650-171-120-ENA      
Firmware: 1.20   
Partition Size: 8.4MB




**ROM Size, RAM Size, and Free RAM were determined by FileZ
**Largest ROM Size, Current ROM Size, and Wasted Space were determined by RomTool
**DBCache Size, DBCache Free, and DBCache Max were determined by DBCacheTool
**Speed was determined using Palm Internals

[ChasTreo]

Looks like you've been having fun 

This tool is great 

[hpspringer]

Looks like you've been having fun 

This tool is great 

With the wife sick right now, and the dog with cancer, not able to get out a lot in this ugly Ohio winter.

So just play to my hearts content.

[jho]

This sounds great! 

Only thing is I have a mac...will the rom tool work with OSX ?

[AllGamer]

unfortunately not for mack, and only windows XP (32 BIT) !!!


regarding rom space, i agree, the most EFFECTIVE way to get more ROM back is by putting what you need in ROM
just to fill the gap of the stuff you removed. then you have more RAM left to work with.

just removing the junk from the ROM does not free up more RAM 

[sdgandhi]

Hello, I have gone thru all this forum and before trying this tool I would like to get one clarification. I have Firmware: 01.71 Software: Treo 650 - 1.20 LAP Hardware: A after using this tool to update the ROM will we be able to apply any new updates released by Palm for Treo 650?? Waiting for a positive reply and sorry if this has already been answered.

[ChasTreo]

just removing the junk from the ROM does not free up more RAM 

Correct, but it increases your available DBCache which depending on what you use your Treo for can be more important than RAM.

Most apps can be run from your SD card, so is RAM really that short/important?

But filling up your ROM with useful stuff will take away DBCache.

As I said in the post above, it depends what you are wanting to use your Treo for 

[hpspringer]

Hello, I have gone thru all this forum and before trying this tool I would like to get one clarification. I have Firmware: 01.71 Software: Treo 650 - 1.20 LAP Hardware: A after using this tool to update the ROM will we be able to apply any new updates released by Palm for Treo 650?? Waiting for a positive reply and sorry if this has already been answered.

Yes, BUT!!! as Discussed in this thread


It's sorta like going from Windows 98 to Windows XP, you get the UPGRADE, but it's a completely different operating system with different partition requirements.  Therefore the upgrade overwrite the current customized ROM

Regardless of what you have/had in ROM before the new ROM update, it will all be wiped clean and replaced by the ROM updater say to 1.25 for example, and it will not keep any Custom things that you had already in ROM.

Then all you have to do is basically delete the same files you did before.  This sounds like a lot of work, but, let's consider:

• How often do you update your ROM?
• Is it worthwhile to spend 10 minutes customizing a new update for the efficiency?
• After you have done it once and see how easy it is and how fast it goes, this will not be a concern.
• The first time you customize your ROM, just keep a list of the files you removed.
• Then the next time, you have your starting point and  know what needs removed also

IMHO It's really a misnomer to call these a Palm Update, basically they are a new install of a NEW operating system.  The upgrade being some operations are improved, BUT the complete current system is overwritten.