Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 4

I'm an old Newton user and REALLY miss having real HWR. I manage with Tealscript and ScreenHack, but it's not the same.

The main problem seems to be that the D'ball processor is too slow to handle HWR acceptably. Maybe we could put the processor (and a battery for it?) in a springboard! Load up a hack to substitute grafitti a la Tealscript e' voila!

It might not be a cost effective option for a vendor, though. :-(

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Another interesting thought... if there are no flash upgrades to the OS, 3rd parties might put it on a springboard module... this would eat your slot though, but if relatively few springboards exist.. this might not be a problem.

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How about storing a spare $10 bill in the slot??? :-)


Cheers,
Bruce

Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 67

I had thought the issue of OS upgradability had been settled. I think I read that you can upgrade the OS (which doesn't occupy too much memory) as software, that it doesn't have to be in ROM. Can anyone back that up?

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 105

Yes, thats how Palm used to do it-through software patches. This was for minor updates though, large upgrades did require a new chip or an attachment. I read once that this guy had a beeper which had the updated OS and he kept it just for that fact, never used the beeper function.

I expect Handspring to issue Software patches, and will allow you to load these updates onto the 8mb modules.

Its been stated before that you can override the OS by using the Springboard so I'd be very surprised if you couldn't use it to add updates.

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-Matthew Nichols
[email protected]
http://www.extremebleem.cjb.net

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 103

I just heard that the issue of the nonupgradable os is a non issue. Basically from what I hear the visor does have rom; It just doesnt have the hardware to write to the rom. And that it was possible to write to the rom through the springboard slot since all of the system hardware and resources are available through the springboard port. Which would mean that we could buy a $5 springboard that would burn the latest version of the os onto the rom -which is there if you check for it, you can check for it using quite a few pieces of standard palm diagnostic software. It is however as I said a rumor. I am going to sniff around and see if I can substanciate it.


[This message has been edited by Bane (edited 02-08-2000).]