[FOR CHEFS]Fully WM 6.1 and partial 6.5 Feature Compatible XIPs for GENE:) - P3400 ROM Development

Dear Friends and Friend Chefs ,
As you all know that i was working on creating XIP for our beloved Gene that is supports all the new features (mostly hidden from causal user, but even then very useful) that were introduced in WM 6.1 and carried forward with some enhancements in WM 6.5. The most important feature we were missing was the new improved virtual memory management model that 6.1 offers to solve the windows mobile version of the "DLL Hell" problem, Windows Developers may know about this
At the Core of this issue is the file initvmmap.exe which initializes the extended slot VM model when the device starts. This file was introduced in WM 6.1 but chefs never added it to the XIP because they were told that they should never insert anything new into the XIP. BTW, when people said that they were not wrong, but as always in this biological world, exceptions do exist . Since original Gene XIP was either WM 5 or 6, initvmmap.exe was always missing, causing the system to use older model.
Along with that, although its not much used, but the Storage Card encryption filter driver was updated in Wm 6.1. In WM 6 it was called encfilt.dll but in WM 6.1 upwards, its called mencflt.dll. I dont know the benefits of using it exactly, but the fact is it is newer and perhaps better in some way.
None of the previous ROMs were having these two features in them.
Today, i was successful in porting these features on Gene XIP and now we have an original manufacturer made identical WM 6.1 and 6.5 feature complete XIP for both old and new gene. These xips have made debut in WM 6.1 Pro Users ROM v2.7.
So i insist all chefs to download and use these XIPs as base while porting/making ROMs for Gene. This will make sure your ROM is providing the users with full experience of the Windows Mobile OS.
Thanks!
Background: It was not that hard inserting these files into the XIP.
Initvmmap.exe has a fixed E32 address of 0x00100000 and O32 address of 0x00130000. This is just like we have fixed addresses for device.exe and filesys.exe for both old and new gene. So after observing this in XIPs of about 10 devices, i just copied the file and it worked.
Mencflt.dll was looking like a problem at first but using the same addresses as encfilt.dll worked.
I also took some registry entries from WM 6.1 Emulator image's XIP (these were same in the 6.5 emulator image's boot.rgu, which i got from Ankit (a big thanks goes to him for making me aware of this fact.)). These entries direct the loader of OS to use the new memory model and use initvmmap.exe for that.
Download the XIPs
XIPs in Dumped Format
XIPs in XIP.bin Format
Please Note: You may notice that even though these XIPs are complete, these dont have hd.dll and oxa*.dll. I have left these files because these are only used for debugging purpose when a new build of Windows mobile is being made by Microsoft developers or at HTC. These are not useful for normal users in any way. Removing them only saves space in the XIP, hence free ram.
Also, although these XIPs are fully compatible with 6.1 memory model, 6.5 extended this model by adding a large amount to the available VM space and slots, which is only posssible using a compatible nk.exe in our xips. This ain't gonna happen most likely.

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Thanks Krazy for the new XIP's
To use your new xip's in the cooking, do we have to just replace the xip folder with the one you have uploaded after extracting the rom and rebuild it.
If possible can you tell us know how to incorporate this new xip's in rom cooking.
That will be very great of you for new chef's like me.

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Thank you!!!
Thank you Sumit. You really rock!
By the way, best of luck for your interview...

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Thanks all of you guys!
Actually the XIP is currently ported for WM 6.1 21051. To use it for any other SYS, just take MSXIPKERNEL and MSXIPKERNELTK packages from the new XIP and replace the packages in this XIP and then relocate the addresses using original addresses in this XIP. It should be used as usual as you were using the original WM 6 xip as base for porting. You can also use XIPPorterEX.

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Though going overhead a bit, but will try.
If successfull, I will be familiar with the XIP porting.

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Thank you Krazy......
Ported 21815 XIP according to your XIP address, and amazing.... it work well on OG.
Thank you, NOW all CHEFS have to include INITVMMAP in their XIP.

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it's nice to see we start thinking about XIP which r most untouch since long time
i want to ask some question did u also make changes in Nk.exe if not there is no use of all this because its required some slot to initvmmap.exe to work (correct me if i m wrong)
is its possible to patch nk.exe ? do you have any link or documentation where we learn how to patch nk.exe + add slot in it ?

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@Ankit360
I think this is what you are looking for.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3806368&postcount=1017
Though I could not understand a bit of it.

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@Ankit: No nk.exe for WM 6 and WM 6.1 is same. Its different for WM 6.5. And ya its my mistake too, i shouldn't have called the XIP fully WM 6.5 compatible. Actually the story goes like this:
In WM 6, when an executable loads, its DLLs are loaded in Slot 0 along with the exe itself. And the memory architecture of WIndows Mobile is such that this creates problem when multiple programs are running at the same time. For more info, you can read the Windows Mobile Team Blog's Two part Tutorial : "Slaying the Virtual Memory Monster".
Now in WM 6.1, there was a new structure which uses the initvmmap.exe to initialize the VM in such a way that dlls that are not in XIP and are more than 32 KB is size are not loaded in Slot 0, instead they are loaded in Slot 60 and 61 (dont remember the number correctly though, these are the last slots. Which solves that problem to a greater extent. And this is the level upto which my XIPs are working.
In WM 6.5, this architecture was furthur enhanced by extending the number of slots available by a huge percentage, i guess its double or more. This gives applications more virtual memory than previously possible and allows loading of more DLLs in module format. But enabling this extended VM layout needs a new nk.exe that can support it. It also requires at least 128 MB of RAM if i am not wrong. Thats why we may never have it. There is no patching of nk.exe, an altogether new nk.exe is required. And this is the reason why we need to recmod the modules of IE and Flash in our WM 6.5 ROMs to get them working properly. WM 6.5 SYS has larger number of modules due to availability of more VM space.
I hope this had cleared up some things for you.

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krazy_about_technology said:
@Ankit: No nk.exe for WM 6 and WM 6.1 is same. Its different for WM 6.5. And ya its my mistake too, i shouldn't have called the XIP fully WM 6.5 compatible. Actually the story goes like this:
In WM 6, when an executable loads, its DLLs are loaded in Slot 0 along with the exe itself. And the memory architecture of WIndows Mobile is such that this creates problem when multiple programs are running at the same time. For more info, you can read the Windows Mobile Team Blog's Two part Tutorial : "Slaying the Virtual Memory Monster".
Now in WM 6.1, there was a new structure which uses the initvmmap.exe to initialize the VM in such a way that dlls that are not in XIP and are more than 32 KB is size are not loaded in Slot 0, instead they are loaded in Slot 60 and 61 (dont remember the number correctly though, these are the last slots. Which solves that problem to a greater extent. And this is the level upto which my XIPs are working.
In WM 6.5, this architecture was furthur enhanced by extending the number of slots available by a huge percentage, i guess its double or more. This gives applications more virtual memory than previously possible and allows loading of more DLLs in module format. But enabling this extended VM layout needs a new nk.exe that can support it. It also requires at least 128 MB of RAM if i am not wrong. Thats why we may never have it. There is no patching of nk.exe, an altogether new nk.exe is required. And this is the reason why we need to recmod the modules of IE and Flash in our WM 6.5 ROMs to get them working properly. WM 6.5 SYS has larger number of modules due to availability of more VM space.
I hope this had cleared up some things for you.
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thanks for reply i got it now, there is any way to see that initvmmap.exe is working or not ?

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There is, but its not that straight forward as initvmmap does its work at the very begining of the OS loading process, even some files in XIP are not executed by then so its a bit tricky to record. But i will post a method for it, one of my friend at microsoft once told me about it.

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ankit360 said:
thanks for reply i got it now, there is any way to see that initvmmap.exe is working or not ?
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Go to HKLM/init. If you can see initvmmap, it should work.
As my friend Helloworld1 said that If we are using native 6.5 or 6.1 NK.exe, it will not even boot without this.

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so anybody interested to make native 6.5 nk.exe for gene ?

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ankit360 said:
so anybody interested to make native 6.5 nk.exe for gene ?
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Still looking for more info about it.
Does it possible to ask in PPCGeeks forum?
I think everybody there more interest in New SYS, they give fast response for question related to NEW SYS, but slow for others.

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i m stuck at certain point in both patching XIP + android on Gene project , there is two reason for this first is, i don't know what exact IC and Part use in gene
second is i don't know how to see Code in dll and exe file .

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We have to use platform builder to make native NK.exe work well on our device, I don't know how to operate the tools.

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BesFen said:
We have to use platform builder to make native NK.exe work well on our device, I don't know how to operate the tools.
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give me link whatever u saw about platform builder, i will try

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Ankit, if you are following the Conflipper's WM 6.5 kitchen thread at PPCGeeks, you may know that i have asked DA_G about nk.exe. He said that all the devices that are currently having the 6.5 native nk.exe had test roms built by microsoft itself at one time. So the kernel nk.exe for those devices was recompiled against teh 6.5 codebase. We cannot do it right now ourselves as we dont have the source code for kernel and WM 6.5. Futhermore, he said that the nk.exe combines both device specific hardware initialization code as well as WM 6.5 code in it which makes it almost impossible to do it. But he added that a clever hack using a disassembler might do the trick. He is also searching for such hacks so that all the devices can have native WM 6.5 kernels.
One more thing, devices with 64 MB RAM can have native 6.5 kernel, it has nothing to do with the RAM size. I apologize for conveying wrong information previously in this thread, but i wasn't aware of it.
I dont know about the ICs used in Gene but to view code in DLLs and EXEs you use a Disassembler. IDA Pro is a great tool for that purpose and all the senior guys here like da_g use it. But its paid so.... BTW, you wont get full C or C++ source code with it, it emits assembly code.
Platform Rebuilder i dont think can do this, are you 100% sure about it besfen?

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krazy_about_technology said:
Platform Rebuilder i dont think can do this, are you 100% sure about it besfen?
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Platform Builder 5, Not Platform rebuilder.
It is development tool kit for win mobile, You can download it from Microsoft site. But still need native BSP ( I don't know what is this)
Information I get that native BSP is device depended and can be hardly downloaded from legal way. They are licenced to oem.
I think it hard to make it for GENE.

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OK, i got your words wrong. Ya Platform Builder kit is a way to do that but BSP (Board Support Package) is needed for compiling the OS kernel and driver code is also needed to be recompiled in some cases. This is specific to the device's motherboard configuration. You are right, its not legally possible to download and use it as its only liscensed to the manufacturers. Otherwise, guys like Da_G and Conflipper had done this way before Anyways, they are still looking for something so our chances are not all gone.