You can get it into windows mode yourself pretty easily. Just put the "testmode" folder that's part of the F-series update download onto the SD card. When the unit boots up, it will go into windows mode, then it does a quick COPYING function. Once that's done, just hit the close window "X" at the top right of the screen to close the copying window and there you go... you're in windows!
Heh, I don't have an F-series myself. I have a Z2, but have just been curious about the inner workings of the F-series.
I sure wish my wife's car had double-DIN, because I'd like to pick up an F-series to play with! 
You can get it into windows mode yourself pretty easily. Just put the "testmode" folder that's part of the F-series update download onto the SD card. When the unit boots up, it will go into windows mode, then it does a quick COPYING function. Once that's done, just hit the close window "X" at the top right of the screen to close the copying window and there you go... you're in windows!
does it do any harm to the system if you do the copy part over and over again just to get into windows?
Oh, OK. I just assumed you had one... lol
Here's a topic that's got a couple of pics of the windows system running. Although the pics themselves are quite awful! I might take some pics later today whil I'm messing around with it.
http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16632&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
According to the system control panel on my f700 it is running CE 5.0. Also by tinkering and researching I've found out the North up only in 2D mode is something lacking in iGo v8.0.
I can make new map color schemes and upload them to the device.
Pretty sure by finding the .ui file in the data.zip in the igo folder that controls how the map is displayed while not navigating I can disable the stupid blue boxes.
Hmm.. does the .ui file contain xml? I am wondering if they used qt to develop the GUIs.
Oh, OK. I just assumed you had one... lol
Here's a topic that's got a couple of pics of the windows system running. Although the pics themselves are quite awful! I might take some pics later today whil I'm messing around with it.
http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16632&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
Yeah they are really awful lol. Wish I had a bench setup to mess around with this.
Oh, OK. I just assumed you had one... lol
Here's a topic that's got a couple of pics of the windows system running. Although the pics themselves are quite awful! I might take some pics later today whil I'm messing around with it.
http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16632&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
I've seen those pics before, but they were so blurry I thought they were screenshots of him doing something on a Windows machine, I didn't realize that was Windows mode on the F-series. I guess I should have read/looked more carefully. That's pretty badass, I wish the Z-series had a Windows mode to play with!
Anyone manage to get other 3rd party apps to work, just to do it?
Here's a site that has some older CE apps:
According to the system control panel on my f700 it is running CE 5.0. Also by tinkering and researching I've found out the North up only in 2D mode is something lacking in iGo v8.0.
I can make new map color schemes and upload them to the device.
Pretty sure by finding the .ui file in the data.zip in the igo folder that controls how the map is displayed while not navigating I can disable the stupid blue boxes.
Hmm.. does the .ui file contain xml? I am wondering if they used qt to develop the GUIs.
I can email you the data.zip if you want to take a look
I never did find a way to copy files from the card to the internal memory, because I can't figure out a way to right click and bring up any context menus.
Easy copy and paste using the edit menu. I have already created one custom map color scheme and put it on the unit. Blue and red to match VW interior, but still needs some tweeking till im ready to post it.
Color schemes are cake. Just different roads and areas with a comma delimited RGB value
Now all im hoping for is pioneer to release a few alternative (read much better) skins for the Nav portion of the unit. If I had better photoshop skills I could make them. Everything needed is in the 2MBish data.zip file all the icons and scripting that makes it all work. The people over in the mio section of gpspassion.com have been doing this for quite some time (uses CE and the iGo software as well).
Anyone in this forum photoshop skills up to par and know a bit about scripting? 
Also it seems I might be able to cut down on the constant direction giving (4+ prompts for one corner) there is a excel format file in the Voice_TTS-nua-eng-us-f1.zip containing all of the voice prompts and the distance they are given at. Anyone with excel should be able to give a try to fix that if they so choose.
Also it seems I might be able to cut down on the constant direction giving (4+ prompts for one corner) there is a excel format file in the Voice_TTS-nua-eng-us-f1.zip containing all of the voice prompts and the distance they are given at. Anyone with excel should be able to give a try to fix that if they so choose.
That would be so awesome if someone could figure that out. Pioneer should at least provide an option to modify the frequency of those notifications. Also, I wonder if the empty green boxes that remain on the map when no destination is selected could be removed with scripting?
Also it seems I might be able to cut down on the constant direction giving (4+ prompts for one corner) there is a excel format file in the Voice_TTS-nua-eng-us-f1.zip containing all of the voice prompts and the distance they are given at. Anyone with excel should be able to give a try to fix that if they so choose.
That would be so awesome if someone could figure that out. Pioneer should at least provide an option to modify the frequency of those notifications. Also, I wonder if the empty green boxes that remain on the map when no destination is selected could be removed with scripting?
The problem with this unit seems to be the use of 3rd party Nav software. the "bugs" that we have are "features" of that software. If you have ever used a stand alone Nav unit like a TomTom the boxes for the next turn arrow never disappear, this is more of an issue of Pioneer having a bad "skin" on the Nav portion of the unit. The upside to this is the iGo software is very easily skinable if someone is willing to put in the time. Personally I would like to have a sidebar or infobar permanently on the bottom of the screen (like a Mio or Tom Tom) than the weird UI that Pioneer chose.
It occurs to me that since this thing runs on a Windows CE backbone, with the right extra hardware and some creative programming, the unit could become a nice little touch screen engine management system for those who race their vehicles.
I think most of that stuff will only be loaded when it's needed so I don't think there's much of a way to speed up performance other than maybe overclocking the processor.
Seeing as how the F-series uses a lot of 3rd party apps, most of those libraries probably need to be there.
so in other words, theres not much that can be done about the slow start-up time?
Correct. Removing unnecessary stuff will free space in the flash memory, but I don't think that will buy you anything.
If you could run 3rd party apps, you could run an overclocking program to overclock the CPU, but it's possible you could have overheating problems. Theoretically, it could also be upgraded to WinCE 5.0 or even 6.0, but I don't know if that would improve performance. Usually the newer the OS, the worse the performance which could be why Pioneer stuck with the old version 4.2.
The general consensus in the Windows Mobile community is that WM6 (and actually WM6.1 for that matter) is a bit faster than WM5 on the same hardware. We also have people cooking custom ROMs for the phones, stripping out the unneeded garbage and they usually do boot faster than the stock ROMs. Not sure if thats possible for the F or not though. If anyone wants to talk to some really knowledgeable people about windows mobile, check out forum.xda-developers.com. It's really a site for HTC phones, but i'm sure they could provide some valuable information.
And somthing else i wanted to mention, maybe its possible we can have the unit go into a standby mode rather than turning off every time? I mean if it has a constant battery source, i don't see why it couldn't just standby, and not have to boot up each time. My WM6 phone will last 3-4 days on its tiny little battery so long as the screen isnt on, i would think our car batteries could handle the unit in standby for a few days...and maybe we could actually shut it down through the menu if we know our car will be parked for a while, or somehow program it to shutdown automaticallly after being in standby for a few days?? I dunno, just a thought 
The general consensus in the Windows Mobile community is that WM6 (and actually WM6.1 for that matter) is a bit faster than WM5 on the same hardware. We also have people cooking custom ROMs for the phones, stripping out the unneeded garbage and they usually do boot faster than the stock ROMs. Not sure if thats possible for the F or not though. If anyone wants to talk to some really knowledgeable people about windows mobile, check out forum.xda-developers.com. It's really a site for HTC phones, but i'm sure they could provide some valuable information.
Heheh, yeah, I've built some custom ROMs on xda-developers.com. I have a little experience with ROM cooking, I ported WM6 and WM6.1 to the StarTrek (WM5 device) from scratch, and did the first port of WM6.1 to Tornado. I used some of the tools from XDA in order to dump the OS part of the F-series firmware.
One of the reasons a clean ROM boots faster than an OEM ROM, is you've stripped out all the carrier apps and services which bog things down. However, I think if you want all the features of the F-series, you need to keep all these apps and services intact. For example, maybe it will boot faster if you strip out the voice recognition and TTS, but do you really want to lost that feature?
As for updating the OS, it's possible, but Windows Mobile is a little different than CE of which it is based. WM5, WM6 and WM6.1 are all based on CE 5. WM5 is based on CE 5.1 and WM6/6.1 are based on CE 5.2. That doesn't necessarily mean there are CE 5.1 or 5.2 cores for Windows Automotive so it may or may not be possible to update to a newer core to see if it's any faster.
Yeah, I had the exact same thoughts on standby vs. off and mentioned it in another thread. I was thinking the device should stay in standby for a preset length of time, maybe 24hrs, although I think 36hrs would work, and after that, turn off completely. This would mean it would never have to reboot it in a daily drive. This is definitely possible because I have my laptop set to do just that. I have the power button set to do an S3 suspend which means everything completely off except the RAM, then after about 2-days, the laptop turns on briefly in order to go through the Windows shutdown process and turn completely off.
Well its nice to see that some of the geniuses on XDA are now working on the F series For as much as i've said i hate pioneer for what a POS the D3 is, im actually considering the F series now, especially if people like you are working on making it even better.
Sorry, I'm not actually working on it, I don't own an F-series. 
I own a Z-series, but have just been exploring the F-series out of curiosity. I would love to help where I can, however.
I've attached the registry if anyone wants to explore.
I did a quick search of GnatGoSplat's registry listing in hopes of finding the "Boot_Speed"="Tortoise" entry.
I was hoping to simply change it to "Boot_Speed"="Hare", but no such luck... 
-Eric
I did a quick search of GnatGoSplat's registry listing in hopes of finding the "Boot_Speed"="Tortoise" entry.
I was hoping to simply change it to "Boot_Speed"="Hare", but no such luck...
-Eric
Lol. Lol...
I'm not a software guy or an electronics guy...just a car guy....
.....but I was wondering if it would be easier to handle this issue with a stand alone electronic timer circuit....similar to a turbo timer.....a relay with a timer circuit that keeps the unit connected to the constant 12v for a programmable period of time.
It would be nice if you could make the screen go dark when you want, however, even though the power is still on...to save battery and to attract less attention from theives.
Warren C.
yeah, a sort of turn off delay.
i know that the vdo pc 5200 sat nav computer has a option to set a turn off delay. this for example if you are at a filling station. you can set the unit to 15 min. so when you turn the ignition off the sat nav computer will stay on for 10 min. when back in the car and start the engine the route is still there, no startup time.
Now doesn't that seem like a simple solution for a simple problem? I mean if your sitting there in the ACC position hanging out, why does it have to restart from scratch?
I mean why can't the memory of the nav unit be in an always on and just the amp/screen etc turn off after a set time?
I mean there has got to be 100 different ways they could of figured out how to get by the minute long boot time. I mean sheesh.
I finally reordered my f900bt from Newegg.com 799 + 10 dollars shipping! Wowa, 300 dollar savings? I feel like crutchfield was raping people, my butt kinda hurts now from the originally purchase. Can't say I regret returning it now.
Bought my F700 from Newegg too! I think it was like $609, vs over $800 from Crutchfield.
Anyone know the size of the flash drive in the HU? Just curious. Also, what's stopping anyone from putting a USB 2.0 Hub on the port and running a keyboard and mouse plus anything else to the unit?
I don't know much about it myself but, I figured if it lets you connect your iPod, why they have somehow disabled any other device from working? Like does it limit it to storage devices only? And if so, can that be hacked?