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| Filed: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 2:13:37 PM | | Filed Under: Announcements | | Upgraded the database engine | | Just a test post, actually. |
| | Filed: Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 5:26:26 PM | | Filed Under: Phones | | So, I took the GPS plunge on my 6800.. | After a lot of research, I decided it was time to reflash my Alltel PPC-6800 to enable GPS and EvDO RevA (though I don't have RevA in my area, so can't test that yet).
Now, here's the latest.. having had it installed for about 24 hours...
First of all, I ended up installing DCD's ROM after all... had problems with missing files in the other ROM I referred to. So, these observations are specific to DCD's Alltel port of his ROM.
A note: Because you will need to reprovision the phone, I think it is important to make sure you are in an Alltel native area since you want to make sure you can get to Alltel's *228 after flashing. If you are roaming, you would have trouble I would think, in which case you would have to ##778 (##PST) and enter everything manually. I went through and wrote down ALL my settings in PST just to be on the safe side before I upgraded, though I ended up not needing them.
First of all, the ROM installed very cleanly. The order should be HardSPL, then DCD's ROM, and then the radio last as I understand it... though I ended up installing the reinstalling the ROM after the radio so I'm not sure how big of a deal that is.
Once everything is installed, you will see 1X and roaming. You must then do a *228 and select option 3 to reprovision the phone on Alltel's network to get back to EvDO and not roaming. The phone will reboot. You then need to *228 again select option 2 to update the PRL (as the ROM installs a really old PRL 30006 for some reason) or manually update your PRL to 40029 if you want EvDO roaming on Sprint (click on "Alltel PRLs" at the top of this page).
Then, you should be ready to go! No problems at all with either phone or data.... the *228s took care of all the setup.
Here's what I've noticed so far, as well as answering the questions I remember being asked:
DCD's ROM, being a "clean and simple" flavor, is pretty snappy (though the phone always seems faster after a hard reset, so I don't know how seriously I would take that).
I don't have a headphone adapter, but both the stock headphones and my Seidio amplified car kit (uses the miniUSB port) worked fine.
My Jabra BT350 Bluetooth headset paired right up and worked just fine. Can't say that the sound quality is either better or worse.
No RevA in my area, so I can't vouch for that, but a speedtest seemed to be right where I usually am (EvDO speeds between 400k and 900k depending on signal).
Now, about the GPS... it worked very well! I have Odyssey Mobile nav software (it came with my Holux GPSlim 236 BT receiver) and I installed it and configured it to use COM4 (which seems to be the consensus port to use with the 6800's internal GPS). It took about 5 minutes to find the satellites, but then it worked really well... I took it for a drive and it was consistently seeing 7 satellites and using either 6 or 7. It was pinning my location down well, showing me driving under overpasses as I was doing so, etc... I went down to a 25 foot range in Odyssey and it looked like my location was spot on.
So far, so good... other than the one lockup I had overnight, no problems at all... battery life seems fine and the phone is very snappy.
I'll give more info in a couple of days after I really have a feel for how well it's working |
| | Filed: Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 4:04:07 AM | | Filed Under: Phones | | PPC-6800 Internal GPS and EvDO RevA Working! | .. well, sort of anyway... but not for us Alltel users, at least not yet...
Someone over at PPCGeeks has obtained a test copy of the Sprint ROM update that enables GPS and RevA. Lots of Sprint users have installed it (with varying success) today and have proved conclusively that the internal GPS chip in the 6800 does truly exist and is a standalone (not aGPS) chip (as proven by putting the phone in flight mode, which turns off the phone radio).
PPCGeeks thread on 6800 GPS
While I wouldn't suggest any of us Alltel users try to upgrade to this ROM (it's Sprint-specific and has a few bugs) it is great news in that we now have hope for GPS being enabled on the 6800, which will make it the perfect device!
Now, we just have to wait and see if Alltel will follow suit (of course Sprint hasn't officially released this yet, so who knows how long it will be before Alltel does)... otherwise I am sure there will be custom ROMs available eventually...
Take THAT, iPhone! |
| | Filed: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 2:57:15 PM | | Filed Under: Computer Stuff | | The Vaio "upgrade" from Vista to XP Pro | Well, expanding on the earlier post, I spent about 5 hours upgrading my Vaio SZ430N/B laptop from the factory installed Vista Business OS to XP Pro.
Well worth it. The reinstall of all the Sony drivers was a bit time consuming, but everything works now except for the fingerprint reader (which I would hardly ever use anyway since I have a docking station the laptop sits in).
This machine just screams now. Not only is it running XP Pro, but it's a "clean" install from an original MS disk. None of the bloatware that comes with a restore disk.
The final numbers now (refer to the earlier post about memory usage under Vista)... I am using my Vaio right now, and with 6 programs open Task Manager shows 490MB of RAM being used. Under Vista, it took twice that just to get through startup without opening any programs!
If this interests you, the drivers are available here. It's a bit of work, but you won't be sorry. |
| | Filed: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 1:19:59 PM | | Filed Under: Computer Stuff | | Vista is dead... | ... for me anyway. At least until it becomes more mainstream.
I broke down and replaced my trusty old Averatec laptop (see an earlier post about this in "Computer Stuff" with a shiny new Sony Vaio VGN-SZ430N/B. Core Duo T7200 processor, 2GB RAM, and nVidia GeForce 7400 graphics with dedicated video memory. And it should be a screamer... except that it came with Vista Business preinstalled.
I was a good soldier and stuck it out for a week, trying to convince myself that Vista would work for me. But, now I am giving up. I just finished downloading all the XP compatible drivers from Sony, and later today this computer shall become what is capable of... a screamin' machine running XP Professional. With the hardware this laptop has, it should be the fastest machine I have ever owned if it has a "professional" OS installed.
Vista just has too many idiosyncracies for me, it's not compatible with a couple of programs I use, and I don't see why a machine with these specs should take 5 minutes to boot up and 3 minutes to shut down. Heck, a look at Task Manager once startup is complete shows that it's using 990MB of RAM... to do NOTHING! My Averatec didn't use 990MB of RAM when I was multitasking!
Nice try, Microsoft, but Vista's just not for me. |
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