Several years ago, in a moment of insanity, I purchased an iPaq 1945 PocketPC. I loved the clear screen and interface, and I had not quite become a complete slave to the fruit. It has worked well, but still been a complete pain. Oh woe, I should have gotten a (now defunct) Clie or Palm.

But I continue to pick the iPaq up every now and then to work on getting it synced with my Macs and transfer info from my work Windows machine and dial-out on my Nokia 6600 cellphone to grab some mail or just browse when stuck indoors in public places.

When in ROM…

I have been running ROM 1.00, which came with the original device, and has been causing me problems for years. I would lose data, random resets, difficult to configure, etc. I finally noticed that there was a ROM update 1.10, which is actually designated for the iPaq 1940, even though the iPaq 1945 is an identitical device, with different branding.

Half-way through the update, the installer died and complained. No amount of resets would bring it back from a white screen with “1.07″ plastered on the top. I called HP and chatted with their Tech support. Their analysis was that it was “bricked” and would cost $80-$200 to fix. Essentially the cost of the device.

Originally, I used a very slick Belkin USB charging/syncing cable which travels well. The updater complained because it wanted the *actual* power cable and sync cable, in an attempt to make sure the battery would not die mid-update. Therefore I used the original cabling (which has always been flakey). In a last ditch effort to not leave my iPaq as a silver brick, I used the newer 3rd party cable and ran the updater directly (which doesn’t check the cabling type) and the updater ran through great in about 5 minutes.

…do as the ROMs do

Lesson learned, Tech support is only good so far as you can see them.