A bug in the iPaq hardware. A good bug!

[EdwinOlson]

According to a guy who worked at Compaq Research labs who was in line with me this morning to pick up his very own iPaq, Compaq was unable to obtain 16MB flash parts for the first production run.

Consequently, they are 32MB flash parts.

I haven't verified this myself, but he said that the extra 16MB is accessible/usable, and completely unused by the windows ce installation. He said he put linux there.

Ed

[Chris S]

How can we verify this? For that matter, how do we access the flashable memory?

[T-Will]

Is there a program that would allow us to access that memory? Also, how many times can a ROM be flashed?

[clarkn]

I posted a topic about this a few weeks ago but noone paid attention. I have a Palm V with a flashable rom, and there are several apps that will transfer files to the rom where they can still be run. This is what we need on the Ipaq. It would make it a 48mb machine!

[EdwinOlson]

Well, according to the Asset Viewer in the control panel, it's a 16MB ROM, which agrees with the reported device (28F128).

I'm still hoping he was right, but it's looking unlikely.

Ed

[T-Will]

Come on Compaq, when's the 64 meg version going to be ready?!

[Aaron Green]

Also, when I posted a question on COMPAQ's board about using flash ROM in general (e.g., delte pocketMoney and put something else there), the replier (only by e-mail, I think...don't know if they ever posted my question...)stated that there was some # of times after which flashable ROM "wears out"...it was in the 1000s or maybe 100,000s...Still, could be used for some things that don't take multiple writes...

[D Milley]

The iPaq hardware has a pair of 28F128 devices. Each one is 16MB, so the total would be 32 MB. The iPaq hardware spec also refers to the 28F640 as being supported. Compaq probably used the bigger part in the initial iPaqs due to availability but only advertises 16MB so they can also use the smaller parts if those are available.

[Dan]

I've heard that a Flash ROM is good for anywhere from 100,000 - 1,000,000 flashes before wearing out. I don't know, seems like a pretty vague number to me! But 100,000 times is a lot more than you think, since writing to Flash ROM is more difficult than writing to RAM (you need a special program to do it - you probably will only do it about once a week at the most. That's over 1900 years!).

Once upon a time I had a Palm III, and since they have so little memory, the extra flash space was too hard to pass up to most people. So, a company called TRG made a program called "FlashBuilder III" which would allow you to place any READ-ONLY software in Flash (such as AportisDoc, the Palm equivilant to Reader).

Since they now make PalmOS devices, though, It's doubtful that they'll make a CE version of the app . It can be done, though, and the Palm community has been doing it for a while now. It's pretty safe, but you CAN turn your device into an expensive paperweight and void the warranty at the same time (if it loses power, etc - same dangers as flashing the ROM on any device).

[This message has been edited by Dan (edited July 31, 2000).]

[Dale Coffing]

There are definitely two. I have this on my web site "What's iN your iPAQ?" page. So since the Intel Flash is 16Mb is there really 32Mb of ROM? I was thinking it might need both just to be 16Mb sort of like a parity bit. This is what is printed on the Flash itself:
Intel Flash
E28F128
J3A150




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Dale Coffing's Pocket PC Page

[This message has been edited by Dale Coffing (edited August 01, 2000).]