Contents:

• What's New ?
• The Main Screen
• The List Screen
  • Sorting
  • Backup Bits
  • Button Bar
  • Deleting
  • Beaming
  • Exporting
• The Detail Screen
• Registration Info

The Main Screen gives you quick access to vital statistics about your Palm connected organizer. The memory display and battery display are updated about every 2 seconds:

• Memory/Palm connected organizer information
• Battery information
• Operating system version
• Sleep and Hot Sync information
• Battery and reset information
• Debugging options
  

At present, all Palm devices only have 1 card, card 0. We query and report information on this card.

The Warning levels are defined as follows: Low Voltage - When your voltage level reaches this level, the Palm OS will warn you it's time to start thinking about changing the batteries. You can adjust this but it's not recommended. Critical Voltage: If your batteries get this low, the device will refuse to operate. There's just enough juice to keep the memory alive. You can change this too, but it's not recommended. Infinity Softworks can not be held accountable for any failures of your system do to altering system settings within FPSUtil.

The List Screen displays the list of items (databases) on the device. Under the Palm OS, everything is considered a database, whether it is an executable application or an actual database. In the first view they are listed in the order the items were installed or created. That is from item 0 to the number of items. The list is sortable (see below).

The list is broken into 3 columns. Column 1 is a check box that represents the status of the 'backup bit'. The backup bit is the bit responsible for telling Hot Sync to make a backup of this item. Normally this should be off for faster Hot Sync times. But if the item changed, you want to create a newer backup on your desktop. Flipping this bit will do that. Column 2 is the name of the item and column 3 is definable. Column (3) can display any of the following information: Type code, Creator Code, Size rounded up to the nearest K, number of records, Backup Bit status, RAM/ROM location, Backup Date, Creation Date, Copy Bit Status, and Modification Date.

NOTE: Items that are in FLASH or ROM (Read Only Memory) cannot be changed by FPS Utility.

On the bottom of the screen is a row of buttons, from left to right: Info (?), Delete, Beam, and Export. Further discussion is below.

Sorting:

The list (as displayed) can be sorted any of the following ways: Alphabetically by Name, Type Creator, Ascending by Size, Creation Date, Backup Date, Modification Date. This is useful for locating items.

NOTE: Sorting can take time. When you select a sort order you are warned that this could take a while. Sorting a 130 items has taken upwards of 40 seconds to sort on a Palm III. While sorting the following dialog is presented on the screen:

Please wait... The Iteration: is a count of calls to the compare function.

Statistically speaking... Sorting 46 items by size makes 138 calls to our compare function which then made 276 calls to Dm routines to retrieve the information about the database and make the comparisons. The Dm routines are the time 'expensive' routines.

Backup Bits:

The check box in the list represents the status of the backup bit for that item. Tapping it in the list will toggle the backup bit if the item is not 'busy' or in ROM/Flash. Item for which the backup bit is set are backed up each and every HotSync. While it's a good idea to back everything up once in a while, doing so for every HotSync would be very time consuming.  If you want total control and maximum flexibility with backup bits, we recommend BackupBuddy by Alexander Hinds.

We do offer a few quick and dirty ways to toggle all or some of the bits through the application's menu.  Select the menu button to the lower left corner of the Graffiti input area to activate the menu.

Select All turns the all 'On'
Select All type 'appl' selects all applications.
Select All type non 'appl' attempts to select data objects but will also get system updates, hacks, etc.
Select None turns them all 'Off'

You may choose to delete just the application, its preferences from BOTH the saved and unsaved preferences databases and any other items that have a matching creator.

Note: Exporting full detail information will result in multiple MemoPad Records. Name is not an option it is always exported. The item number and progress of the export is displayed at the bottom.

The Detail Screen displays most of the detail items about a database: Name, Icon, Creator, Type, Creation Date, Modification Date, Backup Date (if any), Total size, Data size, Number of records, Version, Database ID number, Record/Resource database type, Read Only Status, Backup Bit, Memory Location (ROM/RAM), CopyBit status (beamable or not).

Editable items include () Name, Type, Creator. If the item is not editable (that is it's locked, busy, or in ROM/Flash the fields won't be editable. Changes made to the name, type and/or creator are not saved until you tap the save button. Changing the name, type or creator can be handy, but costly if care is not taken. Most applications locate their databases by type/creator or by name. Changing these generally break the relationship between the data and the application. Some applications are self modifying and will also locate themselves in the same way.

The Res DB indicates that the database item is a resource database. Applications are resource databases. Most databases are record based databases.

FPS Utility may be purchased/registered directly through:
Infinity Softworks, Inc at http://www.infinitysw.com for only US$14.95

Currently FPS Utility is available in (2) versions: the demo version and the registered version. The registered version includes all of the functionality listed in the documentation. The demo version has the items flagged as disabled. Upon registration, you'll either be sent the registered product or given a location on the web to download the registered version. You should always delete any prior demo version before installing the registered version. For information on installing 3rd party products, see your Palm Computing platform documentation.