5.18 No CMOS widget and CMOS problems

I’ve just upgraded to 5.18 on my BB today. Thanks to all who have contributed to this ROM image.

I am planning to buy a CMOS widget, but this will take some time. In the mean time is there a way to save and reload CMOS on my BB under RO 5.18 without the widget?

I’ve tried setting up the BB the way I want it and saving the CMOS (I assume it is still saved to Boot.Choices.) Using * LoadCMOS seems to have no effect at all. Copying the CMOS file from my Iyonix and trying to load that gives the message Corrupt CMOS file, which means that something is happening.

I have also tried re-creating the SD card with RO 5.18 and the saved version of the CMOS file but this hasn’t helped either. I end up with the default desktop instead of the desktop I tried to configure. Is there anything else I can try?

Yes, I don’t understand this either. Functionally, it looks as if the CMOS save code has been removed from RO 5.18 and 5.19. Can someone please confirm whether this is or is not the case?

Though I’ve now got the eeprom, I was able to save CMOS to SD with both 5.18 & 5.19 beforehand IIRC. Saving the CMOS file with the SD image should certainly work.

Functionally, it looks as if the CMOS save code has been removed from RO 5.18 and 5.19.

If this is the case, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. While the widgets offer advantages in ease of use, not everyone wants/needs to use one (initially?)

If this is the case, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Agreed – but first I need to know for sure whether the code has been removed, or whether the code is failing for some of us, in which case someone (probably me!) needs to fix it.

While the widgets offer advantages in ease of use

How?

not everyone wants/needs to use one (initially?)

Agreed. In any case, the CMOS file has no particular capacity limit, which seems to me to be a significant advantage over a hardware solution. This can become relevant if we do pick up the ideas of using the CMOS to store more data in the form of key-value pairs, or unplugging modules by name instead of number. And so on.

How?

AIUI because the settings are stored on the widget, there’s no need to remove the SD card to copy the file onto it via a USB reader/writer. Sounds a little easier to me. Oops – I’d forgotten you’d implemented the saving since!

need to know for sure whether the code has been removed

This diff might answer your question.

Since Sprow was in charge of all this, we’re really waiting his reply. However, Dave’s flash writing proggy can still be used to save CMOS. I know ARMini/BBSS members are happily still using !SaveCMOS (if I have the name right, I have a habit of muddling it up) which is our front end to Dave’s executable. Obviously the caveat here is that you set things how you want, then run !SaveCMOS, but that’s always seemed pretty acceptable to users historically, so in that regard, nothing has changed.

This diff might answer your question.

I’m not accustomed to reading diffs, so it’s a struggle, but if I’ve understood it correctly, the one in question shows a substantial tidying up of the code when getting close to release. Lots of debug printout lines were commented out or made conditional on #defines.

So, if the code is still in there, I’m puzzled as to why it fails for some people. I’ll have to build the source and get debugging.

I’m not accustomed to reading diffs

Me neither, TBH… so perhaps it’s no help.