Just bought my new Pronto on Friday. I must say this remote is very slick and easy to use. All you do is pick the device you want to control; press learn, pick the command on the Pronto and fire the signal from the sending remote to teach the command. EASY! In a few hours I recreated my old remotes on the Pronto and programmed a macro with the Dish Network remote and my tv.

But I do have a question about the memory in the Pronto. My Pronto came with 44% free memory available as well. Why is that? Is it because the templates that are built in take up this available memory (56%)? The manual says that the Pronto will reclaim memory when it needs to, but can we control the amount of free memory? And finally can the software help with this? Memory should not be a problem as far as the previous threads tell us. But I bet I’m not the only person wondering about how memory can be managed.

Thanks.
Terence

My Pronto arrived yesterday, and I too noticed 44% memory out of the box.

I decided to delete all of the devices and create new ones without the IR codes, thinking that I would open up alot more space. After doing that, it said there was 33% remaining, before it learned any codes. So I decided to revert back to original settings and then delete only what I didn't need and teach my remotes (7 remotes). That left me with 24% Memory Remaining.

Is this the norm? 24% Doesn't seem to be alot of space to play with when the software comes out.

Craig.

That's all normal guys, mine was the same way.
Eventually, after you change things around,
adding/deleting even more, you're free memory
will be used up and the Pronto will purge it's
free mem.

The Pronto, saves all unused/deleted templates/
buttons/macros/and labels so they can be undeleted
later.

As far as whats been posted on this forum, the
software will allow memory management, where
all unused data can be deleted, clearing up tons
of mem.

Via the software, I have purged all but one device for my laser disc player, which has about 50 buttons, including a jog/shuttle control which I made up of a bitmap and used 4 buttons on it for jog +/- and shuttle +/-. With all commands now taught, free memory reads 93%.

Thats great news. Thanks for the info.

Summary: yes, the 'memory free' indicator never appears to increase when you delete stuff. But if you run out of memory, deleted objects will be reclaimed and it will increase. We do this to keep things responsive (trading delays every time something changes for one delay when memory does become full).

More Detailed Explanation: On the Pronto, there's a difference between 'deleted' and 'purged'. When you delete something, it still consumes memory. When the Pronto OS finds it's running short on memory, it will sift through what's in memory and purge things that were previously deleted.

The reasons for doing this are tied up in the characteristics of Flash memory. 'Erased' flash memory has all bits set to ones, and writing to flash consists of setting appropriate bits to zero. Setting a bit back to one requires going through an erase cycle on an entire block. Writing to flash isn't particularly quick, but erasing takes forever by comparison. Consequently, when someting is deleted, we just mark it as deleted by clearing a bit to zero (which is quick) rather than all the erasing and rewriting that purging would require (deadly slow).

If you ever do manage to fill memory, you'll find the 'garbage collection' process will take a little while, since it has to do a fair amount of erasing and rewriting to consolidate the active objects and purge the deleted ones.

Having said that, I've never managed to fill a Pronto...