Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Mo-Town, WV
Posts: 22

Visor Self-Modifications (any thoughts?)

Has anyone tried or even know where these rumors I keep hearing about can be attempted? (instructions that is)

I see talk about people upgrading their Visors from 8mb to 16mbs of ram, but I never actually see instructions, or even evidence that it's been safely done.

I also hear that it is possible to replace the non-flashable ROM on the Visors with a compadable, flashable rom, thus allowing you to upgrade the PalmOS!! With that, I thought it might be interesting to see if removing a rom chip from a Visor Plat. and inserting it into a Visor DLX would actually work to get version 3.5.

I admit I don't think I have the skills to do any of this w/o screwing up my visor, but i have a lot of geek friends that could probably pull it of... not saying that im not one

Any leads? thoughts? anything?? I've spent a good 2 hours already searching the web, and found mostly porn and other dead ends...

__________________
~Jonathan

Registered: May 2001
Location: NY metro area
Posts: 219

Try www.palmpilotupgrade.com

I have read about this on other threads and they all seem to give him high marks.

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Jonathan

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 216

Re: Visor Self-Modifications (any thoughts?)

quote:

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Originally posted by Vew
<snip>...I also hear that it is possible to replace the non-flashable ROM on the Visors with a compadable, flashable rom, thus allowing you to upgrade the PalmOS!! With that, I thought it might be interesting to see if removing a rom chip from a Visor Plat. and inserting it into a Visor DLX would actually work to get version 3.5...<snip>

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Mo-Town, WV
Posts: 22

Re: Re: Visor Self-Modifications (any thoughts?)

quote:

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Originally posted by MPM
Sorry, this one's not possible. While you can replace the ROM in a Visor with a Flash ROM chip, the best you can do is to copy the old ROM into the new Flash ROM chip. There is no way to upgrade the OS because Handspring does not (and will likely never) provide a ROM image you can use to upgrade any of the Visors.

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~Jonathan

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 251

Handspring modifies the standard Palm OS to include features such as Datebook+ and the use of the Springboard slot.

There's no telling what would happen if you tried it...

Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 118

OS 3.5 on a VDX

Well -

this discussion has come up before, and other than *legal* restrictions there wasn't a hard and fast rule about using a 3.5 handspring ROM image on a VDX that had been altered for flash rom.

With that in mind however, there isn't a legal place to get the ROM, nobody has admitted to trying this kaizo (yet) and the Plat uses a
different version of the dragonball cpu, and might have different address registers, etc.

I've been wanting 3.5 for the 16 grayscale ability that the controller can handle, but the OS cannot. If you do decide to try this, and it works (probably the easiest way to test would be to pull out the daughterboard from a plat that has the OS on it and try to
install it on a VDX; don't know anyone who has one, so can't try myself) please post it. There is a very small but determined group of hardware modification enthusiasts that have Visors, and if you do a search for Kaizo or Kaizen you'll find some sites about it all.

Good Luck!

Tucson Sailors

Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Elkins Park, Pa
Posts: 577

quote:

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Originally posted by Rolando
There's no telling what would happen if you tried it...

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__________________
-Bernie

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 216

Still won't work...

quote:

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Originally posted by tucson_sailors
<snip>...and the Plat uses a different version of the dragonball cpu, and might have different address registers, etc...

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