[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 ROM Development] deank:
plus and minus

I know it is not nice to re-post but it seems to me that the most important thread is now dead, so I will post it here:

Hey there guys!

Few days ago I shared with you my disappointment with both 2.02t and 2.06 versions because both seemed really unstable. My ppc was constantly freezing, would boot for 1 minute if at all, bluetooth problems and such, soft and hard resets 3-5 times a day

I decided to go back to 1.72WWE (edsub's one) and it went well. But then all of a sudden all the problems continued - soft/hard resets. I really didn't know what has happened. I am not quite sure but I think that except for the last re-flash the cradle was not connected to a power supply, but only to a powered USB port. All the times the main battery was fully charged - something i've learnt as a must when flashing gsm phones.

My original configuration was 1.72WWE, Radio 1.14 and all the times I upgraded to either radio 1.17 or 1.18.

Two days ago I decided for the last time to try again with 2.06 but with radio version 1.14 - the one included in the original file (fyu I used the mysteryman WindowsMobile2003SE.exe and didn't touch anything but the operator ID in ms.nbf.

I flashed my MDA2 (I don't know why but this time the upgrade took LESS TIME than my previous attempts or at least I think so), hard-reseted it, allowed the Extended ROM 2.06.100a to install and as it contains only win2k3SE compatible software it was no issue (callerIDb10, cameraB10, clearvue3.4.381 and mms1.5.0.24)

Cleartype fonts are fine. I removed the built-it MS Bluetooth stack (deleting all the keys in the registry) and installed widcomm's 1.5 and it works just fine. I installed Netfront, spb 2.2 plus, gprs monitor 2.1, weather panel, icq, resco explorer 2003, resco keyboard 4.21, phonExt. Screen rotates in less than a second.As of this moment - everything is just STABLE.

The only thing is the soft-reset boot. Sometimes it takes 5 seconds, sometimes it takes 15. The "Phone not ready" appeared only once when I tried to access the phone options, but I guess it was because the gsm part was not registered yet with the network or something with my 64k stk SIM card.

I would suggest you all - not to cook a special extended rom but install the mystery man's update without any changes (except the operator/language ids). Then install anything you need. Avoid to install programs not designed for SE. It didn't hurt in my case to put 2 items on the today screen that are not se-compatible - but who knows.

Because I didn't know how to make myself an installable .CAB file for my operator settings (like MMS, GPRS internet i.e.) I just extracted those things from my registry in a .reg file and after a hard-reset I just run the .reg file and it is all there (resco file explorer needed of course) - this includes: RAS settings for MMS, INTERNET, MMS server settings for the mms-application, Device Name, bluetooth profiles, paired devices list, all of my phonext ringtone settings, timezone, etc...

Now my device shows:

ROM: 2.06.00WWE (14-JUNE-2004)

RADIO: 1.14.00

PROTOCOL: 1337.24

ExtROM: 2.06.100a

Windows Mobile 2003 SE

ver. 4.21.1088 (Build 14132)

T-Mobile MDA2

MMC 256MB Transcend

Bluetooth widcomm 1.5.0.108

Yours,

Dean

p.s. My opinion is: the best way to flash is to use a notebook/laptop or ups'd pc - to prevent power loss during the upgrade. To use powered USB port. Not to touch the PC while the upgrade goes on. And to disable ActiveSync for searching usb connection - all things from the dsc's post.