ROMTool

[mjs31]

Ok...did all this and then uploaded the 1.17 custom cingular rom. Everything looked to load fine, but I do not see a single change after I did the soft reset? Did I need to get rid of something else or how do I tell what is on there?

Thanks

[mjs31]

Got it figured out. Was working perfectly. I just needed to do an "update list". I have changed out custom rom's 3 times so far without issues. Great program

[handquake]

To see if it your changes took make sure you back up all your data then do a hard reset. You will see if the things you removed or added are now present. An easier way would be to use FileZ. A little chip symbol shows next to items in ROM.

[mjs31]

Right. They are gone. Just needed to update my launcher.

[hpspringer]

All I can say is WOW!!!   WOW!!!   WOW!!!   WOW!!!
Though it made me pretty nervous to get started, after about 2 hours reading over there, I decided to take the plunge and go for it BIG-TIME, armed with:

mmastrac - ROMTool
http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=107543&page=1&pp=20

jamesgangut - StepbyStep RomTool.pdf
http://discussion.treocentral.com/showpost.php?p=911791&postcount=93

Shadowmites - Filelist
http://www.shadowmite.com/filelist.pdf

First and foremost, a hearty THANK YOU to mmastrac for an excellent eaisly usable tool to allow others to customize their own ROM, to jamesgangut for his ROM Tool instruction, though they look daunting in the beginning, they are very straight forward, and last but not least to Shadowmite for all the development he has done.

THANK You all!!!!!!!!

I updated to FAT32 and built my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, nineth, tenthm, and so on Custom ROMs all by my little ole self!!!  (NO, I really didn't get carried away, it's just with these tools it was so easy that I kept experimenting to see what els I could take out that I didn't use)

When I first started, even after using "Uninstall Manager" since day 1, I found I still had what appearred to be a lot of clutter and had decided to do a Hard Reset and reinstall everything, since I am sorta finished with experimenting with what software I really wanted and needed on my Treo.

To Start, I made a few notes and exported a FileList from FileZ to Memo Pad to have a record.  Here's what I started with:

Firmware 1.51
Software Treo650-117-CNG
12.2MB free in my RAM

In ROM, I had just updated to the latest Cingular, a few months ago, so I had:

Largest ROM size           7,136,768
Current ROM Size      6,982,765
Wasted Space (Free ROM)        154,003


By the time, I had deleted, built ROM, deleted, built ROM, deleted, built ROM, and deleted, built ROM, I had removed:

Versamail
Blazer Web Browser
World Clock application
Datebook
Spanish - Default Languange Database
French - Default Languange Database
Italian - Default Languange Database
Japanese - Default Languange Database
GetGood
GetMail
Real player
ToDo
Tutorial


At this point, I had the following left in my ROM Build:

Largest ROM size      7,136,768
Current ROM Size      5,918,829
Wasted Space (Free ROM)      1,217,939

Since the Wasted Space (Free ROM) was almost 8 times the previously Free ROM, I decided to use some of it for utilities that I use.  Even though there seems to be a varied opinion on leaving all the Free Space as is, versus adding additional application in, I felt with the amount of gain, along with ease of rebuilding the ROM, to add some in. 

I added the following applications to the ROM before building it to Upload:

Zlauncher
ZlaunchManager
SoftReset
RescoBackUp
FileZ
LedOff
StopDim
UninstallManager


In my Final build I ended with:

At this point, I had the following left in my ROM Build:

Largest ROM size      7,136,768
Current ROM Size      6,356,265
Wasted Space (Free ROM)        780,503

With the Free ROM, still being 5 times the original, and Freeing additional Ram, and still having 22.8MB of Free Ram (and that's with Documents to Go and some other software installed.  Though I still have some apps to install, it looks like I will be ending up with about 18MB of Free Ram with the same apps as I previously had with 12MB Ram Left.

Needless to say, I am very happy.  They great part is, saving the original ROM, I can have it restored in about 7 minutes if I would need to return it for warranty.  Also from the appearance, I would guess that most Cingular CS Reps would never know the ROM has been altered.

I've been testing it all day, through all kinds of paces and never a reset!!!

[handquake]

Found I was also able to run HandZipperLite, Destaller Lite, and Cleanup from new rom also. Phone seems quicker and not a single crash since new rom (4 days).

[mjs31]

I agree...outstanding tool. I don't believe that you actually free up ram by moving apps to the rom. They still need the ram to run from, but I may be wrong on this. I am pretty sure it was discussed in another thread though. You definately can free up some ram by getting rid of the programs that were part of the original ram/rom. I believe that mmastrac even said that techincally you should not run extra apps in the rom. Now...apps that run automatically you could put there because they will run either way. You will also have those apps if you need to do a hard reset.The extra dbcache is the real added bonus to everything besides getting some extra space by eliminating the bs programs.

[hpspringer]

I don't believe that you actually free up ram by moving apps to the rom. They still need the ram to run from, but I may be wrong on this. I am pretty sure it was discussed in another thread though. You definately can free up some ram by getting rid of the programs that were part of the original ram/rom. I believe that mmastrac even said that techincally you should not run extra apps in the rom. Now...apps that run automatically you could put there because they will run either way. You will also have those apps if you need to do a hard reset.The extra dbcache is the real added bonus to everything besides getting some extra space by eliminating the bs programs.

Yes, but you free RAM from the space they occupied in Ram, thus giving you more free (unoccupied)  Ram to run them in.   Unless I'm wrong, if I move 942 kb from ram to Free ROM, that I have just increased in size by 5 times, then that gives me 942kb additional RAM to run the apps in.  Certainly by increasing Free ROM by 5 times and Free RAM by 50%, one would see major improvements.

[mmastrac]

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.   

[mjs31]

Thanks mmastrac. I thought I had read a post from you basically saying to make it is small as possible and not put extra programs in the rom. Great program by the way. Thanks for everything.

[puenil]

Bootload Start



 pmsys =0xA171A808



!!!!!! Device has password set.  Type erase to erase all data and proceed !!!!!!



HTC Sausalito Bootloader Version : BOOTLOAD V0.22

Built on Mar 18 2005 at 14:28:15

Copyright (c) 2003 High Tech Computer Corporation



SDDownload ++


Total Image CheckSum= 0x0

CheckSDDownloadSignal ulDLType= 0x5

++Check BT Router

USB>>

USB>>mw

Invalid command : mw

For a help screen, use command ? or ?? or h


USB>>

3/19/2006 10:38:12 PM   Found phone, waiting for bootloader
3/19/2006 10:38:12 PM   Validating bootloader
3/19/2006 10:38:12 PM   Upload error: does your phone have a security password?

No, my phone does not have a password set that I know of.

What might be causing this?

[handquake]

mmastrac might be able to help with this but I bet if you back up all your data with like backupman or hotsync and hard reset then use the tool, any password you may have accidentally set should be erased. The phone should have no password. Once you create new rom, restore device. May work.

[handquake]

Realize tool is made so you don't have to hard reset before using it but I've tried it both ways and works just fine with my Sprint CDMA either way.

[handquake]

Incidentally when I had my 600 a year ago I set a password and never could remember what is was. My computer then crashed and I had to reload ALL PC software including palm. Password was no longer in memory and my 600 treated it like a different computer. When I tried to hotsync I got a message like that. Never could get it to sync. Had to hard reset and then reload most programs with backupman then change username.

[mmastrac]

3/19/2006 10:38:12 PM   Found phone, waiting for bootloader
3/19/2006 10:38:12 PM   Validating bootloader
3/19/2006 10:38:12 PM   Upload error: does your phone have a security password?

No, my phone does not have a password set that I know of.

What might be causing this?

Go to the security panel and delete the password.  You may have inadvertantly set it a while ago.