ROM Flashes Are Hot
It’s great when a piece of technology purchased years ago has new life breathed into it.
My DVD/CD combo burner for example. That came with a computer I bought over a year ago and flashing the ROM update increased it’s speed on certain media making burning DVDs much faster. Easier too because a quirk of my machine was having to log out and back in between discs.
Then my trusty PDA. When I first got it I was so excited I started using it right away. And being a man I did that without reading the manual. I later discovered a ROM update had been issued but would result in data loss on the device so I didn’t bother doing it. Then I tried getting World Enough And Time working on Burton’s cell. I didn’t spend much time on it and had virtually no experience on his phone so my debit machine voodoo wasn’t happening but it got me to thinking about trying on my PDA.
It didn’t work but I also tried an episode of Chef! which did work but didn’t fit the screen right. I remembered the ROM update was meant to update Windows Media Player. Maybe that would do the trick. Mindi and the kid were headed out for much of the evening so I would have time to focus on the update. I dug out the instructions and went to work. It may not sound like much to do but I would also need to re-load my programs and configure the device to work the way I want.
Wow. They said it was just to update Media Player but it did much more than that. It changed the way WiFi works for example.
As well just wiping the device did a lot to speed it up and make room. This is my first PDA after all. I had no idea what I was doing when I first got it. Frankly it was something of a minor miracle that I got such an awesome machine to begin with, although I did have help. But when I would load features and programs at first I didn’t know I could load them onto the SD card rather than the device itself.
Aborted attempts to use Outlook for example left some untidy files laying around taking up space. 4 years of uneducated use adds up. So starting from scratch, with improved programs, I was able to make better decisions.
So not only does it run better and have more space I was able to get programs like Bejeweled and Sudoku working.
So what about the videos, the entire impetus behind this? The ones I could run before ran smoother but no progress on those that didn’t work before. But with Orlando so soon I couldn’t really investigate third part video players as much as I would have liked. I’m still stoked about the new features of my old toy though, even the screen looks better!
So unlike the Vegas trip when one of us has the DS the other won’t have to make due with second-class entertainment.
I feel like I have a new PDA. Of course that got me thinking about getting an actual new PDA but that’s a subject for another day.
