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View Full Version : Dueling TH55's !! Attack of the Clones!


Atomic Chicken
04-29-2004, 01:19 AM
Greetings!

I posted about this earlier this evening on the NX forum, in my NX80 is dead thread.

In short, for those of you who don't know (or care), my NX80 died on Monday and Best Buy is sending me a refund check for my purchase price because it was covered by an extended protection plan I bought. I left Tuesday evening for Las Vegas, won a little over $400 playing roulette, and got back late this afternoon. I have been thinking about what to replace my NX80 with - either another NX80 or another TH55, or both. At least part of the decision was made for me when I returned from my Vegas trip this afternoon.

Shortly after returning from my trip, I went into a local CompUSA to pick up a USB cable. I noticed that there was an "open-box special" TH55 in the glass cabinet. I asked about it, they said I probably wouldn't want it because it was missing the stylus, install disk and manual, and had a large scratch on the back of the case near the camera button. It also had a tiny scratch on the flip cover. They wanted $289 for it "as-is", which seemed like a GREAT deal for me considering I already have the install disks, disk+manual, and an extra NX80 stylus. I didn't mind the 2 scratches, as the camera button scratch was only visible if you are looking at the back of the unit, and the cover scratch was not visible AT ALL when the backlight is on.

I jumped all over this deal, after giving it 10 or 15 seconds of thought. They seemed surprised that I would want it, until I explained to them I already had the missing parts and that the scratches didn't bother me. I am now the proud owner of two TH55's!

I have since "cloned" the memory between the 2 units, in order to have an identical backup unit that contains the exact same software in case my main unit breaks or loses data for some reason. At first, I thought I would be able to do this with Sony's memory stick backup program. However, I was unable to do this because MSBackup does a comparison of the unit serial number before allowing a restore. A dead end. :(

I then did a search for backup utilities, and found one called BackupBuddyVFS. It is shareware, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. Success!!! It happily did a restore of my main TH55 onto the RAM of my new TH55, with only one glitch (One of the files for the WiFi update patch wouldn't restore). At this point, I manually installed the WiFi Update patch just to make sure everything was the same, used the "ChangeName" app to set the Hotsync ID identical to my main unit, did a warm reset on the new TH55, and it was finished! Two TH55 handhelds with identical software and databases, the same Hotsync ID, and identical Zlauncher setups! The only way I can tell these 2 units apart now is the stylus color, as I replaced the missing stylus on my new TH55 with a spare NX80 stylus I had sitting in a drawer (with the white plastic pieces instead of the black plastic). Way too much fun! :D

Has anyone else here tried "Cloning" a Clie? If so, what were your experiences and reasons for doing this? I found it quite an interesting endeavor, it ended up being quite a bit harder than I thought it would be! :)

Best wishes,
Bawko

strider_mt2k
04-29-2004, 06:35 AM
Excellent story, and a good find!
Nice to have a "beater". ;)

Yep, BBVFS makes the process pretty easy!

I went through a couple of m130's a couple of years ago when I first bought one, and did that restore-n-go with BBVFS.

It works great! I'm glad it still works under OS5.

I'm pretty sure it backs up all the patches too. Everything in RAM.

cayos
04-29-2004, 06:58 AM
now you can play warfare multiplayer with yourself =)

robinson
04-29-2004, 07:31 AM
Ok, I think (although haven't tried it, fortunately), this is the quick way to clone.

1 - buy registered version of BackupBuddy 1.53 (not the VFS handheld-only version, but the BUB desktop component -- worth EVERY PENNY), and hot sync your GOOD 1st unit.

2 - hard reset 2nd handheld back to scratch.

3 - Place in cradle/cable and hit hot sync.

4 - Palm Desktop sees the unit as a "blank" palm, and asks if you want to pick your "old" user name from the list. Say YES.

5 - Palm will then reinstall all RAM files and 4 conduits (add, todo, date, memo).

6 - Then BUB takes over and completes the hot sync by installing ALL third party programs and preferences.

This shouldn't affect you the next time you hot sync the #1 unit (not positive, but can't see how it would).

Rob

Munan
04-29-2004, 01:35 PM
Originally posted by Atomic Chicken

Has anyone else here tried "Cloning" a Clie? If so, what were your experiences and reasons for doing this? I found it quite an interesting endeavor, it ended up being quite a bit harder than I thought it would be! :)

Best wishes,
Bawko

BackupMan. No issues at all. Cloned three Tungsten T3s using is, two NX70s for my wife, and a second UX50 for around the house.
No muss. No fuss.

Unregistered
04-29-2004, 01:56 PM
Originally posted by robinson
1 - buy registered version of BackupBuddy 1.53 (not the VFS handheld-only version, but the BUB desktop component -- worth EVERY PENNY), and hot sync your GOOD 1st unit.

Is there a list anywhere of apps known to need BackupBuddy? So far, just plain old hotsyncing the new palm has always worked for me. Their description page says "this may not be true for every third party application" but I'd like a little more detail.

doboy
04-29-2004, 02:07 PM
I personally have and use BBVFS, but FlyBackUp seems interesting since it compresses and encrypts. BBVFS can only encrypt and doesn't allow mutiple backups like BackupMan and FlyBackUp.

doboy
04-29-2004, 02:18 PM
Originally posted by Unregistered


Is there a list anywhere of apps known to need BackupBuddy? So far, just plain old hotsyncing the new palm has always worked for me. Their description page says "this may not be true for every third party application" but I'd like a little more detail.

I think it depends on the property of the app itself. If you use Filez to look at the properties of the app and associated databases, most will have backup enabled but some don't. You can technically use Filez to change all app/db properties to backup upon sync. Never done this so I don't know any potential problems. Good thing about using these backup app to save to your MS is that you can schedule backups and don't need to rely on having your computer available for restore.

Unregistered
04-29-2004, 02:32 PM
Yeah that's why I was wondering if there's a list. Some apps may set the backup flag off, but some may do that because it really shouldn't be backed up/restored for some reason. In other cases it may be a total mistake. It seems like the value of BackupBuddy (for Windows) is in backing up the apps that do this by mistake. (?)

I do understand the difference between being able to backup to a memory stick, but I'm wondering specifically about the BackupBuddy for Windows app.

kp*
04-29-2004, 03:08 PM
Oh, this just reminded me of something. I had two TH's for a few days because I bought a US model while waiting to see if/when Expansys would ship my Euro one. I just returned the US one today, and I had always meant to take a picture of the two of them together, maybe make an avatar out of it (I've accepted that my NX80 is never coming back :( ) Oh well, too late. I wish I had known this tip about cloning with BackupBuddy. I wanted to do it with MSBackup and was annoyed to find that it wouldn't do it with two of the same model. A hotsync restored most of it, but there were a few things I had to set manually. Good to know in the future, though.

musk
04-29-2004, 03:25 PM
I used to use BackupBuddy (for Win) with my Visor, and later T615, because I went through a few hard resets that didn't restore all the applications to the handheld. BackupBuddy worked flawlessly for that purpose. I quit using it when I found BackupMan, since I could easily restore everything from memorystick. The one area BackupBuddy would still help though, would be a MS failure. BackupBuddy has an option to backup data on external cards too.