Measure flash usage of your script

Optimize your patches byte-by-byte

There is very little free flash space on some DCT-3 phones, e.g. on Nokia 6110 (NSE-3). To be able include many new applications and patches in your phone, it is essential that the patches are carefully optimized for size. Although the complier in NokiX SDK is set to heavy size optimization there are lots of thing how the programmer can affect the code and data size.

In order to test different alternative solutions, you will need to tool that tells accurately how much space each alternative uses. Until now, the only way to measure has been the official "show_free_space.nrx" script, which shows an approximation of unused flash space.

However, "show_free_space.nrx" is not suitable for byte-by-byte optimization because it shows the result with 32-byte resolution only. To overcome this limitation, I wrote a small script that measures the flash usage of a script with 4-byte resolution.

Run this script in the NokiX dumper mode and give the (path and) name (and parameters) of the script to be tested as parameter. "show_used_space.nrx" executes your script with ROM image provided and reports the amount of MCU flash space used by the script (not the free space left).

You can also use this script in the processing mode of NokiX. In that case you will need to add this script just before and again just after the script(s) to be measured. The first execution of this script starts measuring and the following one(s) report the MCU space used since the previous occurrence. (Each execution of this script eats four bytes of flash, so remember to untick all "show_used_space.nrx" scripts away when you are really out of flash space.)

Download Show Used Space 1.00: Developed for NokiX Scripts snapshot 6.10.2006.

Note that this script is intended for code size optimization and is not able to measure the following things (which may have major impact on the actual flash space usage of the script):

PPM space needed (e.g. texts and languages); this script measures only the MCU usage
space used by delayed processing (patches using THE_END processing)

CAUTION: Trying to modify the built-in firmware of a mobile phone may make it practically unrepairable. This applies especially to phones that does not have a separate EEPROM chip for settings and calibrations (e.g. most Nokia 3xxx phones). Before trying to update the flash memory, you need to understand the functions of your flashing program and the whole flashing process, including any checksum updates required. NuukiaWorld does not give any support in flashing-related questions.

6.12.2007 nuukiaworld@gmail.com
No email support or answers to technical questions.

To see NuukiaWorld's finest appearance, update your web browser!