Hacking/Tweaking the HP Ipaq RW6100 PPC Phone ROM

Anyone familiar with PPC tweaking/hacking? I need your help.

I have an Ipaq RW6100 which is only avaiable in Korea.

http://www.ipaq.co.kr/product/rw6100/index.asp

It is awesome. pxa270 520 CPU, wifi, 260K LCD, Sharp 1.1 megapixel CCD Camera, 128 ROm, 64 RAM. Now running on WM2003SE.

Surprisingly, the current ROM version of my Rw6100 does NOT support landscape function. u know, no landscape function certainly compromise the wifi internet browsing.

so i want 2 upgrade the rom. upgrade (the official way) is done on pc with ipaq is usb synced with desktop PC.

unfortunately, upgrade program needs to confirm the ipaq is correctly plugged with ac adapter. So it needs the orginal cradle, coz Rw6100 has no separate ac port. charging or usb sync is both done through the same port with different cable. Only the cradle can handle ac charging and usb sync at the same time.

I have only the usb sync cable and the ac adapter, but not the cradle. these two simply can not plug into the same port concurrently. usb sync and usb charging together can not fool the upgrade program.

Can anyone help? btw, i can not enter usb remote update mode with usual key pressing on HP PPCs. neither do i succeed running the enterbootloader.exe file and manually put the rw6100 into bootloader mode.

I have looked into the official rom. It is a 128M NBF file (coz this Ipaq has 128M ROM). If it is a usual NBF file, it is then 32 byte rom info+ROM. in theory, deleting the first 32 bytes will leave a .nb0 wince image. I have done this and leave the new nb0 file onto sd card. (I have found the sd card update method by myself)

the screen says the sd card has no rom image. Failed again. Is it because I have put no bootloader file on sd card too? Because I have no idea of where to get the bootloader file. No luck.

Email to HP Korea proves not much help.

Another reason. This PPC could not have a wince image as large as 128M. Now I have about 78m usable flash space on my current PPC. Is it because i have not successfully ripped off the right-sized wince rom?

Could anyone help rim the correct wince ROM from this 128M ROM update file? I need badly the native screen rotation function in WM2003SE.


ROM update address:

http://h50177.www5.hp.com/support/FA294PA/more_info_local_19768.html

it is a 43m exe file download. running on host PC will get a 128M nbf file.

the upgrade proggie is the usual ruu.exe

btw, i have found the following bootloader info by hex editing the 128m nbf file.

enter your selection: R) View SD card
D) Download Image to SD card
L) Launch existing flash resident image now
P) Power Test
C) CPLD GPIO Set Test
W) WLAN Test
K) Flash Lock Status
F) Flash Write Test
E) Flash Erase Test
A) AC97 Test
V) View Memory
I) Download FLASH or SDRAM image through USB
LCD Test


USB Boot Loader Configuration:

If i can find out the way of entering it, there will be much hope of successful rom upgrading

From what i can see you just want to install the ROM upgrade without AC? No need to mess around with files then

Make sure your battery is full before hand.

What you do: - on the iPaq press the bottom left and top right hot-keys (might be slightly different on that model, try different combinations) and the reset and power-buttons (you may need help with this). You unit will enter debug mode. Connect to USB and run the installer. It will ignore the AC adapter check (this worked on my ipaq 3970).

Hope that helps.

Edited by chazco 2006-03-13 1:24 PM

Glad this is in the Off Topic forum given we are an H/PC site and this is a P/PC discussion.....

Thanks for ur quick reply.

left and top right hot-keys ??

U mean the Contacts and Itask keys?

They dont work. I said in my previous post that I could not enter the usb remote update mode. It seems to be same as ur debug mode.

Btw, this CDMA PPC phone is made by Korean LG, not HP. I am afraid that most tricks for HP dont apply. I have tried many combinations.

I can not buy this cradle in China and using a WM2003se PPC without system screen rotation is unberable for me.

I am wondering if there is somebody familiar with PPC ROM, who is willing to check the official NBF file.

THis PPC is not made by HTC, like XDA1 XDA2, etc, or I can seek help from xda developers.

Assuming that this PPC has a bootloader that supports flashing from SD, you will need to copy the NB0 image directly onto the SD card (byte-for-byte RAW; NOT onto a file system). The bootloader should recognise the jumpcode at 0x0 on the SD and be able to flash the image to ROM. I've only done this with HTC devices so there are no guarantees.

Perhaps you can sync with a different connection - wifi, bluetooth, IR?