Re: Flashboard questions...

bbsux, much time has gone into research of this project which you have
apparently not reviewed online nor done on your own.

I'll simply add my vote for Mark and ask that bbsux be restricted from
further posting if he sends anything that is less than productive.

Greg

Mark Gollahon wrote:

[email protected] wrote ..

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

Gee, we get a lot of brownie points by posting derogatory comments.

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

Yes, you are absolutely right - but only if you actually have *room* for
those wires.

My contention all along has been that there isn't room for the board +
those wires + whatever extra chips have to float around inside the
Jornada's case. And it looks like you aren't going to believe me.
Fine. Try this simple procedure:

1. Open up your Jornada and remove the masked ROM board.
2. Take a CF card and place it in the board's space.
3. Now, try to reassemble the keyboard (but don't force it).

You will find that you can't without seriously flexing the keyboard,
possibly even breaking it. Now, you've just seen that whatever you
place in that space MUST be THINNER than a CF card. If you use the
board, then the board + your mods must be thinner than a CF card.

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.

I'm really not following you here. If the board you want to use/modify
wasn't designed to have information written back into any chips where
the masked ROM chips are, what makes you think you can simply "wire"
different chips into those spaces and "voila" now you can write new
information there? If the signals that cause the writeback of
information are missing, no amount of simple "wiring" will create them.

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??)

Ok, now I am convinced - you have *not* opened up your Jornada to look at
the space you have to work with. DUDE - OPEN IT UP! it will be very
obvious that there is no physical room in there for any kind of socket,
let alone sockets (plural) with wires hanging off of them - and now I am
talking about the WHOLE Jornada - not just the area in and around the
ROM board. Sockets are large compared to surface-mounted chips. Plus,
there is an upper limit on how long connecting wires can be, as each
millimeter of wire adds capacitance and inductance to the circuit that
the signals must traverse - the bigger the wire, the more capacitance and
inductance is added per millimeter. Now we are getting into modeling
"tranmission lines" and their effects on electrical signals passing
through them. I don't have the time nor the inclination to teach you
electromagnetic theory.

It doesn't have to be SD or CF -- they were just an example.

Actually, a CF card would be the perfect way to do this, since it has
three modes of operation (ATA/IDE, PCMCIA, and straight memory access).
The other storage mediums (MMC/SD/XD/SM/etc.) are serial-based and
the additional circuitry would more than offset the media's size. But
only if there was enough room. But I've already shown you that there
isn't enough room.

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.

<sigh> Back the the brownie points again.

Look, if you don't have constructive things to say, then keep your mouth
shut. If you think you have an idea that might work, then *critically*
*analyze* it first. Since it seems that you have done neither of these
things, then I respectfully request that you get back to me once you have.

Good day to you, sir.

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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