Japanese NX to English

[rosdimahdi]

Hi all,
I am now working in Japan. I'm really pissed off with Sony here as in Japan, they are selling the Japanese version of NX-70V for 59,800 Yen (USD 515.00) while the English version for 79,800 Yen (USD 680.00). The difference between the Japanese and English, hardware-wise is just that there are some Japanese characters below the Spacebar and Backspace keys. The rest is purely the software and the manual, which is of course, in Japanese.

Now, I wonder if someone could tell me how to convert the Japanese version into English. I read somewhere that the OS was installed on a flash ROM, and may be upgraded to PalmOS 6.0 when the time comes. So, I strongly believe that the Japanese OS can be replaced (upgraded) easily with the English OS the same way. The problem is, how can I do it?

I really don't think it's a good idea to buy the English version here, coz the price is just outrageous. As for the manual, it doesn't really matter; though, if possible, someone can tell me where I can download it from.

I am now using a Toshiba PocketPC, but with the new Palm OS 5, I think it's worth to change to the NX-70V.

Well, hope to hear your solutions for the poor "gaijin" in Japan.
Bye... and thank you very much, you damned Sony!!!

[n2ifp]

The problem is that even if you could do it, it would be illegal.

[rosdimahdi]

Hmm... thanks for your reply. So, I guess I have to buy the English version, eh? But, no way I'm gonna buy it here.
Would anyone recommend where I can buy it from? Any stores in the US that would likely ship it to Japan?
Or better yet, if any of you here can find a shop here in Japan that sells at the same price as that in the US? I'd appreciate any info.
Desperate to experience Palm OS5, especially the one with a camera.
Bye.

[fireants22]

sorry, i am a gaijin in tokyo, and ended up having to settle for a jap-unit.

if you go to the sofmap in yuracho, the used ones are only 44000 nowadays and dropping...a month ago they were 50,000used. I picked up a used gunmetal-limited edition one and never regretted it. (they even give you warranty)

[rosdimahdi]

Thanks.
But the problem is I don't speak and read Japanese.
I've been to Softmap Akihabara last weekend, and the price is now 42999 Yen. But they are all Jap-version. They are really cheap, but useless to me, though.
Any other suggestions?

[fireants22]

you dont know ANY japanese? cuz os5 is pretty intuitive...not much different from os4.
My japanese is crap too, but i still get by...from the help of the nice people on this BBS of course.

[clie_wannabe]

fireanst22 is right... so you dont even need to study japanese to use the japanese nx... as long as you've used a palm before, everything would be fine... just load it up with english software, and it would be smooth sailing from there - i have a friend who doesnt know any japanese but gets quite by using a japanese prism... OR, you could wait until someone actually performs a reflash of the rom to english (which you could follow by example) - in my experience, ive already flashed a japanese vx, and a n750c to english - but with os5 and an nx, i better wait though... OR, you could shell-off the extra dough and get the english version... OR, better yet since you'd be working in japan, get the japanese nx, and learn some japanese (when in rome, do as the romans do)...

[clie_wannabe]

Originally posted by rosdimahdi
Or better yet, if any of you here can find a shop here in Japan that sells at the same price as that in the US? I'd appreciate any info.
Bye.

in my years living in japan, i still have to find a shop that sells an english version comparable in price to a locally available japanese one... it is just supply-and-demand...

[jbray]

I bought a Japanese version, and I never could get used to the Kanji fonts. The only thing you can really do is wait until Brayder Technologies gets their act togather and finishes up JackSprat. Then you can take the ROM file and change it to English, provided of course that your Japanese ROM file has English in it. If it doesn't, well I'm sure that someone here at ClieSource would be willing to send you one that does. Unfortunatly we have been waiting since last year for this software, and Brayder doesn't seem to care.

good luck

[euroclie]

As Larry wrote, even if you could do it, reflashing the Japanese ROM with an English ROM would be illegal (well, maybe not actually the ROM reflashing in itself, but then how would you legally obtain that English NX70V ROM?).

Anyway this is more or less pointless since from what we read on this board, JackFlash support for OS5 should arrive any day now, but JackSprat for OS5 may never be available due to some additionnal technical difficulties... As JackSprat is currently the only known tool to reflash the ROM on Clie devices, there's not much hope...

That being said, maybe there's a slight chance to be able to localize the Japanese interface, but it's far from trivial, if only because hacks like Localize Hack do not work on the OS5 devices. Changing the locale and adding the appropriate overlay files is not very hard (I'm pretty confident that we could create easily a Spanish version of the NX70V starting from the US or European model, for instance), but the trick here is that the character encoding is different, so the same method cannot be simply applied to localize a Japanese device (or to get a Japanese device from a non-Japanese device, by the way).

I don't have a Japanese NX70V at hand, though, so I can't do any testing to check these assumptions...

The best thing would be if a talented programmer could write a tool that would let users display both Japanese and non-Japanese characters on the same unit and at the same time (say, in a text field, a Kana or Kanji word followed by some (accented) ascii text, but this has not yet been done! :-(

To make a long story short, you'd better shell out the money for the English model (that's what I did for the NX70V, after having bought two Japanese Clié), it's not that expensive anyway: your English NX70V bought in Japan would cost as much as a European NX70V bought in France, for example...

Otherwise, if you buy a Japanese device, even when using English programs you'll run into problems (the date picker dialogs, for instance, would remain in Japanese...) if you don't understand Japanese at all. :(

[jbray]

Everybody keeps talking about the "illegal" changing of the ROM from Japanese to English, I really don't see how that could be. It could void the warrenty, but that's it. The ROM that comes with ALL Clie's with English as the primary language also has Spanish, German, Italian, and French, it just depends on which version is specified as the language you want to use. All Jack Flash does is allow you to take the ROM and specify which language you want to use, then remove the other languages, giving you more free space on the Clie. I am not sure about the Japanese version, nobody except Sony, and Palm really knows because the new version of JackFlash has not been released, but if it has Japanese and English in the ROM and you change it, how is it illegal, you are using the software that came with your unit?

[fireants22]

beats me....i dont see anything illegal about it either. I figure, i paid my hard-earned cash on the clie...i am free to do what i want with it. If i choose to take a chance to screw, and possibly void the warranty on the clie by messing with the ROM, i have all the right to.

[n2ifp]

It is illegal for the simple fact that there is no way to obtain the English ROM legally.

[Onno2]

I am living with you boy and I owe a NX60 J, which means Japanese.

Qua hardware, it's 99.9% the same as the US one. People here are talking about it's illigal if you touch the ROM. Well, then I can tell you. It's illigal if you cross over the street when it's not green and don't tell me you 've never tried it in your whole life! What I am trying to say is, it can't hurt anybody! Except you, if you damned your rom from bootup.

I 've many many experience with Palm machine. Less with the CLIE's. You won't lose your garantee if you backup your original ROM. On Palm and OS4 machines, flashing the ROM was a piece of cake. Now it sounds desperate, if I read your story, sad.

Nothing they tell here is true.

NX / NZ devices own a 16MB ROM, that can be FLASHED. So, it can be upgraded. In HongKong the smaller stores, sell Japanese NX machines with an English OS5. Yes, it could be done. What you need is tools to flash in or flash out plus the new ROM you wanna try.

Here it is. ROM is here, tools are only not provided, but Those sneaky Hongkong salesman won't tell you there secret.
Once released online. They simply lose costumers.

Yep, for 50 bucks (USD) they will turn your Jap machine into a US one. So everything is possible, only if you know how.
I already 've found the English version ROM for it. What I miss is how can I make a backup rom and flash the new ROM into it and how can I fill the rest of the ROM which is more than 13.5MB without Sony Clie standard programs!!!

Time will tell...

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by n2ifp
I also remember someone saying that the Japanese version has a smaller ROM, hence the difference in price!

i beg to differ... the japanese version has a bigger ROM because it must also accomodate the language overlay files (2-byte characters) use to display the menus, etc.

just as in the case with japanese computers where one should at least need twice the memory (ram) as required by the english version - lest youd want your pc to really crawl..

[euroclie]

Originally posted by jbray
Everybody keeps talking about the "illegal" changing of the ROM from Japanese to English, I really don't see how that could be. It could void the warrenty, but that's it.
No. The most illegal part is how you get a copy of the English ROM. Those things are copyrighted (anyone here did ever try to download the ROM images from Sony's website? You have to sign some agreement first, in which you acknowledge that these files must not be distributed/shared/etc...) and the only way to have such a ROM image legally would be to own an English device in addition to your Japanese device.

Then comes the question to know whether changing the content of your Clie ROM is legal or not... Softwares like JackSprat / JackFlash wouldn't be tolerated by Sony / Palm if this was really completely illegal, but we're talking about completely replacing the content of the ROM here, so I imagine that Sony would say "No" if you asked them. Now, if the only thing you're going to do is modify the content of the ROM of one device you bought, then Sony will probably never hear about it or care about it. If you're doing a business of changing the language of Clié devices, then they will certainly not appreciate.

Otherwise, if you change the content of the ROM of your Clie, and send it back to Sony tech support, if they notice it then I'm convinced that they'll argue that your modification will cancel the warranty.

Now granted, if you backup your ROM first, then restore it before sending your Clie to the tech support, you should be fine... But what if your Clié is damaged and can't run anymore? You wouldn't be able to restore the original ROM and Sony WOULD notice, and bye bye warranty! :(

The ROM that comes with ALL Clie's with English as the primary language also has Spanish, German, Italian, and French, it just depends on which version is specified as the language you want to use.
Not exactly (but then you're close to the truth! ;))

The ROM of the European devices contains three languages (English, French and German) from which you can chose during the initial boot (or after a hard reset, or whenever you like using the Localize utility I wrote). Sony dumped the Italian and Spanish version on their European devices. Probably decided the market wasn't big enough to bother (or the ROM was too small to handle all the additionnal apps and these two languages, I don't know), which I feel is an unfortunate decision from them.

The devices sold in the US, in Hong Kong and in Singapore are English-only devices.

The devices sold in Japan are Japanese only devices.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that Sony (as all major companies do, even Palm do this) wants to divide the market in separate local markets, and there can be a significant price difference for the same model depending on where you buy it. Obviously Sony do NOT want you to buy a cheap Japanese device and turn it into an expensive English devices, they'd better have you shell out the bucks for the English model right from the start.


All Jack Flash does is allow you to take the ROM and specify which language you want to use, then remove the other languages, giving you more free space on the Clie.
No, this is what JackSprat does, not JackFlash. JackFlash only lets you put files in the unused part of the FlashROM.

Using JackSprat on a European (=multilingual) device will let you erase the unused languages from the ROM, thus freeing some additionnal FlashROM space to use with JackFlash. You can also remove some additionnal, manually picked files (that your do not use) from the ROM.

Using JackSprat on a monolingual (English or Japanese) device only lets you remove some files from the ROM if there are applications in there that you do not use.

I am not sure about the Japanese version, nobody except Sony, and Palm really knows because the new version of JackFlash has not been released, but if it has Japanese and English in the ROM and you change it, how is it illegal, you are using the software that came with your unit?
No all the Japanese devices contain Japanese only ROM.

Some applications in that ROM may indeed be originally written in English and bundled in ROM with a Japanese overlay file, but others will be natively Japanese, and making the device run in plain English without reflashing the ROM with an English ROM, although theoretically possible, is not particularly trivial because of the character encoding routines (two bytes encoding in Japanese devices vs one byte encoding in the western devices) which means that only changing or adding the overlay files (the files which actually contain the localized resources) is not enough.

Although the physical size of the ROM chip installed on Japanese devices is typically larger than on western devices (8Mb vs. 4Mb for instance on a N700C vs a N760C), it might be the same (16Mb ROM for both Japanese and US version of the NX70V). Converting a Japanese device into a western device is always possible technically speaking (and indeed a lot of shops will do that in Hong Kong), the reverse is not necessarily true if the Japanese ROM is bigger than the US ROM chip size.

The bigger ROM requirement for the Japanese devices is caused by the size of the Japanese fonts, the presence of a word list (because words are entered using Kana only, and then translated to Kanji according to that word list using the top button on the left of the graffiti area), and some additionnal software like ATOK.

To sum this up:

1) If you own just one Clié, changing the language by reflashing the ROM (I'm not talking about the switching to another language in the European multi-language ROM) is illegal (but yes, a lot of people have done this without harm... As someone pointed out, as long as you don't get caught, you'll be fine, but this doesn't make the ROM reflashing process legal because Sony didn't sue you! The highest risk you face is to fry your device's ROM, turning it into a very expensive and useless paperweight).

2) If you own both an English and a Japanese device, then this is only marginally illegal (because you can obtain the English ROM legally, since you own such a device), but would certainly be frowned upon by Sony anyway. After all, when you buy a car, the manufacturer doesn't expect you to replace the engine yourself, right? I'm pretty sure that deep down the papers and legal stuff found in the Clié box, there's something about this, but I don't have enough time to pinpoint it! ;)

[n2ifp]

Patrick,

Excellent!

The point is that illegal activities don't belong on Cliesource.

Sure, I can go rob a bank, but that doesn't make it legal.

I stand corrected that the Japanese ROM is the larger one.

As one user pointed out awhile back, English doesn't necessarily mean American:). So yes there is a Euro version and a Engish version that's mostly for the USA market.

[rosdimahdi]

Thanks for all the posts, guys, especially to Patrick for the long explanation. Now I know the situation.
I don't think I can live with the jap-version NX, since I've never used a Palm device before. I'm a PocketPC user who is about to convert to a Palm user. And, I will only be here for the next 4 months. I will not live in Japan forever. No way.. he he he.
So, in this case, I really need to buy an Eng-version NX. Anybody can point out where they sell it cheap here in Japan or Yokohama? I'll try to survey around Yokohama and see if I can find one this weekend. I'll inform you all if I succeed.
Okay then. Bye all.

[clie_wannabe]

to be honest, most japanese shops have that sense of competitiveness... in short, they'd prefer to maintain the status quo instead of creating a price war... if you do find an english clie (which of course is not that in-demand) with a certain price, you'd probably find it at the same price in other shops...

moreso, as far as i know sofmap doesnt sell english clies... you could try ordering direct from reputable online shops... most popular is pdakobo, ikeshop, and vis-a-vis (retailer for handango), etc.

[rosdimahdi]

clie-wannabe,
They have online shop too in Japan? How to contact them? Any URL? Are the websites in English? And the prices are cheaper than those of normal shops?

[fireants22]

funny thing you should mention ikeshop.... they are offering the TungstenT/T (english-version cuz the jap version is still not available) for 69,500yen....and you can download (for a fee) the Japanese-ROM!!!!!

So I guess that is legal?:eek: :confused:

[fireants22]

www.ikeshop.co.jp

just click on the mobile-shop button

[rosdimahdi]

Thanks. Ive surfed through but, they don't have English pages (pdakobo has, but on general terms only). I doubt they have English version but I've mailed to them my query. So, have to wait for their replies. But anyway, their price is not a Yen cheaper, so I guess buying one in Akihabara is a better bet.
Thanks anyway.