AKU 3.5 flash for dummies??

[lefty11]

OKAY, before I get flamed here for posting this, please cut me some slack as a newbie. I would appreciate some guidance to the proper location if there is one for noobs like me who are looking to maximize their 6700 (xv). Somewhere that explains the ROM building, Kitchen, etc. Is there one simple all inclusive flash for us dummies? I am 2.2 and really want to do the 3.5 but do not want to brick my 6700. Some advice or guidance would be much appreciated with links if possible. Again, please excuse my ignorance if I appear that way , but we all start somewhere and I am trying to do that with minimal headaches . Thanks.

[nightowl007]

I did it today, never done it before.

I grabbed BigJ 1.2 Verizon ROM and the extrom.unlocker and unlocked the extended_rom2 and copied it to my storage card and then deleted the extended_rom2 as instructed.

Then, I ran the updater and all went well. It's really pretty easy and seems safe.

I would recommend reading what you can and going for it.

[lefty11]

Thanks, I have been reading a lot of the posts in the forums and there seems to be many items out there. While there may not be one entire all inclusive file for us noobs to install, surely there must be a basic starter type setup to get going. like I said earlier, I do not want to brick my unit , but instead have it excel at what it does . I have ot OC'd now and this is nice but it appears like AKU 3.5 must really improve it drastically. Is this so? or is it more of an improvement on the apps ?

[Shaska]

3.5 will run alot faster, Especially now that it includes the files from the Bell Mobility AKU3.1 roms, and I think there are a few users working on Clean and Simple style roms for the new kitchen, I know of one for sprint already, and I believe a Verizon version is in the works right now...

I wouldnt mind making one myself but im un-familiar with Verizon's EXT_Rom and last thing I wanna do is forget something so your phone would be all wacked out... (also, Being my Sprint 6700 is currently hosed, and I lack a XV6700, I can't quite test to ensure quality either...)

If anyone is willing to help me on those two issues, Id be more then happy to make, Or at least help others make a rom...

(Ive gone through the Kitchen a few times now, and have a pretty good understanding of the basics and how to customize OEM's and such to a certain degree... Still looking for a good cab extractor though so I could make my own)

[gguruusa]

Upgrades come in three flavors: pre-built, pre-built w/ ext rom, and the kitchen.

All of them use APACUpgardeUt_noID or ROMUpgradeUT (they both do the same thing, but ROMUpgradUT checks to see if the device name in the ROM matches the one built into your phone). The kitchen comes with both loaders, or you can easily find and download them from this and other sites. Some ROMs even come with them - just unzip and run.

Some pre-built ROMs make use of the extended ROM to store more data than will fit into just the standard ROM. These ROMs are more difficult for the author to construct, but only marginally more complicated for the user: instead of just a nk.nbf, you get a ms_.nbf too.

The bootloader (APACUpgradeUT_noID or ROMUpgradeUT) will load whatever is in it's directory, so just copy your nk.nbf and/or ms_.nbf into it's directory and run it. Follow the on screen directions (connect via, bootloader mode (on/off and cassete button at same time as reset - hold them in until the screen goes dark and says Serial or USB on it), click next, wait for the progress bar, click next, clear memory (left and right softkeys at same time as reset - hold until you get the confirm question))

The kitchen process is simple too: Run BuildOS.exe (this let's you select what's in your ROM), then run CreateROM.bat (builds the rom, encodes it, starts the bootloader program). The only tricky part is really running the encoder: you have to select your carrier (check the path!), and push encode.

The only problem with the kitchen is people get overly ambitious and end up in the weeds. If you want to play with the kitchen, your first attempt should be to build a stock ROM: don't change the default selections except to select 1 carrier and 1 theme. Load that onto your phone as a baseline. Now that you have the way of it, go back and start changing what's selected. After downloading your ROM, a white or garbled (even partially garbled) boot screen means you tried to put to much into your ROM - deselect some items and try again.

The nice thing about the kitchen is it's customizable and expandable. Once you get the hang of using the stock kitchen, you can get additional OEMs pretty easily - just unpack into the kitchen OEM folder and *poof* another thing to choose. Createing an OEM is easy to very complicated - read the docs in the kitchen if you want to do this.

There are only two potential trouble areas with downloading new ROMs (no matter how your ROM came into existence): don't unplug or lose power while loading the ROM onto your phone; you might get stuck in bootloader mode. In either case, the solution is to try and reset, try one of the exit-bootloader methods (), try donwloading your ROM again, try downloading a stock ROM from your carrier, repeat until you give up and declare your phone a paper weight. 99.9% of the time usage of an exit-bootloader will work for you. Know what you are downloading - downloading a different carrier's ROM to your phone will likely be Trouble - most assuredly if you're loading anything more than a nk.nbf (CE ROM image) or ms_.nbf (ext ROM image). These phones are pretty tough - they don't break permanently very easily.

In most, if not all, cases you should not let your carrier customizations run - either erase your ext ROM before loading your ROM, or press the reset button when you see the "loading customizations in 3 seconds" message (or similar message). Some ROMs include an ext ROM image - you should let the customizations run in this case (read the ReadMe.txt for you ROM!)

[gguruusa]

Originally Posted by Shaska

I wouldnt mind making one myself but im un-familiar with Verizon's EXT_Rom and last thing I wanna do is forget something so your phone would be all wacked out... (also, Being my Sprint 6700 is currently hosed, and I lack a XV6700, I can't quite test to ensure quality either...)

If anyone is willing to help me on those two issues, Id be more then happy to make, Or at least help others make a rom...

The carrier files in the kitchen are pretty good these days - no matter what carrier, if it's selectable in BuildOS you can likely erase ext ROM and use it as additional storage. If your carrier isn't selectable in BuildOS, you should post your ext_rom so a carrier customization can be built for your carrier.

[lefty11]

Excellent info so far and I thank you for the kindness and patience. I definitely have noticed the wide variety of things people here have cooked up and that is why I am hesitant just to throw one on my phone for practice. From what I have read it looked as though Kirvins No Junk was getting pretty decent feedback but not sure if that one is very outdated at this point. Besides, I could not find the file any longer as the link was dead . If anyone can recommend the easiest rom for a noob to use as the first time to break his cherry, i would appreciate that. I dabbled in Flashing my old IPAQ PDA years ago but that was extremely simple. I do like the idea of placing my own likes on the ROM since memory is such a valuable commodity and these little units do not exactly come loaded up with much like an Iphone. My brother has an I phone and I am sure that I can create a user friendly 6700 that rivals or exceeds his " toy" . I have scratched the surface here but it appears that there are some roms or plug ins out there that emulate some the touch features of the I phone??? How do the 3.5's run when the unit is overclocked? Does the OC'ing make it unstable with all the extras jammed in? Again if anyone has a good link to a fairly easy verizon AKU 3.5 Rom for my first go at it, it would be greatly appreciated. thanks again.

[gguruusa]

Kirvin's no Junk is outdated.

Start with the default kitchen. It's well tested and it is the baseline for anything more complicated.

If you don't build anything else into your ROM, the default Kitchen is fairly "clean and simple". You could make it cleaner and simpler, but not by much.

Haven't tried overclocking. The "amount" of extras has nothing to do with it. Some extra's don't like overclocking (I imagine), but most don't care.

You can build in some fancy iPhone like stuff, but it's not as smooth as the iPhone is just yet. ContactManager is a good app to load (and it's currently free!)

[lefty11]

Thanks. Is there a link to the default Kitchen? You might like to try the OC if you like to watch a lot of video , etc. I am using Xscalar which lets you speed up by scaling to the cpu usage . It seems to run pretty well , taking it up to 624Mhz and fairly stable on the 6700. You can also set it as low as 208Mhz for when you are basically in very low cpu usage , so you get good trade off with battery life if you OC but scale it . This may come in handy for some people who dont want to spend the bucks on a 6800 when they are available since makers dont seem to want to push the processors much faster than 400Mhz or so. From what I have heard there wont be many advantages to the 6800 except onboard memory and a few minor changes.
Now that I know that I am more interested in tweaking my 6700 up until something more along lines of a real mobile PC becomes affordable and available.

[gguruusa]

I just don't like the whole overclocking idea. It's hard on your equipment and can lead to premature failure. Underclocking is fine.

Spent the day playing with a 6800. Extra storage memory is nice, but a 6700 and the kitchen are equivalent. Button layout not so nice. Form factor very nice. Camera nice. Short stylus not so nice. Not worth the cost of upgrading, to me (although I would like to get rid of that 1/2" cut in my LCD ).

There's a sticky for Helmi's 3.5 1.02
http://www.ppcgeeks.com/helmi-offici...-07-t6719.html