At 5:02 PM -0800 3/9/99, David Tribble wrote:
>So... Question 1: Will removing the batteries from a Palm III for 24 hours
>guarantee that RAM is zeroed?
I don't think so. It really depends on what RAM does when it's unpowered.
>Question 2: is there a ROM command that will zeroize the RAM?
I'm presuming you mean both the storage and dynamic heaps.
MemSet will write zeros to whatever locations you specify. I *think* you
could zero the entire storage heap without anything crashing before the
MemSet finishes. I doubt you could zero the low memory or dynamic heap,
since you'd be writing over kernel structures or low memory globals that
interrupts or other tasks use, and you'd probably crash before the MemSet
finished.
I suppose you could write some little assembly snippet that disables
interrupts then loops over the entire RAM area and writes zeros, finally
jumping to the reset vector. The device *should* still cold-boot and
initialize the heaps and stuff even if all of RAM gets zero'd. Pretty
drastic software though...
--Bob
