[joefel]

I did my conversion this weekend of a Day 1 Sprint Pre- to a NIB Verizon Pre 2 bought on ebay. I read everything through a bunch of times over the previous week to make sure I understood everything, which seems confusing, but as you follow the steps, everything becomes clear and makes sense as you do it.

On Friday night, I downloaded and installed Ubuntu on my XP laptop and then did all of the other installs. Prior to that night, I had never used any form of Linux.

Saturday night, I backed up my Pre-.

Sunday night after returning from the Ducks beating the Blues!, I did the comm board switch - I put the video on and was able to keep up with the guy and actually finished it before he did. Then ran the meta-script and less than an hour later, I had a new Pre 2! It's been working great ever since! Follow the instructions and you won't have any problems. I haven't installed the Sprint Navigator yet (I hardly ever use it), but I will install it later this week.

Thanks to all the internals guys - I'm always amazed at how smart some people are to figure all of this stuff out, and then to make it easy for guys like me to fumble through it and have it come out right!

___________________________________
Long time Pilot/Palm user since April 1997.

[ananimus]

Indeed, you have to upgrade the software. As folks are saying, the longest part is getting a Linux install if you don't have one already (fortunately had that covered here). And backing up/restoring. The actual hardware and software upgrades are pretty quick and painless if you follow the directions all over the site and wiki.

Hopefully as my last gush, I did mine this week after deciding against the competition for now. Totally worth the trouble. The difference is night and day if you've been on a minus with 1.4.5 for the last couple years.

Plus, I had put together the ipk for browser Flash since the wiki said it had to be done. I was surprised when I got to installing it just to be informed the files were already there. Went to my browser and saw the Flash options were already in the menu, too. Hit up endofworld.net for a test and the animation played like a champ!

Maybe the wiki's just out of date, but it looks to me like someone added the Flash library and patch to the metaDoctor script or it got added in 2.1, I dunno. But hey: Flash at no extra charge!

[pinoyrepn1124]

I hope this question doesnt sound too ignorant but here goes . . I had doctored my old pre minus to 2.1 and I got real excited at the prospect on running 2.1 on a device that was made to handle it. So I purchased a shiny new verizon pre 2 with a clean esn on ebay. My question is, after doing the comm board swap, do I need to still doctor since I already had webos 2.1 installed from my pre minus ? . . Thanks guys for all your help and keep up the great work devs

[DJ Nativus]

That's a good question... I think for the software to work on the Sprint network you have to.

[DJeremyC]

I too have just finished my launch day Pre- conversion with a GSM Pre. One question: What is the best way to get the Sprint Nav and Sprint TV onto this device and working. Really need Sprint Nav as it is my only GPS unit. Thanks.

[ArchonAdvisors]

One question: What is the best way to get the Sprint Nav and Sprint TV onto this device and working. Really need Sprint Nav as it is my only GPS unit. Thanks.

Have a look at this thread for reinstalling Sprint Nav on a FrankenPre 2:

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...2-1-0-a-9.html

As for Sprint TV, doesn't that already get installed by the metadoctor? (Note: if not, the thread above also mentions that the SprintTV package can be extracted from the 1.4.5 doctor)

[Dilandu]

Using the regular Verizon Dr. worked for me.

swaped out the pre minus board with the vzw pre 2 and just Dr using the vzw stock Dr and no problems at all. I guess we don't really need to meta Dr after all .... Thanks for the heads up booyapre !

[alanh]

I made a FrankenPre2 for Sprint out of a GSM unlocked and an original Pre-. It was a great upgrade and I used it for several months. The process was straightforward, if slightly intimidating. I ran into one issue with the MetaDoctor where it wouldn't find my Pre unless I ran things as root on my Mac. It took me an hour or so of fiddling to fix it (I couldn't find an answer easily online), but other than that it was quite smooth.

The Pre2 was definitely a far better device than the original Pre: more solid construction, more scratch resistent, faster OS with better battery life, more polished OS, etc.

I was also able to install the Sprint Nav binary on my device and it worked great for me.