dimmer_is_a_DJ
New Member
Hello, I'm Dj Dimmer aka DimSum aka Deez aka D.Malicious. I'm from Boston but have been down here at Fort Bragg, NC since 2009 with a year spent in Iraq. I'm not so much a DJ anymore but I'm still very much into the underground dance music scene, particularly drum and bass, breaks and most recently dubstep although I gotta say that the later is very much on a track by track basis. I don't understand how that particular genre of electronic music has become so popular while being fairly new (I remember in 2006, fellow DJs switching over to it and I had never heard of it before). It's popular to the point of almost being mainstream while drum and bass has been around since the mid-90's and has a far more substantial track record has remained completely unknown to the general public (not that I'm complaining in the least). However, I have on 2 separate occasions mentioned to someone I work with, someone who seemingly has no knowledge of any music other than rock/rap and considers all "techno" to sound like either the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim or Darude (remember "Sandstorm"?)...mentioned that I was a rave/club DJ before the military and that person has said to me, "oh yeah? you played dubstep?"
Anyway, sorry about that, I tend to go off on tangents. I'm writing this because I've finally decided to join the forum I have been viewing as a guest since I got my first Droid OG back in 2008. That phone introduced me to Android 2.0, got me hooked on the open source mobile OS before I deployed and was retired (and brought back to duty last week) into a drawer as soon as I came back and immediately got a DroidX. All was fine and good, I used my DX like a good end-user without even a thought of rooting or doing anything to void the precious warranty. I updated as I was told, when I was told and how I was told by the notifications on my screen. I visited forums like this one just to see if I could do anything "legally" that would make my phone more "mine". Rooting was just a passive thought and looking at instructions to flash, sbf, recovery and custom ROM'ing I imagined it to be extremely painful and not worth my time.
All changed with the latest update a couple weeks (or maybe longer) back, I don't really remember, I think it was 5.5.596 or whichever one supposedly brought you to Gingerbread (all that Froyo/GB talk wasn't really in my vocab.). All I knew is that my screen looked different and I was excited to have the latest and greatest until my phone started acting weird like opening text messages by itself, sending multiple copies of the same text and then receiving texts which were in conversations I had days prior and multiples there of. I would touch the screen to open an app and nothing, then all of a sudden while doing something else, the app would open by itself. While composing messages I would type a whole paragraph without it displaying a single character then wait about 2 minutes and all of a sudden it would display my text "ghostwriter" style. It was an annoyance at first, then an inconvenience, then it became a full-blown problem and I decided that I had enough. Most people would take their phone to the nearest Verizon location. I, having a brother who's been with the company for over 10 years and knowing their "tech-support" practices decided not to be the receiver of a refurbished phone especially since I loved mine so much.
I remembered my Droid OG and where I had put it. I also remembered that once upon a time I used to build desktops from scratch and was into networking back when windows NT was revolutionizing the whole thing. I wasn't an expert by any means but I catch on pretty fast when it comes to new technology.So....I took that phone, I rooted myself (no pun intended) to my couch in front of my laptop with my browser open and started fevereshly researching the terms "droid rooting", "droid x root", "how to....", etc.... Google would in 98% of the searches bring me right back to this forum and also the other one with the word "life" in the address (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention other forums by name) but I found that MOST of my information came from the experienced users on this site who were willing to share their wisdom. Then I found out first hand that the Droid OG is UNBRICKABLE!! I factory reset and after a few bootloader "visits" and having a "bricked" device I was finally able to correctly flash SP recovery, install "update.zip" and I was back in the game with a fresh nandroid backup, superuser permissions and a wide-open playing field. I played around with Rom Manager, Titanium Backup, and all the other "standard" utilities, installing ROMs, getting stuck in a few bootloops, recovering from back-up and all the other fun stuff while also researching steps necessary to root my DroidX since that was the main mission. I finally felt I was ready and I backed up all I could on my main source of communication and proceeded to return back to 2.1 and the rest is history. Along the way I learned quite a bit about the Android operating system, the DroidX and Droid OG devices, overclocking, underclocking, battery management, different recoveries, ROMs as well as the apps which make it all worth while.
I apologize for the lengthy introduction. I will try to be shorter and more precise in my future posts. I want to thank the members of this forum for helping learn so much about the thing I use most in my day to day life and for helping me make it truly my own. A special thanks goes to the Master Droids, Senior Droids, Rescue Squad members and others who posted the outstanding guides and to those who had questions and asked them so I didn't have to. I'm only joining now because I found all the information I needed without posting a single letter and I hope that I can be useful to others who are interested in their devices and how they work and are as fascinated by all of this as I am.
In conclusion (finally, right?! lol), here are my current setups:
DROID X:
- *brand new* CWM Recovery v.5.0.2.0 (includes a couple of new features which I have questions on, see section below if you can help)
- Liberty ROM v.2.0.1 (Android version 2.2.1)
- stock (2.3.340 OTA release) kernel OC'd to 1,265Mhz (I didn't install a new kernel so I think this is the one I had before root, I don't know the voltage)
- GO Launcher EX with modified blackglass theme (this will probably change very soon as I wanna get more into the actual Liberty themes available from Liberty Toolbox)
*THIS PHONE IS MY MAIN SOURCE OF COMMS FOR MILITARY AS WELL AS CIVILIAN CONTACTS AND I RESEARCH EVERYTHING I DO TO IT METICULOUSLY AND MAKE NANDROID/TB BACKUPS JUST ABOUT EVERY COUPLE OF HOURS. I STILL HAVE THE ORIGINAL BACKUP OF 2.1 BEFORE LIBERTY IN CASE OF FAILURE*
Droid OG (not on a cellular network but works on WiFi in my house so I can still play around with it and who knows maybe I'll dial *228 and get it back on the net someday):
- RZ Recovery (which I'm sure most of you senior and master droids know about but for those that don't.....let's just say turning on the keyboard light is useful when it's pitch dark and you MUST do a nandroid backup immediately or if you happen to be in the woods while flashing the latest RZ release you can use the "turn on flashlight" feature also included in said recovery. I dunno...I'm impressed. Look it up whoever actually reads this and doesn't know about it)
- ROM: RZ Baseline FRG83D *not from source* (Android version 2.2.2)
- RZ 1.1Ghz LV (1.525V) custom kernel (been running at full 1.1Ghz with performance scaling all day and no problems, still 22% battery left). I swear I'm trying to kill this phone but it will never die or become a brick (permanently).
- whatever Launcher RZ Baseline came with, LauncherPro I think.
*THIS IS MY FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER. IT HAS HELPED ME UNDERSTAND SO MUCH. IT SURVIVED A DEPLOYMENT TO IRAQ DURING WHICH I USED IT AS A CAMERA AND MP3 PLAYER ON MISSIONS AND LONG CONVOYS AND IT HAS PROVEN TO BE UNBRICKABLE AS OF YET. NEXT I'M PLANNING ON THROWING ANOTHER KERNEL AT IT AND THEN OVERCLOCKING IT TO IT'S LIMITS TO SEE HOW MUCH IT CAN TAKE*
That completes my "new member introduction" thread and of course as a curious "Newbie Droid" and also as someone who is very much interested in learning, I have a few...
...QUESTIONS (most are related to options in ROM Toolbox):
1) Since the CWM Recovery update which I have received and flashed just a couple hours ago there seems to be a couple new options available in the "mounts and storage" menu...
-what is the option to mount/unmount/format "PDS"?
-what is the option to mount/unmount/format "preinstall"?
-how are these options useful to me?
2) In ROM Toolbox under "build properties" there are options to...
-increase/decrease VM Heap Size...
-what exactly is the VM Heap and how does increasing/decreasing its size affect performance (or anything for that matter)?
-what is the "WiFi Scan Interval" and what affect does changing it's value have?
3) I noticed that on the DroidX under the "quick commands" menu in ROM Toolbox the "mount system" box is checked and when I uncheck it after a while I will return to find it checked again while on the Droid OG it remains unchecked...
-what does the option do in regards to function?
-what is/are the major difference(s) in the system being mounted read/write vs read only?
4)Also in ROM Toolbox there is an option to select install location and...
-on the DroidX it is set to "external"...
-on the Droid OG it's set to "auto"...
-I understand it's in relation to where the apps get installed but could someone please explain more what the difference is?
5)Do I really need both ROM Manager and ROM Toolbox and how does one affect the other?
6)If I have both QuickClock Advanced (JPApps) and Android Overclock (JRummie16) installed, how does one affect the other?
I realize some of these maybe very NooB questions but I'm pretty much a "NooB" although a pretty quick learning one.
Thank you to all who read this long and I'm sure boring thread and thank you for welcoming me to the forum. Hope to hear back from you guys and to advance in the ranks of "Droid-hood" or at least rise above "Newbie Droid". lol
-DJ Dimmer
Anyway, sorry about that, I tend to go off on tangents. I'm writing this because I've finally decided to join the forum I have been viewing as a guest since I got my first Droid OG back in 2008. That phone introduced me to Android 2.0, got me hooked on the open source mobile OS before I deployed and was retired (and brought back to duty last week) into a drawer as soon as I came back and immediately got a DroidX. All was fine and good, I used my DX like a good end-user without even a thought of rooting or doing anything to void the precious warranty. I updated as I was told, when I was told and how I was told by the notifications on my screen. I visited forums like this one just to see if I could do anything "legally" that would make my phone more "mine". Rooting was just a passive thought and looking at instructions to flash, sbf, recovery and custom ROM'ing I imagined it to be extremely painful and not worth my time.
All changed with the latest update a couple weeks (or maybe longer) back, I don't really remember, I think it was 5.5.596 or whichever one supposedly brought you to Gingerbread (all that Froyo/GB talk wasn't really in my vocab.). All I knew is that my screen looked different and I was excited to have the latest and greatest until my phone started acting weird like opening text messages by itself, sending multiple copies of the same text and then receiving texts which were in conversations I had days prior and multiples there of. I would touch the screen to open an app and nothing, then all of a sudden while doing something else, the app would open by itself. While composing messages I would type a whole paragraph without it displaying a single character then wait about 2 minutes and all of a sudden it would display my text "ghostwriter" style. It was an annoyance at first, then an inconvenience, then it became a full-blown problem and I decided that I had enough. Most people would take their phone to the nearest Verizon location. I, having a brother who's been with the company for over 10 years and knowing their "tech-support" practices decided not to be the receiver of a refurbished phone especially since I loved mine so much.
I remembered my Droid OG and where I had put it. I also remembered that once upon a time I used to build desktops from scratch and was into networking back when windows NT was revolutionizing the whole thing. I wasn't an expert by any means but I catch on pretty fast when it comes to new technology.So....I took that phone, I rooted myself (no pun intended) to my couch in front of my laptop with my browser open and started fevereshly researching the terms "droid rooting", "droid x root", "how to....", etc.... Google would in 98% of the searches bring me right back to this forum and also the other one with the word "life" in the address (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention other forums by name) but I found that MOST of my information came from the experienced users on this site who were willing to share their wisdom. Then I found out first hand that the Droid OG is UNBRICKABLE!! I factory reset and after a few bootloader "visits" and having a "bricked" device I was finally able to correctly flash SP recovery, install "update.zip" and I was back in the game with a fresh nandroid backup, superuser permissions and a wide-open playing field. I played around with Rom Manager, Titanium Backup, and all the other "standard" utilities, installing ROMs, getting stuck in a few bootloops, recovering from back-up and all the other fun stuff while also researching steps necessary to root my DroidX since that was the main mission. I finally felt I was ready and I backed up all I could on my main source of communication and proceeded to return back to 2.1 and the rest is history. Along the way I learned quite a bit about the Android operating system, the DroidX and Droid OG devices, overclocking, underclocking, battery management, different recoveries, ROMs as well as the apps which make it all worth while.
I apologize for the lengthy introduction. I will try to be shorter and more precise in my future posts. I want to thank the members of this forum for helping learn so much about the thing I use most in my day to day life and for helping me make it truly my own. A special thanks goes to the Master Droids, Senior Droids, Rescue Squad members and others who posted the outstanding guides and to those who had questions and asked them so I didn't have to. I'm only joining now because I found all the information I needed without posting a single letter and I hope that I can be useful to others who are interested in their devices and how they work and are as fascinated by all of this as I am.
In conclusion (finally, right?! lol), here are my current setups:
DROID X:
- *brand new* CWM Recovery v.5.0.2.0 (includes a couple of new features which I have questions on, see section below if you can help)
- Liberty ROM v.2.0.1 (Android version 2.2.1)
- stock (2.3.340 OTA release) kernel OC'd to 1,265Mhz (I didn't install a new kernel so I think this is the one I had before root, I don't know the voltage)
- GO Launcher EX with modified blackglass theme (this will probably change very soon as I wanna get more into the actual Liberty themes available from Liberty Toolbox)
*THIS PHONE IS MY MAIN SOURCE OF COMMS FOR MILITARY AS WELL AS CIVILIAN CONTACTS AND I RESEARCH EVERYTHING I DO TO IT METICULOUSLY AND MAKE NANDROID/TB BACKUPS JUST ABOUT EVERY COUPLE OF HOURS. I STILL HAVE THE ORIGINAL BACKUP OF 2.1 BEFORE LIBERTY IN CASE OF FAILURE*
Droid OG (not on a cellular network but works on WiFi in my house so I can still play around with it and who knows maybe I'll dial *228 and get it back on the net someday):
- RZ Recovery (which I'm sure most of you senior and master droids know about but for those that don't.....let's just say turning on the keyboard light is useful when it's pitch dark and you MUST do a nandroid backup immediately or if you happen to be in the woods while flashing the latest RZ release you can use the "turn on flashlight" feature also included in said recovery. I dunno...I'm impressed. Look it up whoever actually reads this and doesn't know about it)
- ROM: RZ Baseline FRG83D *not from source* (Android version 2.2.2)
- RZ 1.1Ghz LV (1.525V) custom kernel (been running at full 1.1Ghz with performance scaling all day and no problems, still 22% battery left). I swear I'm trying to kill this phone but it will never die or become a brick (permanently).
- whatever Launcher RZ Baseline came with, LauncherPro I think.
*THIS IS MY FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER. IT HAS HELPED ME UNDERSTAND SO MUCH. IT SURVIVED A DEPLOYMENT TO IRAQ DURING WHICH I USED IT AS A CAMERA AND MP3 PLAYER ON MISSIONS AND LONG CONVOYS AND IT HAS PROVEN TO BE UNBRICKABLE AS OF YET. NEXT I'M PLANNING ON THROWING ANOTHER KERNEL AT IT AND THEN OVERCLOCKING IT TO IT'S LIMITS TO SEE HOW MUCH IT CAN TAKE*
That completes my "new member introduction" thread and of course as a curious "Newbie Droid" and also as someone who is very much interested in learning, I have a few...
...QUESTIONS (most are related to options in ROM Toolbox):
1) Since the CWM Recovery update which I have received and flashed just a couple hours ago there seems to be a couple new options available in the "mounts and storage" menu...
-what is the option to mount/unmount/format "PDS"?
-what is the option to mount/unmount/format "preinstall"?
-how are these options useful to me?
2) In ROM Toolbox under "build properties" there are options to...
-increase/decrease VM Heap Size...
-what exactly is the VM Heap and how does increasing/decreasing its size affect performance (or anything for that matter)?
-what is the "WiFi Scan Interval" and what affect does changing it's value have?
3) I noticed that on the DroidX under the "quick commands" menu in ROM Toolbox the "mount system" box is checked and when I uncheck it after a while I will return to find it checked again while on the Droid OG it remains unchecked...
-what does the option do in regards to function?
-what is/are the major difference(s) in the system being mounted read/write vs read only?
4)Also in ROM Toolbox there is an option to select install location and...
-on the DroidX it is set to "external"...
-on the Droid OG it's set to "auto"...
-I understand it's in relation to where the apps get installed but could someone please explain more what the difference is?
5)Do I really need both ROM Manager and ROM Toolbox and how does one affect the other?
6)If I have both QuickClock Advanced (JPApps) and Android Overclock (JRummie16) installed, how does one affect the other?
I realize some of these maybe very NooB questions but I'm pretty much a "NooB" although a pretty quick learning one.
Thank you to all who read this long and I'm sure boring thread and thank you for welcoming me to the forum. Hope to hear back from you guys and to advance in the ranks of "Droid-hood" or at least rise above "Newbie Droid". lol
-DJ Dimmer
