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Forgive me for not really being able to search deeply into this matter, I've seen threads detailing updating with the JasJar ROM or an amalgamation of the the MDA/O2 ROM.
1) I have 43.72mb total storage and 47.93mb Program storage. This results in 91.65mb total storage??? Right, at 128megs where has 40mbs gone? I have pretty much the exact same set up on the MDA3 yet the two figures more or less add up to 128mb. Can someone confirm these figures with me?
2) Is there a new ROM coming out and soon? I'm not one to complain if results are going to happen, but the memory issue is a biggy to me as there is one more program I want to install on the thing and I doubt there will be enough free memory.
3) Software, I'm sure there was a better suite of software on the MDA3 when that came out. Okay time consuming it may be but sometimes I do like to run Messenger when I'm on the train - where has it gone? And if Microsoft think I'm going to pay £10.99 more for that feature they can go swivel. I followed a thread that said it's included in Windows - it's not on the MDA Pro.
I really love the design of the thing but the software just seems to be a joke. Where do I start? I have posted the MDA3 for sale on Ebay and I want to honour that sale, but I also want a device that replaces my MDA3 100%.
This includes getting TomTom 5 to work with my BT GPS receiver!!!
1. Sorry not sure about the memory
2. I havent heard of a new T-mobile ROM being available and they never seemed to work on any updates for the MDAiii
3. The software suite was better - I miss my messenger too and like you I am reluctant to pay microsoft a tenner! The backup software isnt avialbel either which is an arse.
4. Good luck with TT5 I had to upgrade my co-pilot to get it to work on new os.
If at all possible could anyone with the MDAPro and the carrier ROM please do a memory check on theirs to compare with mine?
If you're not sure how to do it - Start/Settings/System/Memory, I just need the total figures for Storage and Program
I have the same memory CONFIG as you have stated!
In WM5 you have separate ROM & RAM configuration unlike WM2k3...
So here's how ur memory is split up -
1. RAM 64MB
Out of 64 megs of RAM, you loose roughly 17MB on internal allocation. For the device to run perfectly it has various fixed RAM permanently allocated (DMA buffers (for ur cameras etc.), kernel level memory allocation, GSM memory, video memory, mem swap space, cache etc.). This total memory fixed can vary from device to device, and each company can tweak it accordingly. Eventually, the OS has roughly 47MB for use. Now again, when WM5 powers up, it again consumes around 17megs of RAM, giving you 30-32 megs of ram to use for your programs or apps!
2. ROM 128MB (permanent storage)
This is divided into the following -
a. OS install: This is where WM5 related files etc. gets stored. This is a total of 64Megs
b. Extended ROM: This is used by maufacturers to store their customizations etc. Another 20megs allocated for this
c. User storage: This is the space available for you to install programs, and for windows to bloat Thats 43megs that you find!
Hope this clears out
Cheers,
San
Thanks for you response having had an XDA for some time and then the MDA I was just quite suprised to see a Memory low warning message so quickly as I never saw one on the MDA3. I wanted to confirm that I wasn't having memory issues.
I have the tmobile MDA USA version. I am supposed to have 128 MB ROM. My device shows only 47.46 MB total storage 34.15 in use, and 13.32 free. I have SPB pocket plus, Avantgo, Agenda Fusion, and SK tools in main memory. Not many things want to go on the storage card. I am new to WM5, but I have had 3 Ipaqs so I am not a total rookie. Where is my storage, and whats hogging it up?
bandersnatch said:
I have the tmobile MDA USA version. I am supposed to have 128 MB ROM. My device shows only 47.46 MB total storage 34.15 in use, and 13.32 free. I have SPB pocket plus, Avantgo, Agenda Fusion, and SK tools in main memory. Not many things want to go on the storage card. I am new to WM5, but I have had 3 Ipaqs so I am not a total rookie. Where is my storage, and whats hogging it up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the marketing blurb never said you'd have 128MB free memory. you have to account for the OS and registry plus all installed apps.
Yep... basically, depending on the ROM/ExtRom/Radio Stack, etc. installed there's...
128MB total ROM
of which
44MB is available for storage of applications/user files
the rest is the operating system, extrom, etc.
and
64MB total RAM
of which
49MB is available for running programs/ memory
the rest of which is the PIM running in the background, the phone running in the background, the radio stack running in the background, etc. All stuff that either the OEM or Microsoft decided you wouldn't want not running
The real issue is that there are program that dislike running from the Storage Card. Write to the developers
( Of course, as the persistent storage is a form of flash memory, I don't see why we're not seeing phones with 512MB or 1GB built-in yet... )
That is kinda what I thought. It came with all the voice dial (which I am liking), and clearvue pdf (which I am not sure I need) bells and whistles. I guess I need to see what I can remove and what I can't. SD support seems to be lacking. I hear you when you say give the developers hell over it, but a lot of it is an OS issue I think.
I don't know if that's true... accessing files, which is pretty much all you need doing, on the MiniSD card is just fine. The only problem that I'm familiar with is that the driver starts after other bits, so any applications that run on startup may have issues. That much might be the OS's fault, but it might be the OEM's fault for putting the driver initialization where it is...
Leave the technical stuff to you guys
If you look at my profile, you will know that as soon as we start getting more than 6 inches deep into the thing, I am gonna start to get in trouble. My OS comment was intuitive and a gut feeling. I have no idea if it is accurate. I kinda understand about the memory, but I am imagining it as physical substance using physical space, etc.
hi, I'd like to know if you can use the sd card and say partition it so that you can make your xda exec device use the storage on it as programe memory so it speeds the device up. this really is a fab device, but it really lacks the memory capacity that I had on a blue angel.
I have a 1gb sd card and don't mind loosing any storage space to accomplish this. if there isn't a way, can someone try and find a reg tweek for this....
anyway, I leave it with you...
cheers.
joey jojo
I think this is something which should be taken as a clue by developers who make programs such as Memaid, Pocket Mechanic, etc and include this as a a feature. Maybe the concept will be something similar to the Virtual Memory on a regular windows pc.
You are absolutely right, I too really miss the shortage of program memory. I can never open a really complicated web page with lots of images in Netfront before I get the dreadful warning that I have run out of program memory.
I hope some developer picks this up and incorporates this as a feature. I am sure this will increase his sales many many times.
Regards
you can put your internet explorer's cache on the sd-card...
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Cache]
change cache from '\windows\profiles\guest\temporari internet files' to '\SD_MMCard' to achieve this...
however you'll notice that it only slows your device incredibly down if your SD-Card is not set up right
see also http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=50301
There is just no way a third party program can add this. On the windows mobile team blog, there's a post from a few months back talking about doing virtual mem on the SD card, and basically, it's just not in the OS and won't be until at least WM6, and third-party programs can't do it.
JasperJanssen said:
There is just no way a third party program can add this. On the windows mobile team blog, there's a post from a few months back talking about doing virtual mem on the SD card, and basically, it's just not in the OS and won't be until at least WM6, and third-party programs can't do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are very disappointing news...
Speaking of memory management and the OS itself..I really wonder during the development of WM5, did they try to come up with a better OS, or just building up upon WM2003.
Reason why I say this is my Universal crashed yesterday, and a look into the "Memory" panel in the Settings showed the OLD memory management screen along with the sliders and all... :lol:
Looks like the developers got lazy and just placed a panel on top of the old one :lol:
Ehh.. You guys want to be buying new SD cards every third month?
Flash memory like the SD cards have only a limited number of write operations before they fail.
Using them for storage is good, because you don't write to the cards that much.
Using them as memory would totally screw up the card in a rather short time.
And, I think using SD card for program memory would result in a slower application, because of the read/write speed of the SD compared to the RAM..
--- EDIT ---
3 months is just a figure of speach..
I have no idea of how much time it would take before failure occurs..
It would probably result in slower and slower performance, because some sectors would be worn out faster than others..
What you say about the writes before failure is right, but when you are faced with a £300 PDA that has the same amount of RAM as my little finger, you have to do something.
SD cards are cheap enough these days, and money grows on trees. I'd rather be able to leave programs open and not worry about how much it will slow the machine down to have more that three big apps running than I would be about coughing up for a new SD card every 3 months.
I have seen a 4GB card on Ebay for less than £80, Tescos sell 1GB for £30 these days.
The great thing about Tescos is their guarantee. You buy the card, write it to death, take it back for a full refund, no questions asked.
It took me a while to realize I'm confused, but it seems I'm confused about Hermes/WM5 memory allocation.
I've been using PocketPC's since PPC2000, there (and in PPC2002, PPC2003) the o/s resides in flash, and RAM is partitioned between storage and program memory. Thus, loading lots of applications to the device reduces the amount of program memory available for actually running programs. Those o/s had a slider to influence the balance of memory allocated.
Since I got my 8525 I've been assuming that it worked the same way, despite the loss of the memory slider. There have always been indications that I was wrong though - I never saw the memory balance shift, and nothing I've done seems to increase the program memory. Even removing several applications from Storage and installing them in Extended ROM didn't help. I'd LIKE to free up more program memory so apps like Mapopolis can use a LOT of it....
My Start->Settings->System->Memory page shows 56.22MB (Total) for Storage and 49.08MB (Total) for Program. When reading about the Samsung "stacked" (aka MCM) processor I realized that none of the variants listed had more than 64MB SDRAM, and 56.22+49.08 > 64!!!
It seems like either "Storage" now equals flash memory (vs volatile RAM in PPC2003 et al.) and/or there's more the 64MB of SDRAM in the Hermes or something. If all 64MB were available I'd expect more Program memory than 49MB....
I'm confused - Can someone explain or point me to an explanation of how the Hermes/WM5 allocates that SDRAM?
TIA,
Richard
Hermes has Samsung KD5657ACA-D090 chip provides 128Mb NAND Flash + 64Mb Mobile SDRAM. See here:
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Hermes_HardwareOverview
pof said:
Hermes has Samsung KD5657ACA-D090 chip provides 128Mb NAND Flash + 64Mb Mobile SDRAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks pof! That's the one I thought it was - but I'm even more confused about the allocation of the 64MB now. If all of it goes to Program, how come I only get 49MB? If it gets split, how come Storage + Program is more than 64MB?
Ugh, I'm confused
Richard
rsolomon said:
Thanks pof! That's the one I thought it was - but I'm even more confused about the allocation of the 64MB now. If all of it goes to Program, how come I only get 49MB? If it gets split, how come Storage + Program is more than 64MB?
Ugh, I'm confused
Richard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
These sometimes confuses people...
But, the stated "Storage: 56.96" is the 128MB part, in that resides the whole OS, ExtROM etc. So in the end there is only 56.96 available for the system to use, plus the other installed programs that cuts it down to about 30MB free after a clean boot (that's just the way it is thanks to our lovely microsoft programmers <3)
The thing is that when you boot your device, the machine loads the whole OS to the running program memory and allocates some of it to important system files, that's why there is 48.80 total and then there is the rest running programs that take space, and about 30MB is free after clean boot on my device.
That's the way it has been programmed, mobile device programming is alot frustrating than on desktop PCs, so the memory handling is very important.
And don't mix those two when you said "56.22+49.08 > 64!!!", they are two separate memoryes. (56.xx being the 128 part and 49.xx being the 64 part).
Don't ask why microsoft excluded the memory allocation slider, maybe the older devices and OSs were differently programmed (memory handling).
gvoima said:
But, the stated "Storage: 56.96" is the 128MB part, in that resides the whole OS, ExtROM etc. So in the end there is only 56.96 available for the system to use, plus the other installed programs that cuts it down to about 30MB free after a clean boot (that's just the way it is thanks to our lovely microsoft programmers <3)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That much is logical - not all 128MB of the flash is allocated to the file system mounted as "Storage" - clearly some is for Bootloader, Radio, etc.
Are you really saying the OS and user-writable storage share a filesystem? That seems counter-intuitive to me, though presumably there are user-inaccessible flags to prevent over-writing system files. In PPC2003 there was a ROM file system and a RAM filesystem overlaid so they appeared together. You seem to be saying that in WM5 the user filesystem lives in a portion of the flash - unlike a portion of RAM as it did in PPC2000-2003.
gvoima said:
The thing is that when you boot your device, the machine loads the whole OS to the running program memory and allocates some of it to important system files, that's why there is 48.80 total
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're saying WM5 hides ~16MB worth of RAM usage? Did PPC2003 execute O/S files in place then? I mean I can see that the o/s and running programs would take up space, but it's unclear to me why WM5 would report total memory lower than 64MB in that case.
TIA,
Richard
See also this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=278903
Got it
pof said:
See also this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=278903
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, that's got it - the MSDN blog links (that Lurker0 linked http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1027392) at least squared me away. Lemme see if I can summarize my own questions:
0) Prior to WM5 most of the OS *was* eXecute In Place (XIP) - certainly on the devices I owned. Now most devices do not support XIP for most of the O/S so more RAM is used in general to compensate.
1) Prior to WM5, PocketPC "Storage" *was* in RAM (for user data), with WM5 it's ALL in flash. Thus there's no sense installing to ExtendedROM vs Storage, because you still can't free up any RAM
2) WM5 *does* hide ~15MB of RAM usage - because they want to. So "Program" really is RAM and it's just stupid that reported Total doesn't match physical Total.
I was tainted by my previous PPC exposure I guess. Half the RAM means that Mapopolis for instance will then always be slower on my WM5 device than on my PPC2003 device - half the SDRAM clock speed doesn't help here either (iPAQ 5555 vs Hermes)
Thanks all!
Richard
1. There are still reasons to use Extended ROM instead of the Storage. The Storage is required for many tasks by the OS, it is wise to keep at least some megs of it free. But, as you can read around, not everything is recomennded for installing on a flash card. Here the External ROM can be in help, adding the storage that is always accessible by OS, and is not used by other means.
2. You may call it "hide" but WM5 actually uses it. Well, the way it uses such an amount of RAM makes it hidden from the tools that calculate total available RAM. But that paging pool is a wise solution. For instance, Symbian OS 9.1 phones (S60 3rd edition, UIQ3.0) use RAM uniformly, and, as such, the same 64MB is just not enough for all (OS, built-in apps, user installed apps). WM5, employing the virtual memory, uses RAM a smarter way.
Lurker0 said:
2. You may call it "hide" but WM5 actually uses it. Well, the way it uses such an amount of RAM makes it hidden from the tools that calculate total available RAM. But that paging pool is a wise solution. For instance, Symbian OS 9.1 phones (S60 3rd edition, UIQ3.0) use RAM uniformly, and, as such, the same 64MB is just not enough for all (OS, built-in apps, user installed apps). WM5, employing the virtual memory, uses RAM a smarter way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed - by "hide" I simply meant not reporting it. I'd be fine with MS showing 64MB total with 14MB used - I just got thrown by showing 50MB "Total". I grok their rationale for that reporting choice, I just don't agree
As I alluded above, I have a specific target app which performed well on a PPC2003 system with 128MB of RAM and which is performing much slower on a WM5 system with 64MB RAM. Reducing the app's dataset (maps in this case) brings performance back in line, so I believe I have a memory issue. I'm running an older version of the app due to a bug which is still outstanding against the WM5-certified versions, so I'm likely not getting any help the app COULD be giving the OS. Bummer for me
On the plus side, I've learned a bunch about WM5 memory usage which I didn't know yesterday....
Thanks!
Richard
Compared with OS like windows xp, window mobile is limited with max process around 30. when it is reached to this figure, the os will kill one or more to keep this limit.
So does anyone know if it is possible to create a program by using the way like attaching to today (should be shell.exe I think) or using services to keep the number of process low? and is there any limitation by using such ways?
Well actually the number is not 'around 30' it is exactly 32 according to WM documentation.
But you rarely reach this number due to other considerations.
Still there are some things that do not count as a process, namely DLLs.
You can create a today plugin or a service DLL.
The limitation for services would be the size of the virtual memory slot they occupy.
Thanks, the number 30 is based on my experience. I have tried to open 100 processes by mortscript and in the end, only 30 or less was survived on my wm6 device. This figure is even smaller for my wm2003se device, it is just around 20.
I am really waiting for wm7, so I can run as many program as I like without considering any program being killed by the OS.
mic2007 said:
Compared with OS like windows xp, window mobile is limited with max process around 30. when it is reached to this figure, the os will kill one or more to keep this limit.
So does anyone know if it is possible to create a program by using the way like attaching to today (should be shell.exe I think) or using services to keep the number of process low? and is there any limitation by using such ways?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! You should take a look here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=235792
What you need is PerformCallback4 function which is undocumented (excluded from SDK) but still exists there.
Thank you!
mic2007 said:
I am really waiting for wm7, so I can run as many program as I like without considering any program being killed by the OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One thing to keep in mind is this: each process takes up system resources (real memory, virtual memory, GDI, etc)
32 is the max system managing capability and that includes processes run by the system not just the ones you start.
The reason you got the low (and different) numbers is most likely because your device ran out of memory before you reached the quota or there were processes running in background you were not aware of.
While the promise of running more than 32 processes on WM 7 architecture is nice we can only hope it will be accompanied by more than 64MB of RAM or it will be pretty useless...
Yes, low memory is another factor that the OS kill one or more processes to free up resources. Supposedly WM7 is based on CE 6 kernel that should allow storage card to be used as RAM, if that is the case which means the distance between desktop and handheld device will be much closer.
Using SD as RAM is about the last thing you want to do!
I have not heard of this feature but even the fastest cards (assuming the device will have a faster bus to support these speeds) are too slow to act as RAM.
Or perhaps you are referring to using it as swap space like the hard drive on a PC? That can work but speed would still be sacrificed.