Reflashing Ubisurfer?

It has the Samsung S3C2450 processor in it..

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/file/media/s3c2450_datasheet_200901-0.pdf

Mark, I'm not sure how to flash this thing yet...will try to keep on learning.

BTW, the Softmaker Office 10 is not burnt into ROM, rather it is complete unto itself in a folder in the "progam files" folder. I was able to copy it off onto a USB flash drive and actually run it on my Mobilepro 900 from there.

OK, that9;s great, thank you. I've got to admit I've looked at Softmaker Office on here and I can't really say I'm impressed... I just want Pocket Office, which is missing from the insatallation on here. Anyways, I have a legit copy of CE6 through MSDN/DreamSpark, so I'll fart about with that in a bit, install it in a VM and see if I can persuade the Platform Builder to do my bidding. Got a 4GB SD card here, which should be more than suffice for this purpose Already hacked about with the OS a little, and I think I might have broken it a little... it complains about missing USB drivers when I fire it up, and some of the software is now broken, but I've found out that if I delete the whole filesystem if just auto-reflashes itself next time I turn it on, which seems a little odd.

If you want the old HPC Pocket Word and such, CMonex has it on her site I believe for ARM devices... but if you wanted the newer Pocket Office Suite as found in WM5/WM6 like on a pocketpc...no such luck.

Hmm, well I9;ve grabbed Pocket Word, and I'll look at that when I'm back home.

Well, I took it all apart. Not too hard really. Just remove 13 screws from the bottom. 2 of them hold the keyboard in place. Anyways, remove all the screws, then open up the laptop. Lift keyboard from the top edge, wedging it slightly to move it from the guides. Once it is lifted from the top, move it upwards to clear the clasps along the bottom edge. You can now remove the ribbon cable. Now lift the palmrest up away from the bottom. Remove the touchpad cable assembly, it is just a few wires that plug into a socket on the left PCB. Once removed you can see the whole thing easily. The motherboard is actually divided into two halves connected by two ribbon cables, one atop the other. In the center is the pcb for the CDMA radio. I took mine out just because I didn't want anything to try to draw power or slow down the system. Pictues below explain all the components. You can pull the left and right PCBs easily enought...just screwed into the base, and separate the LCD assembly from the base. You can see the stereo speakers and all the jacks and it is amazing really that so much is done with so little...enjoy the pics.























Attachments
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ubisurfer screws to remove 1.jpg (307KB - 5 downloads)
ubisurfer remove keyboard.jpg (278KB - 4 downloads)
ubisurfer palmrest upside down.jpg (294KB - 3 downloads)
ubisurfer mouseclick pcb.jpg (197KB - 3 downloads)
ubisurfer touchpad pcb.jpg (299KB - 3 downloads)
ubsurfer left pcb.jpg (355KB - 5 downloads)
ubisurfer right pcb.jpg (341KB - 3 downloads)
ubisurfer cdma board.jpg (302KB - 3 downloads)
ubisurfer palmrest removed.jpg (304KB - 3 downloads)
ubisurfer mini pci cdma card.jpg (249KB - 6 downloads)

Cool Oh, and Pocket WordPad works nicely, thank you Do you know if there9;s a way to get rid of the "DATAWIND" thing on the Start menu though? That hacks me off quite a lot. I'm still looking at reflashing it, but for the time being it seems to work, so I'm not going to cry just yet.

EDIT: my power supply9;s blown out and it's run out of charge. Awesome

Edited by markfptuson 2013-03-23 12:12 AM

It is unusual that a netbook runs on 5V, same as a USB port provides. So it would be simple enough to adapt the cable from the power supply to fit a USB plug and charge it off a desktop.

I wonder if you search your registry real hard if perhaps there isn't something in there that contains "Datawind"

I wonder if there is some mini PCI board, GPS perhaps...that I could plug into that CDMA slot...maybe an 802.11N wifi? Guess I would need something with CE support. Wonder if I could turn it into a serial port...hmm

BTW, must be the case (laptop shell) is made for mulitple machines or other brands. The reset hole in the bottom is just there, but there is no reset on this machine other than holding down the power key and forcing the machine off. Stick something in that hole and all you will touch is the other side of the case.

Might give the USB thing a go, that would be interesting to see. What ampage doe USB throw out though? The power supply says 5V at 3A... wouldn9;t that be a little high for USB?

I have searched the registry actually, it was the first place I looked. Then I thought, perhaps, that it was a custom copy of Explorer or something like that. Again, I can9;t look now until I've sussed a way to charge the bugger. But like I said, what I'd really like to do is figure a way of getting a more standard image on there, frankly I think Softmaker Office is a joke; for my purpose, WordPad and whatever other programs survived into CE6 (do we still have a spreadsheet/database/whatever from Pocket Office, or did they go MIA with the H/PC market in about 2002 or whenever?) ...

Sorry, haha, I sound like a mega-hard man to please

I like Softmaker Office 10 myself...it will open Word docx files, something you can't do without conversion on other machines.

Normally, most desktops will provide 100-500mAh or current. Not much I know, but enough to charge with if you don't mind it taking longer than normal. At least for emergency use. But a/c adapters are cheap and easy to find...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5V-3A-AC-DC-Power-Adapter-For-Spare-D-Link-DFL-300-Firewall-Charger-Supply-Cord-/230848636145?pt=Laptop_Adapters_Chargers&hash=item35bfa6a4f1

As far as spreadsheets, a couple of the best are available for download here on HPCF...SpreadCE and PTab and both great and Excel compatible.

I find Softmaker Office to be slow and clunky for my use... to be honest, all I9;d use it for it writing notes in RTF and transferring to my laptop as needed; I use OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office (though admittedly I have Office 2013 installed on my Windows 8 box). I9;m a little disappointed that Pocket Office fell out of use, but I suppose that's to be expected, seeing as H/PCs fell out of popularity when P/PCs became popular and whatnot. I guess there'll be a way (might just see if I can tear the files out of my H/PC 2000 ROM, same CPU type and all that)

I9;ll be looking at adapters in Maplin later, if I can

I thought I said that it has already been done...

http://hpcmonex.net/izemize/hpc2000office_ver_1_0_cab.zip

Mark, what is the value for Launch50 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/init? Is it explorer.exe, or something else? I think you may be on the right track with the source of the modified UI being explorer.exe. cmonex also has a link for H/PC 2000 "shell files" which includes explorer.exe and its dependencies. You could try copying that into a folder on the UbiSurfer and running that version of explorer.exe to see if it opens. Doing it that way won't override the shell already running, so the "Datawind" Start Menu will still be running, but if it opens it might work as a replacement on bootup by renaming it explore2.exe and editing the value for HKLM/init/Launch50 accordingly. But I admit that's a risky idea without a flashable OS image, because if it then can't execute explore2.exe then you have a brick.

I got mine yesterday by Priority Mail, only 36 hours after ordering it. Mine has the standard Start Menu. I like the size and appearance of the device. Software-wise, it seems to run pretty much the same things as my WM8505 netbooks, but it does support display rotation (using third-party software) unlike the WM8505. I9;m a little disappointed that the 9-inch display only has WVGA (800x480) resolution like the 7-inch netbooks.

I thought the same thing CEGeek...why no 800x600? Still for the price I guess I can't complain...

Damn it Rich - sorry about that. I only found the one with WordPad on it.

CE Geek - thanks. I9;ll look at that when I get home/have voltage in the thing. Battery stands at about 35% right now.

And for the record, I rather like the display the way it is

OK, the OS is in ROM. Office installed, but didn9;t work for some reason, so I'm wondering what to do. Looks like I'll just have to keep it the way it is :/