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

Ok, now that the Visor Edge is out and it doesn't have Flash ROM to allow OS upgrades, it looks as if Handspring is simply not going to ever produce a Visor with Flash ROM. So OS upgrades are going to have to come as patches. Which of course, Handspring has also not produced (other than to fix bugs in the existing OS on the Visor).

So if Handspring truly does monitor these VisorCentral Forums, let's voice our opinion on what kind of OS upgrade patch that us Deluxe (and Standard) Visor owners want.

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 380

The chances of a patch to update the OS are nonexistent. I'm not sure that it would even be possible. It would mean booting to the new image instead of the one in the ROM. Additionally, it would eat between 1MB and 2MBs of memory depending on which OS is involved and which features are added.

The reason for the size and complexity is that it would not be a true patch. a patch is just replacing a few files that add functionality or fix bugs. A new version of the OS would have to replace everything in the ROM.

A new OS on a SpringBoard is also not practical for reasons that have been noted elsewhere.

People need to accept that in spite of what HandSpring implies on their website, the only OS updates that will ever be made available are bug fixes within the existing OS version, not upgrades to a new version.

Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 118

Ok - no upgrade, what PATCHES do we want

Ok - lets say (for the sake of arguement) that Handspring is not going to upgrade the OS via a patch. Not surprising, as that would stop some of us from upgrading to the newer hardware.

I personally don't find a whole lot in the newer Palm OS's that I want, with the exception of the grayscale upgrade. Since the hardware can already support more gray colordepth (lets ignore the irony in that statement) why not allow us to be able to use that functionality? Also, if Handspring is not going to make this, could the development community be able to add that as a hack?

Tucson Sailors

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 380

There are a number of apps out there today that will do gray-scale on a Visor Deluxe. All of them are writing directly to the hardware rather than letting the OS do it. I can point programmers at a number of sites where they can download sample source code. I have even written my own (mostly out of curiosity). There are a couple of problems with this approach.

The first problem is that unless you really work at it, your code will be much slower than the built-in support. This is because most programmers are not going to take the time to really optimize their code. Ideally this should all be written in assembly language to get the best performance.

The second problem is that there is no guarantee that your home grown code is not going to break some future version of the OS (or a current version on different hardware). So chances are the programmer is going to have to put multiple versions of the graphics engine into the program to support both old and new devices.

Chances are that this is more trouble than most casual programmers are going to want to deal with.

The idea of putting it all into a hack seems interesting. The problem here is that the sheer amount of the OS that you would have to replace is scary. I don't see how you could practically do this without replacing the entire OS since you are going to have to revector HUGE chunks of it in your hack anyway.

A possible third solution would be to combine these two ideas. If someone would write a full-featured, high performance shared library (like mathlib) for graphics and make it freely/widely available, developers could access it easily and produce good gray-scale programs for the older OSs. Ideally, the shared library would also contain direct OS graphics support. This would encourage programmers to use it since they would not have to write two pieces of code. I don't have time to do this on my own, but I might participate if there were enough other programmers interested.

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

quote:

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Originally posted by bradhaak
The chances of a patch to update the OS are nonexistent. I'm not sure that it would even be possible. It would mean booting to the new image instead of the one in the ROM. Additionally, it would eat between 1MB and 2MBs of memory depending on which OS is involved and which features are added.

The reason for the size and complexity is that it would not be a true patch. a patch is just replacing a few files that add functionality or fix bugs. A new version of the OS would have to replace everything in the ROM.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 380

I see your point, but I think that you still need to replace the whole OS. Ignoring for the moment your analysis of the size requirements which I don't totally agree with, you still have a major problem.

Most programs will check for feature availability by OS version. In other words, if the OS is version 3.1, you are not going to look for graphics capabilities. If the patch provides a newer version number, say v3.5, so that apps will expect the graphics support to be there, apps will also expect every other feature of 3.5 to be there. including application capabilities, launch codes, new APIs, and changed APIs. Here is a partial list of graphics and windowing capabilities that were added to the 3.5 OS.

WinCreateBitmapWindow, WinDrawPixel, WinErasePixel, WinGetBitmap, WinGetPatternType, WinGetPixel, WinIndexToRGB, WinInvertPixel, WinPaintBitmap, WinPaintChar, WinPaintChars, WinPaintLine, WinPaintLines, WinPaintPixel, WinPaintPixels, WinPaintRectangle, WinPaintRectangleFrame, WinPalette, WinPopDrawState, WinPushDrawState, WinRGBToIndex, WinScreenLock, WinScreenMode, WinScreenUnlock, WinSetBackColor, WinSetDrawMode, WinSetForeColor, WinSetPatternType, WinSetTextColor, BmpBitsSize, BmpColortableSize, BmpCompress, BmpCreate, BmpDelete, BmpGetBits, BmpGetColortable, BmpSize, ColorTableEntries

This is just a partial list that just concerns graphics and doesn't include 3.2 or 3.3 additions.

All told, there are approximately 200 functions that have been added since 3.1 and at least 20 that have been removed. Additionally a number of existing functions have been renamed or extended.

Just hacking in some of the graphics functions might work for a small percentage of apps, but trying to make it look like a newer OS without full functionality would probably break more apps than it would fix.

I still don't believe that you make this work without replacing the entire OS. That is why I made the alternate proposal to develop a true OS independent graphics library.

MPM - Hope this clarifies why I feel the way that I do (even if I still haven't convinced you).

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 106

back on track

I want the multi-tasking/threading OS that's in the queue (saw it mentioned in a thread here somewhere; about 1.5 years out).

__________________
Steve
"Gort, Klatu verada nictu."

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Chicago
Posts: 6

Re: back on track

quote:

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Originally posted by ss@rr
I want the multi-tasking/threading OS that's in the queue (saw it mentioned in a thread here somewhere; about 1.5 years out).

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You are looking at the wrong hardware. Take at look at "yopy"(www.yopy.com) and "vr3" (www.agendacomputing.com). Both are running on Linux. I ordered my vr3 a week ago. Comming in sometime soon.


Seraphim

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 106

BTW, it should be running on an aluminum case (choice of colors!), minimum 320x320 64k color screen, min. 32 mhz, min. 16mb RAM, OS in flash, current VDX size is ok (no bigger please!), SB slot, IRDA, USB, etc?

__________________
Steve
"Gort, Klatu verada nictu."

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Oregon
Posts: 1

Seraphim, are you actually a developer, or did you just sign up for the developer program to get the device early? Are they actually shipping the VR3?

I'm asking cuz I just bought a Visor Deluxe for $150 (after rebate) but the VR3 looks way better, ESPECIALLY since I wanted to use the VD as a universal remote and the VR3 seems to have this built in? It mentioned an IR port (not IrDA)

whoop! it sounds great!

__________________
Packrat
[email protected]

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Utah
Posts: 3

What hacks are available to make the Deluxe use the 16-bit grayscale? I've tried searching PalmGear and can't seem to find anything.

Also, if someone can point me to a website that gives a listing of the APIs added and removed in OS3.5 I'd appreciate it.

I'd like to see if I can't come up with a workaround to the OS3.5 patch.

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 380

What you want to look at is the Palm OS Reference that is available on the PalmOS website. It is available as a PDF document. Look at the section titled Compatibility Guide. You will see a listing of all of the functions that have been added to the OS since 3.1 (more than 200). You will also see functions that have been changed. The only thing that will not show up are functions that still work the same but are required to interact with new or changed functions. Additionally there are a number of functions that have been removed, but you shouldn't have to deal with them very much.

Good luck

Registered: Not Yet
Location:
Posts: N/A

I don't know if this will help anybody but try this download.

http://www.twinkletwinkle.com/download/graytoggle.zip

It will toggle your visor thru any color config available. The visor dlx has 2 choices, B&W and grayscale(4 grayscale).

I haven't found anything that would let you go any higher then that on a visor dlx but this allows you to see the grayscale icons in the launcher.

What I did was use silverscreen to change the grayscale icons for most of my apps. Then deleted silverscreen and use the standard OS and turned the color setting to 4 color grayscale. Now I have the benefit of using better looking icons without the overhead of silverscreen.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 106

quote:

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Originally posted by Zidane
What hacks are available to make the Deluxe use the 16-bit grayscale? I've tried searching PalmGear and can't seem to find anything.

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__________________
Steve
"Gort, Klatu verada nictu."

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 380

quote:

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ss@rr suggested looking at:
Screen Prefs 1.03
http://staging.palmgear.com/softwar...mp;prodID=7547

ColourDepth 1.0
p://staging.palmgear.com/softwar...29&prodID=13561

Depth DA (under Utilities)
//member.nifty.ne.jp/yamakado/da/

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Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 106

If you have MagicText, they have a plugin for screen depth that allows 16 grays; except on my VDX it reports the device is not capable of that and won't allow the selection.

__________________
Steve
"Gort, Klatu verada nictu."

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Cape Town
Posts: 6

I've become unhappy with my Deluxe because it is about time Handspring included flash RAM so the OS can be upgraded. Their cost and compatibility claims don't fly with me. In all likelihood my next handheld will be made by Palm because I do not want to be saddled with a fixed OS for the life of the device. Personally I think they're doing this on purpose to encourage purchasing of their newer products.