Clean and simple AKU 3.5 for the Sprint Apache
 

First, the bona fides...

Based on Unified ROM Project 1.2 Pre-release (thanks to everyone on the ROM team, awesome work guys!)

Removed:
Cyberon Voice Dial (if you're going to use voice dial at all, get Microsoft's Voice Command 1.6)
Clear Storage (hold down both soft buttons while pressing in on the reset switch to hard reset if you need to)
MSN (all of it)
IntelliPad (the goofy T9 SIP)
IA_Zip (Unnecessary with Total Commander)
SMS Retry (might be useful if it was automatic, but it's not...)

Added:
1-Calc Lite (better calculator)
MMS with Sprint settings (self-explanatory)
Midlet Manager (Java Virtual Machine)
Sprint Customizations (stuff that would have been in your now empty Extended ROM partition)
Total Commander 2.5 (freeware file manager, FTP client and registry editor; also makes great fries!)
Windows Live Search (better than Google Maps)

.NET 2.0 Compact Frameworks are preinstalled.

Okay, here's how you use this. Follow this step by step, and nobody gets hurt.

1. Hard reset your phone. As mentioned above, you don't need Clear Storage to do this. Hold down both soft buttons with one hand and poke the reset hole with the other, ideally while holding a stylus in the second hand, unless you have really pointy fingers.

2. Put your phone in Bootloader mode. This is a special condition that prepares the phone to rewrite the ROM. While holding down both the power and record buttons, poke the reset switch, again with a stylus. The backlight should go off and the screen will say "Serial". When you put it in the crade, the screen will change to say "USB" and the backlight will stay off. This is normal. Wait for Windows to recognize the new USB device before moving on.

3. Run Kirvin AKU 3.5 Sprint NoJunk.exe. Keep clicking Next until it's done. Do NOT remove your phone from the cradle until it tells you to! Seriously. Don't make me come over there.

4. When told to remove your phone from the cradle, pull it out and hard reset it again. Congratulations! You're running AKU 3.5, probably the closest to Windows Mobile 6 we Apache owners will ever get!

5. Boot up normally, and note that you don't have wait on the customizations. They're baked right in.

6. Go ahead and create a new ActiveSync partnership if that's the sort of thing you might do.

7. Get Ext ROM Unlock.exe and PPCGeeks.com ApacheExtRomUnlocker.cab, both included in this archive, on your phone somehow. Put them on a storage card, drag them to your Pocket PC My Documents folder, it doesn't really matter. Just make sure you can find them on the device.

8. Run Ext ROM Unlock.exe. A little box should pop up that says "Success".

9. Install PPCGeeks.com ApacheExtRomUnlocker.cab. You can do this by tapping on it, if you're not used to installing cab files.

10. SOFT reset your phone. When it boots back up, you should have a new "storage card" called "Extended_ROM2". It will be 10MB and empty.

11. Go ahead and start reinstalling all the stuff you use for your standard loadout, putting everything but device drivers, stuff that sets alarms and Today screen plugins in Extended_ROM2. You should have well over 25MB of main storage memory still free when you're done, a pretty mean feat for an Apache! Oh, and don’t restore from a full system backup as you’ll end up restoring pre-3.5 system files.

And finally, the download link:

ftp://ppcgeeks:ezupload@up.ppcgeeks....int_NoJunk.zip

Sounds very tempting.......Does it include smart dialer? That is one thing I am really missing in 3.5.

Does the extended ROM need to be left unlocked after installing the programs to it?

If so, doesn't that cause a conflict with the storage card when one wants to install programs to it?

Thanks for all your work.

Wow Jeff, thats just about excactly how I build the rom i put on my phone :).

Any chance you'd release it like I have been doing the kitchen pre-2? Ie, create a batch file that does all the removes, and then copy in you're OEM package?

That way we can easily see any tweaks you found, and people can extend the rom for others..

:)

on the storage card, there are up/s downs in making it visible and useable.

#1, you can install more software to that 8 mb of storage.

However some applications then proceed to try and use it like they would see/use routing external storage.

What i've been doing for my own personal builds, is to build an external rom with the binaries for applicaitons on them, with shortcuts to those files in \\program files\appname. I put about 5 megs of applications "preloaded" to the ext_rom as part of my flash.

Then I dont make the rom "visible" but it quietly gives me extra elbow room.

Like most choices there are advantages/disadvantes to the way you slice this cat. This one has them as well!!

Shawn

If I install this on a Verizon 6700, what problems will I have?
Can I just run "Apache_VZW_MMS3.0.6.24_20060124.CAB" to enable mms?

Thanks.

- RX8 -

this rom is preloaded sprint, so I would sugguest you not run it less you know how to take out/undo the sprint mods.

Great job with the Rom!!

I do have a question though. When I try to tether my 6700 (via USB) i'm getting a "COM OPEN ERROR" is this normal with this build?

So far so good. It's much faster and cleaner than the previous 3.3 ROM I was using.
Thank you for releasing this and I'll post issues that I encounter.

This is great as it avoids the hassles I have run across in attempting to combine sprint cabs to reduce unneeded older and duplicate files.

Having customizations run in Rom is the way to go!

Can I get a little more elaboration on this? I'm a little confused on what exactly needs to be done here. do i copy cabs to the Extended_ROM2 directory to install the programs? or do i just install from my PC via activesync like always?

Excellent! This is exactly what I was looking for; installed first thing this morning.

Thanks.

i think im going to have to try this out. thanks for the hard work.

D

To repeat the question I posted above, which seems to have been bypassed:

Does the extended ROM need to be left unlocked after installing the programs to it?

If so, doesn't that cause a conflict with the storage card when one wants to install programs to it?

Thanks.

Yes.

I must say, I like this ALOT. Clean and simple, almost what we are looking for with the Unified ROM project.

Yeah, you want to leave it unlocked so it's just another storage card. And no, this doesn't conflict with your MiniSD. You'll see both as install destination options.

I'm not sure I understand what you're after. All I did was remove the OEMs I listed and insert the ones I listed. No special tweaks other than that. Took me half an hour or so. The ROM team did all the real work.

I've had requests for a version without the Sprint mods, so a more generalized ROM without any change to the EXT_ROM will be my next build.

I think that's still an open issue with ROMs based on the Unified ROM Project. Colonel's working on that IIRC.

Yeah, this is a pretty much "fire and forget" ROM. Again, the ROM team did all the hard work, I just polished and packaged it.

The latter. Install just like always, you'll just see Extended_ROM2 as an additional destination.

Third -- did you get that error tethering using USB Internet Sharing?

I haven't tried this ROM yet, but in Colonel's 3.5 ROM I am able to tether with Internet Sharing over USB without a problem.

I was about to try this one because of the constant 6 hour lockups with Colonels, but I must be able to tether, so if that's an issue, I will wait.

As well it should be, as it's just a polished version of the URP pre-release... Jumping the gun as it were.

Glad you like it. The ROM guys did all the hard work.

Not sure, I don't really have a good way to test that.

Thanks for answering my question Jeff!

I'm wondering why one shouldn't install today screen plugins to the Extended Rom -- I would think it runs faster and they would be better there. Can anyone clarify this? In my case, I would like to put Spb Pocketplus, Calendar + and Inesoft Address Book (which has a today screen plug in that I use) there.

I received the ERROR trying to connect via the wireless modem application in programs.

My understanding is the the wireless modem no longer works for USB tethering (I don't think for BT) either in 3.5. You use the Internet Sharing program instead. Please try that and report back. What I don't understand is why the wireless modem has been left in all the 3.5 ROMs if it no longer works in that revision.

that would be great if you could rls the rom without no sprint customization as i would like to run the rom update on my telus phone..

thankx,
ReDz

Working on a noSprint leaves-EXTROM-alone version right now, as a matter of fact.

Because Today plugins have to be available immediately on boot up, and storage cards, even the EXT_ROM, load just a little bit after boot up. Same deal for device drivers.

As for things that create alarms, I don't know if this is still a problem, but with older versions of WM, the card wouldn't "wake up" until about a second after the device, so if an alarm goes off, tries to access the program that called it and the program doesn't "exist" for another second, bad things.

I agree!

I will look into it when I go on break.

I see your point, though other ROMs have the 02 today screen stuff in them and they load fine (much faster than my Calendar+ which is in regular memory). I also saw a new 3.5 ROM with Spb Diary (which runs on the today screen) in it.

That's different, that's actual ROM instead of the "Extended ROM" partition. What Sprint calles Extended ROM is really more like Safe Store on the old iPAQs. It's a internal, non-removable storage card.

As for why I didn't stick a bunch of Today plugins in the actual ROM, heck, I'm catching heat from people who think I shouldn't have put Live Search in a "clean and simple" ROM. Can't please everyone.

BTW, the ROM I run on my own device has Spb Diary, Spb Weather and Pocket Player built into ROM. But I've paid for all that, so it's fine for me. I didn't want to release a ROM with stuff that will bug you for reg codes eventually.

Thanks, I understand now. I'll probably have to consider trying to make my own ROM to really get the stuff I want into it and get rid of what I don't. I think I'll wait first for a 3.5 ROM that I find solid and then will consider working on it when I've got some free time (which I don't have now).

The Unified ROM Project makes this really, really easy. The hard part is building the OEM modules (collections of what a Cab file does) for the stuff you want. I still haven't been able to do it, so I'm just relying on the OEMs others make.

Thanks. I'll have to look into it all when I find some time.

Is this the sfaure03 kitchen, just packaged up? Looks like the same base. The nice thing about his kitchen is it allows add/remove of OEM's which are becoming quite abundant. MSVC1.6 is the only one that I cannot get to work.

Anyways, nice work with the step by step instructions. With all these prepackaged versions out there now, most users should be able to find soemthing that suits them quite well.