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REX 6000 Help Page News Archive
May 16 - 31, 2001
May 30, 2001
More progress on a "free" SDK. (From Jory.)
"I went ahead and began trying to create an include file based on Chris' wonderful reverse-engineered asm code, which could provide the calls and header from the asm code that would be produced and assembled using TASM (via Chris' batch file). The biggest hurdle was figuring out how, fundamentally, to modify the asm code which I embedded so that it would take parameters from the C code. I cleared the hurdle."
See our here on our Programming/SDK page for more details and a link to the source code.
Two new REX mailing lists set up - one for developers, one for users. (Thanks, Henrik!)
Several people have been sharing ideas via email about developing (add-in programs, PC-side software like RexMail and MaillosaurusREX, and firmware updates) for REX users. If you'd like to join the discussion, Henrik has set up a mailing list for developers:
"REX-6000-developers: This open mailing list is intended for discussion between developers for the REX 6000. The list is not intended for general REX 6000 discussion. To subscribe to the list, send "subscribe" (without quotes) in the body of a message to [email protected]. You will be required to send a confirmation email before your request is processed."
For REX 6000 user discussions, Henrik created a second mailing list:
"REX-6000-users: This open mailing list is intended for discussion between users of the REX 6000. To subscribe to the list, send "subscribe" (without quotes) in the body of a message to [email protected]. You will be required to send a confirmation email before your request is processed."
REX available and cheap too at ecost! (Thanks, Eric.)
"Rex 6000 w/serial docking station is available at www.ecost.com for 89.95!"
Some progress on working with the REX firmware. (From Chris.)
"I still haven't finished my memo browser add-in; frankly, haven't been working on it, side-tracked (still) on getting a replacement C-language SDK working, and modifying Rex firmware. I have now "patched" the firmware in my Rex in very minor ways, getting ready to try to patch it to support more than 8 addins."
Battery life update. (From Ken and Chris.)
"Regarding battery life, here's my experience: back in February when Xircom began shipping the Rex 6000, many of us otherwise happy users observed our first set of batteries dying very quickly - mine died in 6 days! Well, I know Dana sent his first one back, and as he states in the "Known Issues" of his Rex 6000 Help Page, most people seem to be getting at least a few weeks of battery life in their second and following sets of batteries. As for mine, it continued to use up batteries at a rate of about one set per week, sometimes in as little as 5 days! There was speculation here that heavy users of the Rex 6000 (like eBook readers, and those that do quite a bit of input via that tiny keyboard, like me) were having much shorter battery life due to the flash ROM writes, but this was ridiculous! In March, I tried to use my Rex as little as possible - maybe glance at today's schedule & tasks a few times a day, but not key-enter ANYTHING, doing it all from (ugh) "Intellisync Mobile Desktop". But I continued to get just one week or less per set of batteries!!! Finally (I am a rather patient person) in April, I called Xircom tech support about it, they agreed it sounded like a bum unit, and to my amazement, sent me another Rex in 2 days. Problem solved. Footnote 1: I dropped that 2nd Rex about a week later (just 3' onto carpetted floor), screen cracked, and Xircom quickly sent me a 3rd one, as it was within 30 days of receiving it (the 2nd Rex). Am now in my 3rd week of use of Rex #3 without replacing batteries - doesn't sound like much, but I'm elated!" (Chris)
"Well, I had promised to post how long my second set of batteries lasted. If you care to know, the first set lasted 10 days. The second set lasted 75 days. The second set happened to be duracell. Yes, the honeymoon was over the first month, so that accounts for some of the battery's longer life. Still, I now use the rex daily for phone numbers and get around to reading a number of web downloads, world, science, health and entertainment about every other day." (Chris)
So if you're experiencing continuous poor battery life, you may want to consider returning the unit to Xircom for a replacement.
May 29, 2001
It appears there are two versions of the REX 6000 on the market - with either 2 MB or 1 MB of installed memory. So far this has only been mentioned by users from Europe and Asia.
"I contacted Xircom European Tech support, and they said:
'There has been a rex 6000 with only 1MB before but we never put it on the market. Can you please tell me how much you paid for the rex and can you please send me a copy of the invoice to the following faxnumber: +32 70 233 305. Also mention your name and your casenumber.'
Now I'm waiting for definitive response from Xircom and from my seller (www.eprice.it) for a substitution of the REX6000." (Marco)
"I am from singapore. over here some shops are selling the 1 mb version of rex6000. I would like to ask you if the rex 6000 can be use immediately out of the box? How do i check its memory?" (Tony.)
To check the installed memory on your REX: 1) Tap the "Controls" icon on the Main Menu. Then tap the "Memory" icon in the Controls menu. The amount of memory (1 MB or 2 MB) will be displayed, along with the percentage currently used.
May 28, 2001
REX availability in Canada
"For any Canadians in here looking to buy the Rex 6000, check out www.borderfree.com for free shipping from www.ecost.com which sells the USB version for $99 and serial for $89 USD."
May 25, 2001
New program for users of the REX who speak German! (Thanks, Donni!)
"I wrote a small program that downloads and converts the news of heise-newsticker (a famous german computer magazine) to outlook-notes that can be transfered to the rex by intellisync. Old news articles are deleted if you fetch the new ones. My program (hNews for Rex) is very simple and still beta but I think a lot of German users will like it.
You can download it at: http://home.t-online.de/home/donni Feel free to distribute it in any way you like - it's freeware."
Thanks Donni, for adding to the REX software library! See our Add-ins and Other REX Programs page for more cool ways to extend the fun and functionality of your REX.
Serial traffic sequence for REX firmware update available. (From Peter.)
"This is the serial traffic sequence when you put REX.BIN in the RexTools directory and select "Firmware Update" in RexTools. This uploads the contents of REX.BIN to the Rex. The sequence below describes what happens. Knowing this one could add this feature to any utility destined to replace or enhance Xircom's RexTools."
See our SDK & Programming Page for the details.
For upgraders to Outlook XP. (From John.)
We've had confirmation from several users that Outlook XP works fine with the REX. However, John had recently upgraded to Outlook XP and things didn't go smoothly once he tried to sync Outlook XP w/his REX:
"The Rex seems to go through the sync fine, but the data is not sync'd between my laptop and the Rex. Neither my calendar or my contacts sync. They don't go either direction. I am connecting through the PCMCIA slot. It worked fine with Outlook 2000."
John resolved the problem by initializing his REX. Others have upgraded to Outlook XP without issues, but if you do have problems, initializing your REX (using REX Tools) may clear things up for you.
May 22, 2001
New free program to write and read emails on the REX has been released. (From Dunqan.)
"Hi! I've created my own utility simillar to Rexmail. I've called it maillosaurus REX and a free, fully functional version is available at http://dunqan.republika.pl/.
Program has three main functions:
- Copy unread e-mails from inbox (or from different Outlook's folder) to REX. You can convert defined number of e-mails into one note (it is often usefull).
- Send e-mails created in REX via Outlook. Using only your REX, you can add to your e-mails your signature, predefined QuickTexts and even... an atachments from your PC.
- Create formated documents via Microsoft Word. Using your REX you can create Word documents with different font styles, different font sizes and various aligment options. You can also specify many shortcuts that will be replaced with full text, before the document will be transfered to Word. You can even create in REX a Word document and send it as an atachment to the e-mail created also in your REX.
Good luck! Dunqan"
Clearly, Maillosaurus REX is the most cleverly named REX program created to date! Dunqan provides an online and downloadable user's guide along w/the program. I have not tried Maillosaurus REX yet - if you use it and have comments, let us know!
The best news is that users now have two options for adding email functionality to their REX - Rexmail and Maillosaurus REX. See our Add-ins and Other REX Programs page if you are looking for REX Add-ins and Windows REX utilities.
May 21, 2001
Still MORE stuff from Peter on the REX BIN file.
"Discovered a minor mistake in my previous output of memory written by REX.BIN due to signed/unsigned errors in my code. So I've put 3 files on my website. Two are zipped versions of the 1MB memory image. One is prefilled with zeroes and the other is prefilled with 0xFF's (erased flash is usually all filled with 0xFF's). Both are then written to with REX.BIN. The comparison of the two, results in a mapping of areas of memory not written by REX.BIN and therefore probably unused. It also results in a much smaller file that list addresses of unused vs used memory. This could be useful to people trying to dissemble code. Unwritten areas that are referred to by a disassembly could mean that one is erroneously decoding a data area as a program area."
See the SDK Page on our site for links to some new files from Peter.
May 20, 2001
More add-ins from Mr. Morotomi! (Thanks, AntMelNat.)
Mr. Morotomi has two more add-ins. Joke Watch ver 0.1 and Sun Watch ver 0.1.
They can be found at Hideo Morotomi's web site.
Still others working to create new REX software. (From Henrik.)
"Thanks for a great site. I will receive my serial cradle soon and will then test a little shell script I have written that "defrags" the Rex. Commands taken from serial communications dump. This will be good for Linux/Unix users that are running out of memory on their Rex. If it works I will send it to you for posting.
Until someone figures out what the arguments for the rest of the commands are (I managed to figure out that some do segment reads and some do segments writes, and so on, but I don't have time to investigate further) I will probably not improve this software or build something larger. But if the protocol will become documented by someone I will write an open source package that will run on any platform (Linux/Unix/MacOS/Windows/etc)."
Anyone help with arguments Henrik (and others?) are interested in?
May 18, 2001
More resources for REX BIN investigators. (From Chris H.)
"Peter, Thanks for the checksum info yesterday. A minor amendment: I think it should be "checksum = ~(unsigned sum of data) & 0xff" (instead of 0x0f).
This morning I regenerated the sixteen 64K byte "pages" (for lack of a better term) of firmware contained in Rex.bin, posted at:
Each file is 64K bytes, named r00.bin, r01.bin, ... r0f.bin (except no r06.bin). I named the 16-bit address (S1 records) "page" = r0000.bin, which is the page I've been calling the "resident" page, as it is visible while running RexDump. Each file is padded with 00's, ready to run through your favorite disassembler.
Let me know if you find any discrepancies between the regenerated code and Rex.bin Have fun!"
Something for the technically minded among us to noodle over this weekend. (From Peter)
"Cranked some code and verified that the rex.bin is definitely a modified Motorola S-Record. I had my program examine it for valid S-code and checksum and listed each block of records written to an address. It tends to write 128 bytes (16 at a time) to each block upwards from a base address and then drops 128 bytes from the last base address to write another 128. At other times it writes scattered bytes in other locations.
First entry is the length of the file minus the four bytes used for the length. The second entry is for an S0 record with its text content. I only generated entries for S0,S1,S2,S3. The only S-code I didn't bother with is the S9 at the very end."
Peter's result file can be found here.
May 17, 2001
More info on things REX-Tech related to the REX 6000 firmware.
"As the Xircom rep said: "Firmware Update Procedure (in your case it's a reinstall of the firmware)". Apparently the firmware on "Deepsync"s Rex is corrupted, so reloading it should fix it. By the way, I have analyzed the Rex.bin file, here are some preliminary findings: Rex.bin is composed of 4 different types of packets, with header strings S0, S1, S2, and S9. All of the code in the "normally resident" portion of Rex memory (as viewed with my RexDump utility) is loaded from the S1 packets. The S2 packets constitute apparently 15 blocks of 64k firmware, labelled 00-0f (there is no 06). I have located some of the areas of code I am interested in modifying, but still have one open issue: the packets use an 8 bit checksum (or CRC), but I feel stupid because I have not yet been able to decode it. It doesn't appear to be a simple XOR checksum. Any hackers out there can break this simple (appearing) code?! Here's a small sample packet: Sample packet: 53 31 06 50 00 C3 03 50 [93] where: "S" "1" msglen addr data... checksum" (Chris H.)
"It appears to be a bastardized Motorola S-Record. It follows the format but other then the Sx line headers in Ascii, the data is in raw binary. The standard is all data is in ascii hex and each Sx line terminated with CRLF. The 8-bit checksum is the one's complement sum of the bytes after the Sx header up to the checksum ( = ~(unsigned sum of data) & 0x0F).
Motorola S-Records:
Info:
SO, length(byte), addr(2 bytes) = 0000, text data usually title, version etc., chksum16-bit address:
S1, length(byte), addr(2 bytes), data (length-3 bytes), chksum (byte)
S9, length(byte) = 3, starting execution address in 2 bytes, chksum (byte)24-bit address:
S2, length(byte), addr(3 bytes), data (length-4 bytes), chksum (byte)
S8, length(byte) = 4, starting execution address in 3 bytes, chksum (byte)
32-bit address:
S3, length(byte), addr(4 bytes), data (length-5 bytes), chksum (byte)
S7, length(byte) = 5, starting execution address in 4 bytes, chksum (byte)Count of total records of type S1,S2,S3 already sent
S5, length(byte) = 3 , count (2 bytes)" (Peter)
May 16, 2001
Mr. Morotomi has been busy - another English-language add-in: BioRhythm. (Thanks, QC.)
"Mr Hideo Morotomi has added a new rex6000 add-in: "Bio Rhythm" today (16 may) for downloading."
You can find more information and Mr. Morotomi's site here on our Add-in page.