Re: Flashboard questions...

Man you don't know how to think out of the box do you?

The chip doesn't have to "match" the pinout.  If the same pins are there, 
simply wire to them.

The reason they had to design a different board is because the ROM board 
was obviously not designed to be written to.  Thus they had to design a 
board that could be written to and thus the flashboard.

What i am talking about here is MODIFYING the rom board with NEW 
memory.  We program the memory with the new software wire a socket into 
the rom board (yes, space may be tight, but the socket doesn't have to be 
right there, wires can be long you know??)

It doesn't have to be SD or CF -- they were just an example.  If you can't 
start thinking out of the box for an off the wall solution -- then you might as 
well lock yourself in a room and hold your hands over your ears & start 
humming while the rest of us think.

On 8 Nov 2006 at 22:16, Mark Gollahon wrote:

Sorry, the Jornada's modem is a "soft" modem - the hardware is the
same hardware as what produces sound - plus it is soldered onto the
Jornada's motherboard.  If you remove it, at best you won't have
sound, at worst the machine won't work any longer - and you'll save,
oh, the space of a chip.  (Furthermore, I doubt that the space would
be usable anyway because there would be no way to route enough wires
from it to the flashboard area to make it useful.  It is VERY tight in
the Jornada's case.  I know - I looked.)

Furthermore, the ROM/Flash stuff doesn't work like you are describing.
You can't "just solder a new chip on" - especially the newer ones
showing up on motherboards.  You have to find flash chips that fit the
pinout of the ROM chips you are attempting to replace if you are to
have a chance of success (e.g. data signals, address signals, chip
selection logic, power, etc.).  And you really have no way of knowing
if the board even routes all the signals that the flash chip needs.
In fact, since HP had to produce their own flashboard separately from
their masked ROM board, I'd hazard a guess that the masked ROM boards
don't route all the necessary signals.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't work the way you decribe.  I wished it
did, because then the solutions would already be here and working.

Regards,
-MarkG


[email protected] wrote ..
> There is always room somewhere... I plan on losing the modem as soon
> as I can since I don't plan on using it..
> 
> just sucks...  I just wonder if you could tear both those  ROM chips
> off -- get a newer flash chip (Like from a Motherboard BIOS 512kb,
> just big enough to boot and load thebootloader and get the rest from
> the CF card) and wire it in place.
> 
> On 8 Nov 2006 at 17:37, Mark Gollahon wrote:
> 
> Chris:
> 
> Those are all excellent ideas - except (you knew it was coming, right??):
> 
> 1. the ROM board and the Flash board look very different;
> 2. there isn't enough physical space to accomodate a CF card (check the
> Jornada archives);
> 3. if you could put a CF card in there, there's no room for RAM;
> 3. the circuitry to support MMC/SD/XD/whatever would require our own board
> anyway;
> 4. desoldering/resoldering surface-mount is not an easy thing to do, but
> a one-time soldering onto a blank board is (as long as the components are
> all on one side!); and
> 5. the chips used in the Jornadas and the original Jornada flashboards
> have all been EoL'ed anyway - even the Jornada's processor isn't made any
> longer.
> 
> Sorry, there just isn't another option other than building a new flashboard.
> And the problem with building a new flashboard is that there is no way
> to get an initial flash without a custom flash programmer (e.g. flashing
> *after* the flash is mounted on the board).  If you try to flash *before*
> the flash is mounted on the board and you have a bad flash (or mess up
> during a subsequent update), you're royally hosed....
> 
> Regards,
> -MarkG
> 
> 
> Chris Davis wrote ..
> > Hello, I'm new to the Jornada scene.
> > 
> > I haven't been able to find a picture of a stock Rom board.  Is it identical
> > to the flash board except for the fact it has rom on it?
> > 
> > I can't belive there is not a way to interface (Hack it.  Look up zipit
> > in google! Also if someone can add a IDE cd-rom to a gameboy they should
> > be able to do this....) a compact flash card (or SD card or even something
> > else) to the rom board.  Even if you must remove the origional rom and
> > put the new memory in its place I would think that viable. Interfacing
> > removable media like SD or CF would also solve the flashing problems...
> > 
> > Let me know if I'm way off base here...
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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