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View Full Version : Advice on RAMdisk and/or Extended_Rom


davek17
25th February 2009, 09:36 AM
Hi There

I have spent a few days researching and searching the net but I still haven't been able to find a solid answer to how you can create a hard reset resilient piece of software that is user installable rather than having to manually tweak extended roms etc.

I have a piece of inhouse software that is hard reset resilient on CE 4.2/5.0 devices but I need to port the application to some new WM5 & 6 devices and I am currently testing a few different models. I have looked at the excellent work in the Extended_Rom discussions on this forum and tweaking the config.txt and unlocking and adding my cab would be perfect for me apart from I need to do something that will do all of this on a simple user install. The user will install the cabs, the device will need to burn the app into the Extended Rom so that if the device is subsequently hard reset the software is still running.

I understand that I will have to write a different cab for different handsets (For slightly different reg settings), thats not a problem and using c# I am able to do most of this in a cab, but the questions I have are below:

1. Is extended_Rom a WM5 thing only or is it a device dependant thing? What do I do when there is no Extended_Rom, like with the Kaiser/TytnII? and is it a reliable method of doing this!?

2. Are the last 2 lines in the config.txt always the same (LOCK:Disabled
RST: Reset), so that I could reliably insert some extra CAB: lines ahead of them?

2. Is creating a RAMDisk a better option and is this something that would offer a more generic solution to me across all devices?

3. Is there a proper industry standard/MSDN way of doing this!?

There are pieces of software out there that are doing this like B2M mProdigy's device management client so it must be able to be done.

Any help or advice would be very much appreciated.

Regards

DaveK17

davek17
26th February 2009, 11:45 AM
Any ideas....anyone?

I'm begining to think that this is not possible in the Consumer world of WM. I guess i'm too used to the rugged market where the manufacturers provide this kind of resilience themselves.

Would this be the right line of thinking?

Any help is appreciated

DaveK17

Soul_Est
26th February 2009, 07:48 PM
The extended rom is for some of the older phones made before the HTC Touch series and the TYTN II. It is uses across all Windows Mobile versions since the phones need it.

I think I can help you with the config.txt part as well. The last two lines are always there and yes you can put in the relevant lines above them which would be:
CAB: \Windows\path\to\your\cab
So provided you can make the cab file apart of the ROM then you should be good to go.

As for the RamDisk, I would recommend against it unless you'll be including the relevant software into you cab file. Window Mobile doesn't come with one by default.

I haven't looked into the msdn for this aside from Windows CE 6 so I can't help you there. But I hope my answer help you...

Regards,
Soul_Est