Case Before

08/07/2004
I decided to mod my case as it’s starting to look boring etc altho it is quite quiet. My CPU temps seem pretty high altho I’ve been told my mobo is about 12oC out so I decided the best thing was to add 2x80mm fans to the top of my case to blow the hot air (as hot air rises) out using a chimney type of effect.
So I set about measuring etc. At first I did a rough design hand drawn. Then moved onto doing a 3D design to scale.

Next I marked out the centre points etc for the 76mm holes which would be for the 80mm fans and also the window shape on the sidepanel. I designed a small window so you don’t see the HDD’s, PSU etc as the only thing worth seeing really is the mobo and cards. It also gave me the chance to mount the Cathodes out of the way.

Now it’s down to business.
Get the tools out and away we go.
The window was routed out to get a nice non sharp finish on the edges and to have some nice rounded corners etc.

OK, now I have a nice looking BLACK case with some nice BEIGE drives and a SILVER fanbus. So it’s time to get the spraypaint out and get spraying.

Next it’s time to fit the perspex window and install the components

There is a 92mm fan on the window, a 120mm intake, a 120mm exhaust and 2x80mm fans at the top running at half speed.
The case also has 2x blue 12″ cold cathodes (1 above and 1 below the motherboard)

Hardware Mods

The motherboard I have in the system Abit IS7-E which is known to have problems with the northbridge cooler.
Fortunately I have the version with the slightly better fan.
I’m not too happy about the noise tho and it looks so small so lets rip it out and replace it with a Akasa Socket370 P3 CPU Cooler (will run it at half speed as it’s 4000rpm)
I will clean the compound off using lighter fluid as I will be replacing it with arctic silver

Also I robbed a shim from the northbridge of my old Abit TH7-II

Prep the cooler by removing the compound (which looks like bubblegum), sticking on the shim and replacing the mounting bracket with the one robbed from the TH7-II.

here’s a comparison between the coolers

it’s a pretty tight fit but it’s there, it’s quieter and it’s cooler

Next thing is to upgrade the CPU cooler with a heatpipe tower (it’s going to be tight with that northbridge cooler)
Thermaltake Silent Tower

Prep the heatsink (yer it’s new but look at what came off on my lint free cloth)
Install the supporting bracket (pretty fiddly)
Spread on some compound thinly (am using Arctic Silver)

Lineup the holes and put the heatsink in place, had a slight problem with that northbridge cooler so removed it for now.

Adjust the brackets evenly (be patient with this)
Once installed I had room to put the northbridge cooler back

All installed and working

Hardware Mods

 

The motherboard I have in the system Abit IS7-E which is known to have problems with the northbridge cooler.
Fortunately I have the version with the slightly better fan.
I’m not too happy about the noise tho and it looks so small so lets rip it out and replace it with a Akasa Socket370 P3 CPU Cooler (will run it at half speed as it’s 4000rpm)
I will clean the compound off using lighter fluid as I will be replacing it with arctic silver

Also I robbed a shim from the northbridge of my old Abit TH7-II

Prep the cooler by removing the compound (which looks like bubblegum), sticking on the shim and replacing the mounting bracket with the one robbed from the TH7-II.

 

here’s a comparison between the coolers

it’s a pretty tight fit but it’s there, it’s quieter and it’s cooler

Next thing is to upgrade the CPU cooler with a heatpipe tower (it’s going to be tight with that northbridge cooler)
Thermaltake Silent Tower

Prep the heatsink (yer it’s new but look at what came off on my lint free cloth)
Install the supporting bracket (pretty fiddly)
Spread on some compound thinly (am using Arctic Silver)

Lineup the holes and put the heatsink in place, had a slight problem with that northbridge cooler so removed it for now.

Adjust the brackets evenly (be patient with this)
Once installed I had room to put the northbridge cooler back

All installed and working

Default Apps Removed:
Calculator.apk
Gallery.apk
wssyncmlnps.apk
MyFiles.apk
Pantheon.apk
BluetoothIcon.apk
WifiIcon.apk
MySpace1.7.apk
Layar304-final-market.apk
Facebook1.1.2.apk
MusicPlayer.apk

New Apps Installed:
Calculator.apk (ARM11 fix) – [ more info ]
Gallery3D.apk (i5700 version) – [ more info ]
LauncherPro.apk
Music.apk MusicMod (Nexus One + Widgets) – [ more info ]
Superuser.apk 2.1 (xda-developers) – [ more info ]

Tweaks/Enhancements:
OpenGL v1.4 ARM11 – [ more info ]
libdvm.so ARM11 – [ more info ]
build.prop (based on Original JE4 – marketfix)
hosts (adblocking for blocking admob – from xda-developers) – [ more info ]

Optional Tweak:
relocate dalvik-cache to /cache – [ more info ]

This mod is based on the I570EXXJE4 firmware with LK2.06.beta4

I made this for my own phone to make it easier when installing a clean firmware.

All you need to do is:
1. Flash new firmware (eg: I570EXXJE4) using ODIN
2. Flash LK2.06.beta4 using ODIN
3. Boot into recovery & apply this MOD

Optional:
Clear Data/Cache

I have based it on the latest firmware at the moment (I570EXXJE4)
Basics of installing the mod – install I570EXXJE4 – install LK2.06beta4 – install equkmod

What the mod does at the moment:

Removes unwanted system apps

Gallery.apk
wssyncmlnps.apk
MyFiles.apk
Pantheon.apk
BluetoothIcon.apk
WifiIcon.apk
HTC_IME_lo.apk
Clicker.apk
SamdroidTools.apk
MySpace1.7.apk
Layar304-final-market.apk
Facebook1.1.2.apk

Installs

su 2.1, from xda-forums to fix su
ARM11 dalvik-vm, from sdx-developers (have left out JIT due to stability)
ARM11 calculator fix, from sdx-developers
fixes build.prop for market (idea from xda-forums)
installs userinit.sh to relocate dalvik, from equk
Gallery3D (LeshaK’s mod)
LauncherPro
Modded Musicplayer from nexus one from xda-dev forum

todo:

install custom hosts file for adblocking

There are a few reasons for making this, the main one is to make it easy to install a new updated Official ROM (which prob has bugfixes) & apply one update without losing all of these manufacturer bugfixes. (a lot of mods seem to replace so much)
So the mod will only be a few MB instead of replacing 70MB of manufacturers fixes with a lower version causing incompatibility with libraries & completely losing the point of upgrading.
Also you will be able to install the mod without having to do a factory reset and losing all your settings etc.

So far the things which I actually find useful (and will prob add to the mod) are:

ARM11 Optimizations
New OpenGL Drivers
JIT
Relocation of dalvik-cache
Removal of debug dumps on startup
Volume mod (kernel)
Gallery3D (replace gallery completely)
Removal of system apps which are not required

Stuff I’ve never really used and will probably not bother with in this mod:

Live Wallpapers (bit gimmicky)
Nexus One Launcher (LauncherPro is much better)

So far I have a mod which:
removes wssyncmlnps.apk, MyFiles.apk & Gallery.apk
installs gallery3d.apk
installs custom media player with widgets (based on nexus one)
instals a custom startup script to relocate dalvik & also remove debug dumps
installs a custom hosts file to block adverts
fixes file permissions

I’ve since installed my mods for moving dalvik-cache and clearing mem.
I’ve also installed a ARM11 optimized build of OpenGL v1.4, ARM11 optimized build of JIT v8.12.
I also removed a few system apk’s which weren’t needed and disabled some startup services which weren’t needed.
Most recently I have installed a custom compiled kernel which has optimizations for ARM.

With all of those tweaks/mods I have a linpack score of 8.419MFLOPS.
This seems to be faster than the nexus one benchmark.

On looking into the problem with memory usage on the samsung i5700 it seems the system is creating memory dumps from the debugger process.
These seem to mount up and use huge amounts of memory cuasing the /data partition to fill up quickly.

This may be cuased by installing JIT (unconfirmed atm)

These files were taking up 65mb of storage on my phone (on a 150mb partition).

65.7M   /data/tombstones

I have now added to the script which relocates dalvik-cache to the /cache partition so on every reboot these files are removed.

After applying this new mod I have nearly 100mb of free space on /data.

Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                    80.7M     12.0K     80.7M   0% /dev
tmpfs                     4.0M         0      4.0M   0% /sqlite_stmt_journals
/dev/stl6               196.3M    130.5M     65.8M  67% /system
/dev/stl5               147.1M     52.8M     94.3M  36% /data
/dev/stl7                78.7M     41.9M     36.8M  53% /cache
/dev/stl10                7.5M    776.0K      6.8M  10% /efs
/dev/bml8                 4.0M      4.0M         0 100% /xbin
/dev/stl7                78.7M     41.9M     36.8M  53% /data/dalvik-cache

do not use with Apps2SD (should be no need to use Apps2SD)
Download the mod here - Link

related: cyanogen wiki

I just had a problem with my i5700 where the phone storage filled up.

After looking into the problem it seemed the main cause was the dalvik cache using up 45mb of the /data partition of the phone.

df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                    82624        12     82612   0% /dev
tmpfs                     4096         0      4096   0% /sqlite_stmt_journals
/dev/stl6               200996    133660     67336  66% /system
/dev/stl5               150644    150184       460 100% /data
/dev/stl7                80576      4180     76396   5% /cache
/dev/stl10                7729       776      6953  10% /efs
/dev/bml8                 4096      4096         0 100% /xbin

Basics on the filesystem layout:
(512mb is divided into partitions)
/dev 82mb
/system 200mb
/data 150mb
/cache 80mb

I thought why can’t we move/repoint dalvik-cache to this nearly empty partition?
I had already heard that people had used SDCards for this but I think that is pretty pointless as SDCards are slow and should be classed as removable storage (ie – you should be able to boot without them)
On searching around I found someone had actually done this before without any problems.

The script makes the system put dalvik cache into the /cache partition which is 80mb and gets used by various processes for caching & OTA updates (prob don’t have those anymore anyway)

Result:

df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 82624 12 82612 0% /dev
tmpfs 4096 0 4096 0% /sqlite_stmt_journals
/dev/stl6 200996 133668 67328 67% /system
/dev/stl5 150644 105580 45064 70% /data
/dev/stl7 80576 41962 38614 52% /cache
/dev/stl10 7729 776 6953 10% /efs
/dev/bml8 4096 4096 0 100% /xbin
/dev/stl7 80576 41962 38614 52% /data/dalvik-cache

Now another 45mb of storage for more apps and dalvik is still writing to the internal storage
note: in comparison the htc desire only has a 40mb /cache partition

WARNING: THIS METHOD CAN BE DANGEROUS. DO NOT TRY IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
I CAN’T BE RESPONSIBLE IF YOU BRICK YOUR PHONE.

Update: I have now made a mod zip which can be applied using recovery – Link

related: cyanogen wiki

Phone:

LK2.06.beta4
ARM11 optimized dvm
equkmod
Relocated dalvik-cache to /cache

Apps:
- Quadrant Standard Edition
- Jewellust
- Nesoid (NES emulator)
- Go! Go! Rescue Squad!(320×480)
- OS Monitor
- Picasa Tool Pro
- LauncherPro Beta
- G-MoN for Android 2.x
- QuickSSHd
- SshAdapter
- ConnectBot
- SwiFTP FTP Server
- Root Explorer (File Manager)
- Seesmic for Twitter
- Places Directory
- KeePassDroid
- EStrongs File Explorer
- Linpack for Android
- Google Maps
- Facebook for Android
- SMS Backup
- Google Goggles
- Barcode Scanner

I have been messing around with the phone so much and being a linux user since 1998 I’m really interested in the stuff you can do on it. I’m just doing simple mods atm like replacing system apps. (I replaced the stock gallery with gallery3d today using ADB just as a test)

Will possibly be posting some coding stuff and tutorials but for now I’m just messing about and using the phone to learn, might be looking into setting up swap space onto the sdcard.

Also means I am able to take screenshots of the device.

After playing it for a few days I think it’s pretty good and time flies by so quickly. There are quite a lot of bugs tho.
I had read about all the tweaks for sensitivity, FOV & FPS tweaks on various forums so spent a few mins implementing these tweaks. 2hours later (yes I was annoyed to say the least) my sensitivity/FOV was set correctly.
The problem is there are different variables for sensitivity depending on what you are doing. There is Infrantry, Stationary Vehicle, Jeep & Air Sensitivity (4 Cvars for 1 thing) so it’s near impossible to get them all set the same as they all differ.

Once I got online I thought it was pretty nice graphics wise.
I don’t like how new players have the lesser weapons putting them at a HUGE disadvantage.
The whole stats system seems to make people grind for points (much like MMORPGs) and boast about them. People don’t actually care much tbh, games are about having fun & the whole epeen thing is pointless (will probably bring in so many cheating kids aswell).

The game seemed ok until I got a sniper rifle out and aimed directly at people (even close range) and only about 40% of the hits would register as hits.

I found some more tweaks about setting interpolation based on latency (my ping to the servers I’m on is 15ms)

On setting this it seemed even worse but I tried it for a few nights and then put it back to how it was.
The whole hitreg thing reminds me of playing quake2 with a 28k modem as you have to aim in front of people to actually hit them.

There is a new patch coming out which supposedly fixes a lot of bugs but I’m not sure if it will fix the hitreg.
A lot of people who play BF2 say the hitreg in BF2 is a lot better so I guess there is hope.

Over the past few nights I’ve seen at least 30people kicked by punkbuster for cheating and have also seen people blatently botting with names like headtest and headshoot.