VisorCentral.com - Who wants to make a flash upgrade?

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VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Visor General Chat (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=31)
-- Who wants to make a flash upgrade? (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=9822)

Posted by Huie on 12-01-2000 08:15 PM:

Okay, I've been reading the threads *****ing about the lack of flash as being one of the big problems with the Handspring models. But I remember a small company that used to make a RAM upgrade for the original USRobotics Pilots.

It seems that since the ROM was on the same card that held the RAM, and since actually providing a ROM on the upgrade card would probably mean that they would have to pay USR for the SW or face pirating charges, what they did was provide flash ROM and a progarm to read your old ROM and flash it onto the new board. The rationale was that since you already had the ROM, there was no problem in making a "backup" copy of it that you ran your Pilot from. If you were less than ethical, you could also take a OS v2.0 ROM, say from a friend or off the web, and flash it onto your Pilot and have a free upgrade. I think there was also an OS v3.0 upgrade available, but I may be wrong, but according to http://www.palm.com/support/upgrade/faq-engl.html#7 and http://www.palm.com/support/35upgrade/faq-engl.html#7 the OSv3.3 and OSv3.5 upgrades do work.

So, what's to prevent someone from doing this with the Handspring Visors? Just like the first five models of Pilot, from the Pilot-1000 to the first Palm-III, the Visors have the ROM and RAM on a card that you can replace.

Personally, I think it would be a big market- there are a lot of people who would like flash. Even if they never want to upgrade their OS, they do see the utility in having some critical apps in flash- not only would they at least survive a hard reset, but they have that much more RAM available for other apps. Also people with standard 2M Visors- the std. and Solo- would have an upgrade path to 8M.

And if you could get this hypothetical board in under $100MSRP then you can beat the Visor Deluxe in price- right now the standard is $150 and the Deluxe is $250. Admittedly, you can get the deluxe in different colors and with a leather carrying case, but that doesn't matter to many people.

One problem would be in making an OS upgrade available since it needs to be customized for the hardware- I'm sure OSv3.5.2H is specially written for the Platinum hardware (whether it's just a different processor or other hardware too) so you would need to be able to work with Handspring, and maybe Palm too, in order to rewrite the OS for that platform.

Nonetheless, it seems that the market opportunities of a flash memory board for the Visor family of handhelds is great- certainly much better than when that first upgrade board was made for the Pilot.

BTW if you didn't know, the company that made that first aftermarket memory upgrade for the Pilot is TRG, now a manufacturer of a Palm-OS handheld.

Posted by MPM on 12-01-2000 09:07 PM:

This is a good idea

This is a great idea.

But let me play Devil's Advocate for a minute...

Possible problems...

1) Flash is hard to get these days. For a small volume product/service like this upgrade, even if a person/small company could find Flash available, it would likely cost quite a bit. Could be hard to keep the upgrade cost below $100 (more on this below).

2) The only current benefit from this type of upgrade is having some Flash available for 3rd-party software storage like Palm users have now. Nice, but I'm not sure that many people would pay around $100 for this.

3) As pointed out, there would still be no way to upgrade the OS on a Visor that has had this Flash upgrade. I don't think that Handspring or Palm would be interested at all in helping cure this.

If Handspring was interested, they would simply release an update for installation into RAM. Or they could offer an upgrade where you sent in your Visor and they desoldered the current ROM and soldered in a new ROM with the upgraded OS. All indications from Handspring show that neither of these is going to happen.

4) It would void your warrantee. Not to important to some people, but very important to others.

5) Cost. The cost of having the person ship their Visor to the company, fully back it up, they take it appart, remove the ROM/RAM card, desolder the ROM, resolder in the Flash chip (preprogrammed), clean the board, reassemble the Visor, test the Visor, restore the backed up data, and then ship it back to the person, is a VERY labor intensive set of tasks. This costs $$$.

Then there is the high cost of the Flash chip. Flash costs more than DRAM, and I've seen some companies that will upgrade your Palm or Visor to 8MB of RAM from 2MB. They charge about $80. Since Flash is always much more expensive than DRAM, a Flash upgrade would cost much more than $80. I would guess that the cost could be as high as $150.

6) Even if you could do such an upgrade for $100. Why not just sell your Visor Deluxe on eBay for about $175 to $200 (I just checked these prices) and then pay $100-$125 more to get a Platinum. For the same price you get Palm OS 3.5.2 and a faster processor. (Yeah, I know - still no Flash).

Back to normal mode...

If someone would offer this upgrade for $80 as described above, I would do it. At $100, I'd think about it and probably do it. Add in an upgrade to Palm OS 3.3 or 3.5.2 and YEAH! I 'd pay $150 for that!

Posted by stevepowell61 on 12-01-2000 09:23 PM:

PQAs

Can anyone explain why the Visor Dulux cannot use PQA's.

I know it is to do with the OS version, but surley some sort of hack or patch could do the neccessary work ? Or is it more complicated tham this, as i expect it is.

Posted by Huie on 12-02-2000 10:08 PM:

Re: This is a good idea

quote:
Originally posted by MPM
(edited for brevity)

1) Flash is hard to get these days.

2) The only current benefit from this type of upgrade is having some Flash available for 3rd-party software storage like Palm users have now.

3) As pointed out, there would still be no way to upgrade the OS on a Visor that has had this Flash upgrade.

4) It would void your warrantee. Not to important to some people, but very important to others.

5) Cost.

6) Even if you could do such an upgrade for $100. Why not just sell your Visor Deluxe on eBay for about $175 to $200 (I just checked these prices) and then pay $100-$125 more to get a Platinum. For the same price you get Palm OS 3.5.2 and a faster processor. (Yeah, I know - still no Flash).

Okay, let me go through this all at once- yes flash is hard to get nowadays, especially for a little guy. But do you think it's much more than the $10/2M that you'd get it at if you were to buy an 8M springboard backup module for full retail?

Let me just make up some more numbers- if you really want to get gouged on memory prices, most laptop memory modules (SODIMMs) use the proper EDO DRAM. Egghead has these for about $50/64M or $8.25/8M RETAIL. Assume that you're going to pay twice that just for the individual components. Call it about $30 to get a four layer printed circuit board, another $5 for miscellaneous parts (connector, capacitors, jumpers), $20 assembly. Yeah they're exhorborant prices, but possibly reasonable to assume if you're thinking a prototype run off less than 100 boards. Call it about $90 per unit. Then double it for a 50% margin and yes, it is pricy.

Now cost cut this all- get the PCBs made in China for about $5-$10 if not less. Assume you can get the individual memory chips for their assembled reatil price. Use a domestic assembly house so you can oversee it, maybe bargain them down to $15 (not including NRE like the solder paste screen). And you've got a retail price of just the hardware at about $100. Assume your software is priced like the TRG FlashPro and add another few bucks to amortize your development costs and you can hit the $150 price point. (isn't it funny how I've pretty much matched the TRG prices for both its SuperPilot II XL and xtra xtra Pro boards?

With a little more effort, maybe you could pull your cost down to what TRG has their xtra xtra Pro board now selling for: $99.

So, cost might be an issue if you stay too small, but if you can reach certain volumes, you can make it cheap enough. Yeah, I know, it's a "chicken and the egg" issue, but TRG sucessfully solved it when the overall handheld market was much smaller.

Yes, that only gives you flash and the ability to add programs (and backup data), not necessarily OS upgrades.

Would it really be in HS or Palm's best interest to support/allow/lisence an upgrade? For Handspring, it would allow them to increase their marketshare. They're already pushing their expandability via the Springboard slot. With this they could push their OS expandability without increasing the price of the units. Yes, they claim that they support upgrades to the OS via patches and the Springboard slot (http://www.handspring.com/products/...tml#upgradingA1)- these could also just be put into the flash.

Yes, though they havent really provided any significant upgrade patches to the OS, but there's only so much that you can do with patches. For instance, a lot of the graphics routines have changed with OSv3.5- it's not something that can easily be done with a patch. Not to mention it'd probably take up a lot of RAM.

Admittedly, people would scream if HS helped make a flash OS upgrade when they don't even have flash, but they could counter that if they did make it work on a springboard unit too, especially if the internal flash upgrade did cost more (say, something like $20

But you still could add the one existing patch (in addition to other apps) to the flash.

I find it interesting that Handspring sells a stylus with a screwdriver in it, and even supplies it with the Prism and Platinum, when there is no reason to open up the things. Would using the supplied screwdriver to take apart the Visor and change a board really void the warranty?

Yes, there are people who would not want to void their warranty, but the people who would like to add a card and don't care about voiding their warranty have probably already taken the things apart.

Yes, you could just sell your Visor and buy a new one, but there is a definate action potential there that doesn't come from buying an upgrade card. You have to invest more time, money, and effort in upgrading from one Visor to another Palm device, possibly a Visor, psooibly not, depending on your current investment in cradles, springboard modules, styli, cases, etc.

quote:

Back to normal mode...

If someone would offer this upgrade for $80 as described above, I would do it. At $100, I'd think about it and probably do it. Add in an upgrade to Palm OS 3.3 or 3.5.2 and YEAH! I 'd pay $150 for that!

So, would you pay $150 for the thing knowing that you might need to pay another $20 to upgrade the OS in the future?

Posted by MPM on 12-05-2000 08:43 PM:

Re: Re: This is a good idea

quote:
Originally posted by Huie
So, would you pay $150 for the thing knowing that you might need to pay another $20 to upgrade the OS in the future?

Yup. $20 is not that much for an OS.

Posted by Metronet on 12-10-2000 03:14 AM:

So, how's it now? Any anyone or any company is going to try out this idea? I'm very excited about this.... Should forward these threads to HandSpring. I know there is a guy in Singapore who do upgrade from 2Mb to 8Mb for Palm PDA. Not sure if he would be interested in this idea. Can't Platinum OS be used on Deluxe (let's say the upgrade from ROM to FlashROM is possible)?

Posted by gararas on 12-10-2000 09:29 PM:

r you refering to the palmworkshop from singapore???

my visor was upgraded by him.

Posted by Metronet on 12-11-2000 01:11 AM:

Hi Gararas,

What have you upgraded on your VISOR? FlashROM or Memory? But I thought VISOR is 8Mb size already.

Posted by MPM on 12-11-2000 09:11 PM:

Not likely...

quote:
Originally posted by Metronet
...Can't Platinum OS be used on Deluxe (let's say the upgrade from ROM to FlashROM is possible)?

Not likely. The Deluxe uses the Motorola Dragonball EZ processor while the Platinum uses the Draganball VZ. There are definite differences between the two. So the Platinum ROM would likely not work at all on a Deluxe.

Posted by gararas on 12-12-2000 04:09 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Metronet
Hi Gararas,

What have you upgraded on your VISOR? FlashROM or Memory? But I thought VISOR is 8Mb size already.

i got the 2MB one coz at that time i was kinda broke and upgraded to 8MB when i had the spare cash. no flash ROM just RAM.

Posted by ripkim on 12-16-2000 06:52 PM:

Compaq Pocket PC ROM Upgrade

It seems Compaq offers a Windows CE 3.0 ROM upgrade kit for their Aero 1500 and 2100 models. Here's a review of the process from PDABuzz.com.

http://www2.pdabuzz.com/Reviews/Det...OM_Upgrade.html

Here's some text from Compaq's Handheld PC website:

http://www5.compaq.com/products/handhelds/pocketpc.html

Want to upgrade you Aero 1500 or Aero 2100 to Microsoft's newest Handheld Operating System Windows for Pocket PC? Simply purchase an Aero ROM upgrade kit. With this easy to install upgrade, you can increase your Aero's functionality with programs such as Pocket Word and Pocket Excel and Internet Browsing. Just swap out the old ROM chip with the new one and you are ready to go!

Maybe Handspring could learn a thing or two from Compaq and offer a ROM upgrade kit for any Palm OS 3.X Visor when OS 4.0 comes out.

I would be first in line.

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