Soul Of The Prestige

Over the weekend, I will be working on making Soul Of The Prestige a mobile friendly blog with support for Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Iris Browser, BOLT, and UCWEB, as well as Pocket Internet Explorer. In addition to the plugins that I’ll be using to make this possible, I will also be using QR-Codes throughout the desktop version of the blog. All that’s required for viewing the mobile version of the blog is one of the fore-mentioned browsers as well as a QR-Code reader (I recommend BeeTagg or use the Mobile-Barcodes.com software list). Two themes will be offered for this mobile site: WPtouch which was made for the iPhone and a theme from the WordPress Mobile Pack designed by ribot. I’m currently testing the site now in Opera Mobile and Iris Browser although I’ll need your help to put finish the conversion. Please follow this link or the QR-Code on the left side of the page and tell me if there are any bugs.

It appears that getting Windows Mobile 6.5 on the phone may be a lot harder than expected. Even using PPCKitchen.org’s BuildOS (an excellent user friendly kitchen), I’ve run into the same problems as before with this phone. What’s more, I mysteriously spoiled my Windows XP installation leaving me without a way to produce a ROM of any build for the phone. I’ll try and get Windows XP working again by the end of the weekend and publish two new posts.

I haven’t made any inroads during the 5+ months that I’ve been working on a port of Windows Mobile 6.5 for my Vogue. As of today, I will use PPCKitchen.org’s BuildOS for building my ROMs which should make testing OEMs very simple and effortless. It will however be quite hard to get anyone to use it due to the fact that one can easily build their own ROM using the same program. I’ll try porting from scratch again in a few weeks. Time to start enjoying this phone again.

Just completed the second trial in the Alpha 100 stage of the ROM’s development. This build now has the Bronze (Titanium) and CHome (default Titanium plug-in) packages. The mui file for the CHome_Lang_0804 will have to be modified for anything to show up in English but that will be done later. The Base_Lang_0804 package has been replaced with the original Base_Lang_0409 package to increase usability while testing later Alpha 100 builds. nueMassStorage v1.3 and nueStorageManager v1.1 have been added in as well for when my computer and memory card reader cannot be used. It boots but doesn’t go past the third splash screen. Onto the next trial then.

I’m currently working on a port of Windows Mobile Build 21222. It will take a couple of days for everything to fall into place and hopefully it (mostly) works the first time. The Base packages have been added including the DPI and RES packages. Needed to add the OEM_Lang_0409 package in order for the ROM to build properly. All that was required was the initflashfiles.dat file. Now on to the next trial.

I finally got a ROM built that I can now use as a base for the new ROMs that will be built using WM6.5 Build 21500 although such triumph wasn’t to come without some distress and then more triumph. The ROM contains a ported XIP with the original SYS along with the original OEMDRIVERS package to allow the ROM to boot up completely resulting in a surprisingly fast (as if the phone was overclocked) UI. This morning though, Windows could not see the card and after removing and reinserting the card into the reader I decided to try TestDisk. It didn’t work. PhotoRec? Worked like a charm and retrieved most of the files that were on that ‘lost’ partition with the exception of the ROMs that were stored on the card. All that’s left to do now (as I already flashed the original Bell ROM back on it) is to put on my PIM data and do the simple settings changes. Installing programs can wait.

…While trying to cook a good ROM for my Vogue. Since the last post, I’ve moved onto Build 21500 and have begun experimenting with the OEM packages from the Jade’s ROMs as they are much more well laid out. The latest build I put together (26) unfortunately does not get past the second splash screen and without my card reader (which I lost at school), I am stuck with a paperweight. As this my only device running Windows Mobile, I am forced to do without it for some time. While I work on getting a replacement MicroSD card reader to replace the one I misplaced, I’ll be working on a UI for WM6.5.

I will be taking a small hiatus for a few days while I relax my mind and refrain from trying any extreme porting and cooking techniques. I was able to manually port the 21109 XIP today thanks to garfieldau’s XIPAddrTools 2.0 which can be found on this thread. Having gained the knowledge need to port the XIP, I’ll try and work on removing the ULDR as seen in this thread as well as increasing the RAM as seen in these two posts AFTER I come back from hiatus. I will most likely be implementing some changes to the site to increase ranking on Google as well as put up some ads.

The porting of the 21109 SYS went horribly 16 times in a row. After seeing what other ROM chefs like NFSFAN are capable of as well as having to deal with school and my own personal frustrations, I’m having a bit of trouble staying motivated. I usually jump around a lot as well when dealing with any type of project which is fine. Starting from scratch, despite being very much undesirable maybe warranted later on as I want to provide something technically advanced in all its aspects. I’ll just do what I can and Keep Moving Forward.

Wrong drivers though (I think…). After working hard on the errors that popped up while trying to build the a ROM containing my previously ported 21109 XIP with the 21109 SYS that I had finished porting last night, I finally finished building a new ROM (3rd build). It is the second ROM built after Alpha 100 which was the first ROM I built. You can view the changelog here. What’s unfortunate is that the ROM doesn’t even boot past the second splash screen. Either the drivers are wrong or I may either have to replace the boot.rgu file with one from the 21109 XIP, the user.hv and default.hv files with ones from the 19208 (Bell Mobility) SYS, or I’ll have to replace the 21109 OEMDrivers with one from 19208 (Bell Mobility) SYS. Will have to take a look at it. More to come later today after I get a Beta 200 working.