What's new? (October 2001 archives)

Tuesday october 22nd, 2001: Sony releases yet another Clié device!

It's becomming now a kind of routine: just when the trouble created by the PEG-N750C and PEG-N760C release were fading away (those who had just bought a PEG-N700C or a PEG-N710C did not really appreciate discovering that they had bought an "obsolete" device, and that Sony was going to ask money for the update), Sony comes again with a brand new Clié device, the PEG-T415. This one has a new, refined design, but is essentially a finer PEG-S320 (1 cm thick, about 50% less than the PEG-S320) with a high resolution screen (320x320), a buffed-up infra-red port, an improved sound capability when compared to the existing Clié devices (through a small loudspeaker, though, since the PEG-T415 has no built-in MP3 capabilities), all that for 300 US$.
Let's forget a moment about the unpleasant side of this release frenzy, and rejoice about this promising (though not revolutionary) new device. The sheer number of high-resolution devices sold will persuade developers to update their programs to support resolution higher than the original 160x160, which will in turn benefit to all Clié PEG-N6x0C and PEG-N7x0C owners! And after all, having at last a decent infra-red port will please those who dream about using their Clié as remote control, and it was about time the PalmOS devices started to feature a better sound quality instead of the miserable buzzer we've been living with for what seems an eternity... :-)

Also, in the self-satisfaction department, I'm proud to announce that the €uroClie mailing list has recently seen the subscription of its hundredth reader... Welcome to all of you! As you probably noticed, this is not a high-volume list, and I'm kept busy right now by my daytime work so the update are somewhat delayed - the French pages are more up to date than their English counterparts, but I'm slowly keeping up... ;-)

Friday october 5th, 2001: PEG-N710C OS update!!!
They did it! A few active members of Clie board (http://www.palmblvd.com/boards/Sony-Clie-710C/ et http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CLIE_Users_Group) have finally found a way to reflash a PEG-N760C ROM on a PEG-N710C, allowing it to go from OS 3.5.2 to 4.1. What it brings is essentially the fact that you don't need USBSwitcher anymore to hotsync your Clie. The device is also reported to be slightly faster, and support 65535 colors instead of the initial 256, plus some less visible improvements. On the other hand, the upgrade process is, well, not entirely legal since you've got to use a Brayder program (JackSprat) to backup a PEG-N760C ROM, then FlashWrite (included with JackSprat) to restore the ROM backup on a PEG-N710C... It means you must first get JackSprat (or at least FlashWrite) and a copie of a PEG-N760C ROM done with JackSprat. Don't look for that stuff on the €uroClie site, I won't mess with that! That being said, check the Clie boards for instructions, especially this message and that one... Last thing, the drivers of the PEG-N760C (you could need them after the upgrade) are mentioned in this message! ;-)
One word of caution, though: this process is potentially dangerous for your Clie, you must first backup everything, of course, and be careful not to reinstall everything that was on your PEG-N710C blindly afterward, especially so since the system patches on your PEG-N710C are not compatible with the PEG-N760C!!!

Thursday october 4th, 2001: A long awaited update!
At last a sign of life on €uroClie... Sorry for that long time without (apparent) update, I've first had some vacation during the summer holidays, then I was really busy, and had almost no time to update the site. Hence some pages are getting really out-of-date (especially the FAQ), but don't worry, even if I'm a bit on the slow side to add the new software that support the great features of the new Clie devices, I continue to update the version information of the existing programs. Amongst the new software (since the last update), let's just cite PiDirect VFS, which is similar to MsMount.
Apart from that, most of my free time has been used working on a Windows ROM editor for the Clie. Those that need such a program right now can use a Linux program called Romeo, you can use it with a Clie ROM with just a minor source code modification.
To let you have a glimpse at what my program will look like when it's finished (yes, I know I'm slow at programming, but I'm learning as I code), here's a screenshot of CHROMED (Clie Homebuilt ROM EDitor), my future ROM editor (the interface has already changed since when I took thish screenshot, but it's only to give you a hint of what it will look like anyway):

I'll keep you advised, of course, of the development of CHROMED, both on this site and on the €uroClie mailing list.
Once this project is mature enough, I'll try to write a ROM flashing tool (unless Sony finally decides to release publicly their own tool), so that you can reflash the nice custom ROM created with CHROMED! ;-)