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SOUPING UP YOUR PALM III
Palm III flash, it's a gas, gas, gas
By Claire Pieterek
For the third year running, I bought a new PalmPilot as a birthday present to myself. This year's model is the Palm III. Among other significant enhancements, the Palm III features 2MB of RAM and 2MB of flash memory. Since my old production machine is a 2MB PalmPilot Professional, the initial transition was easy. Because I like to test a lot of new applications, I soon started experiencing RAM cram once again.
On April 15, Technology Resource Group (TRG) released their 8MB Super Pilot memory board. I was seriously tempted, but just couldn't face spending another $300 right away. Knowing that PalmOS 3.0 occupies only about 1.2MB of the Palm III's flash, I wanted to find a way to take advantage of that extra 800K. (OK, it's really 768K, but what's a few K among friends?) So, I spent $49.95 and bought an online-fulfillment copy of TRG's FlashBuilder III from PilotGear.
What is flash memory, anyway?
Flash memory is non-volatile--it doesn't lose its contents when the power is turned off. The Palm III is the first PalmPilot to use flash memory to store the PalmOS operating system. In contrast, older Pilots and PalmPilots use a read-only memory (ROM) chip to store PalmOS.
What is FlashBuilder III?
FlashBuilder III is a combination of utilities that allows Palm III users to add and delete third party programs from the 800K of flash memory not used by PalmOS 3.0. It is a modification of the FlashBuilder utility used by all TRG board owners to install a copy of PalmOS onto their new TRG boards. TRG boards do not come with PalmOS preloaded. 3Com is currently the only source of PalmOS, although TRG is working on licensing it for resale.
One piece of the product, FlashBuilder III, resides on your PC. The other part, TRGFlash, must be installed on your Palm III. Sorry, Mac users, TRG does not yet plan to support you. As stated in TRG's (http://www.trgnet.com/Palm/TechSupport/spmb2faq.htm) SPMB II FAQ, "At this point there is not sufficient market demand to justify the costs for developing a Mac version . Wintel PalmPilot users outnumber Mac users by at least 10 to 1 in the latest surveys." If you're a Mac user and this ticks you off, by all means, let them know it.
What does it do? What doesn't it do?
FlashBuilder III allows the Palm III user to add third-party programs to the unused space in the flash memory. This process is called "burning". It also enables Palm III users to hide built-in applications that they don't use. For example, I use Zoskware's ExpenzPro instead of the built-in Expense program. FlashBuilder III allows me to put ExpenzPro in flash, and prevent the Expense icon from appearing on my Palm III. After burning the flash, I can delete the associated .prc files from RAM, and recover that space.
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