How much free ROM space do you have?

[vescalea]

It just caught my eye yesterday that the amount of free ROM space on my Que is 0 KB. I was using an old application Palm Console Demo to defrag my internal memory. I do that about every other week or so. I have not noticed that the free ROM space was ever zero before. I am running R3 since it came out. I don't know if R3 took the last of the free ROM space or some applications that I installed recently took it. Just curious how much free ROM space is in your Que.

-TL

[crowl]

I'm not sure what happened to your rom memory, but I don't think you need to defrag the memory anymore. I think that problem was fixed with Palm OS 2 or so.

[vescalea]

I'm not sure what happened to your rom memory, but I don't think you need to defrag the memory anymore. I think that problem was fixed with Palm OS 2 or so.


I defrag the internal memory, not the ROM (which is pointless). I have to defrag on my Sony Clie which is running OS 4.1. So, I don't think it is fixed in OS 2. Unless, the Palm OS has a periodic task that would defrag the memory, then, it is a must for us, the user, to routinely defrag the memory, otherwise, the memory will be fragmented so bad (and I see that in my Clie), that, you cannot copy a small file into the internal memory even if it shows the free memory is twice the size of the file.

The question still is: How much free ROM memory is showing in your Que.

- TL

[Bavarian]

I have about 19MB free. Use FileZ to search which big file is eaten up your memory.

[TonyMak]

I just checked with Filez I have 11mb free.

[Last Mrk]

I have a dumb question.

Seeing as ROM is an acronym for read only memory, where is the memory that I can't write to and how do I find out how much I have?

[vescalea]

I have about 19MB free.
I just checked with Filez I have 11mb free.
Sorry, to tell you that you do not have 19MB or 11 MB free ROM space. If you check again with Filez, you will notice that the amount of ROM space is 8257536 bytes which is little less than 8 MB. What you are reading off is the "Free" space, which is the amount of free internal RAM space.

Seeing as ROM is an acronym for read only memory, where is the memory that I can't write to and how do I find out how much I have?
I used an old program Palm Console Demo to read the free ROM space.

The reason I am concerned about no more free ROM space is that when R4 is released, and if its size is bigger than the ROM space taken up by R3, then there is no room for R4 to be installed. I don't believe that I installed any application that write to the ROM, which I could be wrong. I just want to know if everyone who had installed R3 end up with no free ROM space left. If that is the case, it really limits how much enhancement Garmin can add to R4. Of course part of R4 can reside in the RAM space, but it is be gone after one hard reset, so, that is not a read good solution.

Just my thoughts.

-TL

[rocket666]

Is the rom memory really separate read only memory, or is it just a portion of the ram that has been set by memory management to be read only (protected ram). Don't they advertise that the ique comes with 32meg of ram?

If this is correct, then on a new release, they could simply enlarge the amount of rom, so there should be no problem.

[vescalea]

Is the rom memory really separate read only memory, or is it just a portion of the ram that has been set by memory management to be read only (protected ram). Don't they advertise that the ique comes with 32meg of ram?

The ROM memory is actually flash ROM. If they are real ROM, you cannot write over it. For flash ROM, we can rewrite it a number of times. But flash ROM is not RAM. When power is removed from RAM, the content of the RAM will be lost, but not with ROM or flash ROM. The RAM need power to retain it's content, that is why the battery will run down after several days without recharging even with no activities.

If a portion of the RAM space is allocated for R4 upgrade, the RAM content can be gone when the battery run out or by a hard reset. So, it is not the ideal place for any software that has to stay put.

-TL

[rwsmith123]

I'm not sure where Garmin came up with the 32Meg number. I've seen the same results from different utilities and it looks like the iQue has the following:

8257536 bytes of Flash ROM of which 5121260 bytes are used by the operating system and que programs. Some unknown amount is used to store tracklogs, que prefrences, satellite data, etc.


26050560 bytes of RAM of which 2097152 bytes are reserved for a system heap leaving 23953136 bytes (22.8Meg) for user programs and data.

The number of bytes for the flash ROM and RAM are a little odd, so there is probably additional memory which is hidden from the normal system routines.

[mcvpjd3]

How do you check ROM size, Filez only gives RAM and SD Card sizes?

[rwsmith123]

Filez gives the ROM size. From the main screen tap the Information button.

Palm Commander will give even more detailed info.

[sync]

I'm confused. Is the ROM in question actually EPROM?

[rwsmith123]

It's flash ROM, I think it's similar to eeprom but with some differences. That's why you are able to upgrade the palm operating system from 5.2.1 r1 to 5.2.1 r2, etc.