Haesslich

Originally Posted by laurie53

"Well, most of the daring and successful were at least EXPERIENCED people, if not trained in those fields. " You mean like Wilbur and Orville Wright? Go ahead, Rumble, do your thing. You've got nothing to lose except a c****y PDA which is well past its best, and which many people would be glad to see the back of! Laurie

Wilbur and Orville at least had some engineering experience, studied a LOT of the past failures, kept up to date on aviation papers/articles up to that point. Which, I will point out, is more than rumble here's shown so far. Plus, they failed a heck of a lot of times; and rumble here'll have just one chance with his PDA. They had the materials and expertise to keep building various models of flyers; he doesn't have the ability to manufacture a PDA.

If he wants to brick it, it's his business. And honestly, I've never had half the problems you and rumble have had; and it's usually the people who have problems that post the most. Still, if he wants to kill it, it's his business - I just don't want to see him posting here saying 'Dell sux because they haven't released WM6 yet, even though it only came out at the end of January and nobody's shipped a WM6-capable PDA yet, and I broke my PDA trying to hack a ROM together when I can't be bothered to use a spellchecker'.

rumble291

All i am is saying what can be done if there is no update im trying to crack the rom atm but because u guys are soo against it then why should i try and tell people how to do it? WM5 is ok but i have errors half the time i use it. The people complainig just leave this thread and dont reply, if you dont have anything nice to say then dont say anything yes yes i no the risks im not stupid even though some of u think i am for trying to install the latest OS. Im starting threads for People who actually want to know about WM6 and because there most probably wont be an update for Axims. Any comments about how stupid it is and that im an saying that im an idiot then keep it to yourself because i really couldnt give a crap what some random person thinks about me oh and BTW i do know what im doing!

Haesslich

The ROM isn't the issue - the problem is that, unlike your desktop PC, a Windows Mobile 6 ROM will ONLY have the drivers for the specific piece of hardware it was designed for. That means that if you try to flash an HTC Universal's ROM onto an HP iPaq hx2790, you're very likely to end up with a broken device because the hx2790's hardware is completely different from the Universal, with perhaps the exception of the CPU. Trying to crack the ROM-lock, which keeps a device from being flashed with the wrong ROM (thus 'bricking' it) is one thing. If you try it, you're VERY likely to kill your currently semi-functional Axim... and if it's working that badly for you, then you've likely got hardware issues which no ROM flash can fix.

Seriously - you've been warned of the risks. Feel free to try, but understand that you're likely to kill your device unless you know exactly how Windows Mobile is constructed at the OS level, and what types of things are included in a ROM image. The guys who do this at the XDA-developers forum have years of experience hacking at these things, and the advantage of knowing the hardware and software inside and out. If you're serious about trying... go there first. Check with what they've done, and how they do things. Your post here suggests you don't understand the above two paragraphs at all, which means you're very likely to fail, like the earliest people who tried to fly by flapping their arms as they jumped off cliffs.

Until Dell provides a ROM image that we know will work with the hardware in the x50/51 chassis... well, it's your device. Flashing a non-certified ROM into it, however, is not covered under warranty.

rumble291

Ok, thanks for that Haesslich.

laurie53

Rumble

Just in case no-one has told you, are you aware that if you try this you may damage your PDA?!!

Laurie

laurie53

"it's usually the people who have problems that post the most. "

Well that's a surprise! Fancy that - people who don't have problems don't come onto this site asking for assistance!

Laurie

rumble291

haha no what happens if you flash it with a totally different Rom?!?! lol half you guys need to chill out its not your PDA its mine the guys who are posting "dont fix something that anit broken" thats like saying dont buy a new computer cause your windows 95 pc anit broken!

Laurie thats oh so true

Alastair

rumble - it's your machine, if it works all to the good and it would be interesting to see the results; there is a site - Google for grack - this guy cracks and creates custom ROMs for Palm Treo's - not directly applicable to what you want to do but there may be some useful tips or pointers especially as Treo's now run WM5 and people will probably want custom ROMs for these.

Remember "he who dares wins"

__________________
Al
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Roz and Frasier in discussion about his agent, Bebe:

Roz: It's not like she worships the Devil.
Frasier: Well, she doesn't have to! He worships her!

edge777

Interesting thread for sure. Weird though, my Axim X51v runs WM5 well. It's not perfect which is why I updated the BT stack (which took time, effort, testing and expertise, and a great deal of all of them). I've put Windows Live MSN on, and outside of it's contact syncing (which was a design choice, just not a good one) it works well (after the initial sync). For a good task switcher (and close button) I use Magic Button. So, I'm pretty happy with my Ax. If Dell comes up with a WM6 upgrade, I'd likely get it, but I won't be too disappointed if it doesn't. Given the X51v is their last PDA though, I'm betting they might, just so they can stay in the market.

Dan_Aykroyd

I'm not sure... but I think that doing that would void your warranty. You would have to check with Dell first...


...

Cannibul

What happens if there is no update?

Well the sun will still come up in the East and set in the West. Water will still be wet. Life will go on. Hardly anyone at all will notice or care. And I highly doubt you will see an update from Dell. There is no money in it.

Haesslich

Originally Posted by rumble291

haha no what happens if you flash it with a totally different Rom?!?! lol half you guys need to chill out its not your PDA its mine the guys who are posting "dont fix something that anit broken" thats like saying dont buy a new computer cause your windows 95 pc anit broken! Laurie thats oh so true

Well, you ever tried restoring a backup of a computer to another system which had a different video card, different sound card, different motherboard, and even a different sized hard drive? Think of what'd happen when you try to start up Windows with all the wrong drivers for the hardware, with it expecting more RAM and more ROM/hard drive space than was available... and all of it was completely incompatible.

I think you'd be lucky to get it to power up, much less to see it go beyond a whitescreen.

Originally Posted by laurie53

"it's usually the people who have problems that post the most. " Well that's a surprise! Fancy that - people who don't have problems don't come onto this site asking for assistance! Laurie

Apparently, you've missed the point - given that we have, on average, at least 1500 active users a day and a total of 151,000 members registered... the number of complaint posts about various problems which aren't related to a bad piece of hardware are surprisingly low. If everyone had problems like you did, or even a large number of users had them... well, given that statement (which you seem to agree with), we should be seeing a lot more 'it's broken' posts than we are. Which means either the mods are up 24/7 deleting all the complaint posts... or else there's a very small number of units out there which have problems as severe as those you've experienced in the past. This either suggests Dell has a very low hardware failure rate, or else the people who have issues are usually abusing or misusing their Axims to cause them to fail so.

rumble291

Well of corse your gonna need drivers for the different things because they are totally different the video card doesnt need drivers well only for accelerated graphics like games etc. Have you looked at the WM6 rom? If its soo different why can other people run it? and why can you install Windows on every machine? because it has alot of different drivers that can be installed if needed I looked at the WM6 rom and it detects different sizes of Rom/Ram.

CrimsonNugget

Originally Posted by rumble291

Well of corse your gonna need drivers for the different things because they are totally different the video card doesnt need drivers well only for accelerated graphics like games etc. Have you looked at the WM6 rom? If its soo different why can other people run it? and why can you install Windows on every machine? because it has alot of different drivers that can be installed if needed I looked at the WM6 rom and it detects different sizes of Rom/Ram.

You can run the PC version of Windows on most machines because it is meant to be run on a variety of machines. It has tons of drivers bundled with it and it's made to be able to detect and adapt to those systems. You cannot possibly even begin to compare Windows 95/XP to WM6 beyond the basic definition. WM6 is an embedded operating system, which means its specialized. Each ROM image is tailored for a specific device with its own diverse set of hardware. In order to get it to work, you're going to have to reverse engineer the crap out of it. You're going to have to write or modify existing Dell drivers to even get it running at all. Even then, you're going to have tons of trouble with glitches, crashes, and incompatibility. You need tons of programming knowledge and probably some documentation (which isn't available) to get a start. This isn't as simple as pulling up a hex editor and changing a header. You need to know the Axim and the operating system inside out. If you think WM5 is bad, running your own experimental WM6 is going to be much worse. Guaranteed.

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rumble291

Ahh well. I know that but hey.