[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 Accessories] orinoco:
Success!!!

Hello all: :D :D :D

I have a MDA II with English ROM. Thanks to all in this forum for helpful comments, Akira and Palmop in particular. I have placed all the software you need to do this on my ftp site (see instructions below).

For everyone's benefit, I'll detail my step by step approach to getting this done. If you follow it carefully, it will work. This is basically a summary of Akira and Palmop's instructions, with some changes I had to make to have it work for me. I did all this in Windows XP. Hopefully, these will be helpful to you:

1) You need to create a backup of your original (german) ROM first. For this, you will need a serial cable (no way around this).

1A) Download the XDAII English folder contents from ftp://www.shawus.com (username: hydrosphere, password: 12345) into a directory in your PC (call it XDAII).

1B) Put your MDAII in bootloader mode (Power + Directional Pad + Reset Button). You will get the infamous Serial v1.01 screen.

1C) Connect your MDA to your PC via the serial cable.

1D) Create a connection between your MDAII and your PC by running Hyper Terminal with settings: 115200 baud, 8n1, direct to COM1 port.

1E) Put a formatted SD card (> 64 MB) in your MDAII.

1E) Type in d2s in the command line to backup ROM to SD. The backup will start automatically and will take a few seconds to complete.

2) Now, you copy your original ROM to your PC for backup.

2A) To do this you need a SD card reader (again, no way around it).

2B) Unzip the contents of the folder into this directory.

2C) Open a MS-DOS window and go to the XDAII directory you just created.

2D) Put the SD card with the original ROM into your SD card reader.

2E) Type ntrw read original-german-rom-xda2.nb1 e: (this assumes that drive e: is your SD card drive).

2F) This command will create a file called original-german-rom-xda2.nb1 in your directory. Note that the program will give you a message error indicating it did not create the file, but it actually does.

3) OK, now the fun part:

3A) You should have two .nb1 files. The one downloaded (1-03-00-USA-XDAII-patched.nb1) and the one you backed up (original-german-rom-xda2.nb1) in your directory at this time.

3B) Download a hexeditor; I used xvi32 which is in the ftp folder you downloaded. It worked great.

3C) Open for editing both .nb1 files (in two different windows).

3D) You will notice that the first 412 characters (on your right half-screen) are similar, but slightly different on both files.

3E) Delete the first 412 characters from the 1-03-00-USA-XDAII-patched.nb1 file.

3F) Copy the first 412 characters from the original-german-rom-xda2.nb1 file, and paste them at the beginning of the 1-03-00...nb1 file.

3G) Save the 1-03-00-....nb1 file with another name, say english-rom-xda2.nb1

Note: For the copying/pasting with xvi32, go to Edit-->Clipboard-->copy/paste as string in the menu.

4) OK, now for the wrap up:

4A) Format your SD card again in your SD reader.

4B) Leave the formatted SD card in the reader, and open a MS-DOS window in your directory.

4C) Type ntrw write english-rom-xda2.nb1 e: (or whatever letter your SD drive is)

4D) You may get an error, but it will write it to the SD card.

4E) Put your SD card into your MDAII. If it asks you to format it, say NO (NEIN in german)

4F) Put your MDA2 into bootloader mode (Power+directional pad+reset). After a few seconds, it will ask you to power to boot. If not, press the camera button a few times.

4G) It will start booting. When you get to 100%, it will give you a checksum error, but it will work.

4H) Do a soft reset, and you will get the MDAII to boot in english. You're done.

Note: I still have a couple of things in german (like the day of the week) but they are very few. I don;t know if this is the case for others that have tried, but I am sure that with more careful editing of the .nb1 file, these can be weeded away.

Enjoy, I hope this is helpful.

Fernando