Re: Retro tech

"Teresa Wells [email protected] [peditors]" <[email protected]> Tue, 25 Sep 2018 16:55:35 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.handhelds.palm.peditors
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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I find some of these devices interesting. And I also thinking that syncing =
with Outlook has been the death of more than one company :)

I don't trust this Life Drive at all. First one I bought never got past the=
 boot screen. I replaced the battery, put in a formatted CF card but nothin=
g worked. Got a second one on Ebay. The guy bricked it trying to do a hard =
reset and canceled the sale. The one I bought after that does work so I can=
 see what it would have been. It was designed to be for business customers.=
 I see it as a great multimedia machine, with lots of room for books and mu=
sic. Too bad the hardware sucked.=20

I've been buying interesting devices on Ebay and have had pretty good luck =
with the untested ones. I see a difference in how I deal with the Palm. I l=
ook something up and I'm done. There's no reason to do anything else. If I =
were on my iPhone, I'd probably check my mail or look up something. I'm enj=
oying spending less time on the Net.=20

(And I probably should have written my post under teri.pittman-Re5JQEeQqe9fmgfxC/sS/[email protected] I=
 still haven't gotten around to officially changing my name yet.)



> On Sep 25, 2018, at 1:52 PM, dmccunney [email protected] [peditor=
s] <[email protected]> wrote:
>=20
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 2:50 PM, [email protected] [peditors]
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Seems odd to be writing to the group again. I have been trying to shake=
 things up a bit. I'd decided that I was done with my old Palm stuff, threw=
 out my archive backups and got rid of a couple of non-functioning devices.=
 Then I got interested in getting my Zire 71 going again. It was like a tim=
e capsule of 2008. And I was reminded of why I found Palms so interesting i=
n the first place.
> >
> > So now, I have lots of new stuff, including a couple of Clies and a Lif=
e Drive. Low End Mac is letting me do a column on Palms and there seem to b=
e some active Facebook groups about them. I carry a Palm plus iPhone these =
days. I've never enjoyed the iPhone. It's a good phone and camera, plus it'=
s always connected to the internet. I really don't want to be on the Net al=
l the time. I'm actually able to do some planning and keep track of referen=
ce materials now. I would encourage you to charge up an old device and mess=
 around with it a bit. It's a lot of fun. I am working on a new blog, pocke=
t-retro.org, but there's not a lot out there yet. Now, if I can just find t=
ime to relearn all the pscripting I've forgotten.
>=20
> I still have a working Palm TX, currently down because I need to get a
> new charging cable.
>=20
> I also have a couple of non-working Tapwave Zodiac 2s, which might be
> turned into one working one by parts swapping. The Zodiac aspired to
> be a handheld gaming device as well as Palm OS PDA, and had an ATI
> video card on board doing 2D graphics in 320x480 resolution. It also
> had 128MB RAM, two fill sized SD card slots that could take 4GB SD
> cards. You could get an SD card that was a Wifi adapter and go online
> with it.
>=20
> Tapwave was never able to get a critical mass of game developers
> involved, and went out of business. This was a case of
> misunderstanding what they really had. The killer app for the Zodiac
> was an open source product called TCPMP that could decode and display
> a variety of video formats. There were reams written online about how
> to rip DVDs to a form that could be dumped to an SD card, and you
> could view them on the Zodiac. Had they realized they had a handheld
> media player instead of a games device they might still be with us.
>=20
> One of the things I looked at back when but did not get was a Nokia
> N900. It was a concept phone running Android, but could also run Palm
> apps.
>=20
> Before Palm went under, they were working on a new version of Palm OS
> to replace Garnet. It would be multi-threading and multitasking and
> would be called Cobalt. It apparently was actually completed, but
> never got used in any devices. Japan's Access Corp picked it up, and
> announced plans to get it running under Android sou you could run Palm
> adds on an Android device. Android would be the OS under the hood,
> and Cobalt would be the UI and provide what Palm apps wanted to see,
> converting the Palm OS system calls into Android equivalents as
> needed. They vever3 successfully got Cobalt running, but did
> implement a VM in which Garnet could be run, and an assortment of Palm
> apps could be run under it. It actually worked reasonably well. Of
> course, using Android as the basis for a future Palm OS instead of
> trying to roll their own is what Palm should have done to begin with,
> but the business cemetery is filled with the graves of firms who made
> the wrong coice in which way to go and died horribly.
>=20
> My current PDA isn't a Palm OS device. I got a pass-along Alcatel
> Fire phone from a friend who lost it, replaced it, and when it
> resurfaced it got passed to me. It has a quad core 1.3 ghz processor,
> 16GB of storage, and a 2.75 x 5" 23 bit color display. It runs Android
> Marshmallow 6.1. I don't use it as a phone. It's in a PDA form factor,
> and effectively, it's a PDA with Wifi and a decent 8MP camera with
> front and rear facing lenses, but I do the same sort of things I did
> on the Palm. It's easier to connect to and share information with my
> desktop, which was always complicated with Palms.
>=20
> I still have a variety of Palm apps archived, so if there's something
> you are looking for I may be able to assist. (I got free or open
> source where possible, so that's what I mostly have.)
> ______
> Dennis
>=20

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I find some of these devices interesting. And I also thinking that syncing with Outlook has been the death of more than one company :)<div><br></div><div>I don't trust this Life Drive at all. First one I bought never got past the boot screen. I replaced the battery, put in a formatted CF card but nothing worked. Got a second one on Ebay. The guy bricked it trying to do a hard reset and canceled the sale. The one I bought after that does work so I can see what it would have been. It was designed to be for business customers. I see it as a great multimedia machine, with lots of room for books and music. Too bad the hardware sucked.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>I've been buying interesting devices on Ebay and have had pretty good luck with the untested ones. I see a difference in how I deal
  with the Palm. I look something up and I'm done. There's no reason to do anything else. If I were on my iPhone, I'd probably check my mail or look up something. I'm enjoying spending less time on the Net.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>(And I probably should have written my post under <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>. I still haven't gotten around to officially changing my name yet.)</div><div><br><div><br></div><div><br>On Sep 25, 2018, at 1:52 PM, dmccunney <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> [peditors] &lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>&gt; wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>












 

<span style="display:none">&nbsp;</span>



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      <p>On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 2:50 PM, <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> [peditors]<br>
&lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; Seems odd to be writing to the group again. I have been trying to shake things up a bit. I'd decided that I was done with my old Palm stuff, threw out my archive backups and got rid of a couple of non-functioning devices. Then I got interested in getting my Zire 71 going again. It was like a time capsule of 2008. And I was reminded of why I found Palms so interesting in the first place.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; So now, I have lots of new stuff, including a couple of Clies and a Life Drive. Low End Mac is letting me do a column on Palms and there seem to be some active Facebook groups about them. I carry a Palm plus iPhone these days. I've never enjoyed the iPhone. It's a good phone and camera, plus it's always connected to the internet. I really don't want to be on the Net all the time. I'm actually able to do some planning and keep track of reference materials now. I would encourage you to charge up an old device and mess around with it a bit. It's a lot of fun. I am working on a new blog, <a href="http://pocket-retro.org">pocket-retro.org</a>, but there's not a lot out there yet. Now, if I can just find time to relearn all the pscripting I've forgotten.<br>
<br>
I still have a working Palm TX, currently down because I need to get a<br>
new charging cable.<br>
<br>
I also have a couple of non-working Tapwave Zodiac 2s, which might be<br>
turned into one working one by parts swapping.  The Zodiac aspired to<br>
be a handheld gaming device as well as Palm OS PDA, and had an ATI<br>
video card on board doing 2D graphics in 320x480 resolution. It also<br>
had 128MB RAM, two fill sized SD card slots that could take 4GB SD<br>
cards.  You could get an SD card that was a Wifi adapter and go online<br>
with it.<br>
<br>
Tapwave was never able to get a critical mass of game developers<br>
involved, and went out of business.  This was a case of<br>
misunderstanding what they really had.  The killer app for the Zodiac<br>
was an open source product called TCPMP that could decode and display<br>
a variety of video formats.  There were reams written online about how<br>
to rip DVDs to a form that could be dumped to an SD card, and you<br>
could view them on the Zodiac. Had they realized they had a handheld<br>
media player instead of a games device they might still be with us.<br>
<br>
One of the things I looked at back when but did not get was a Nokia<br>
N900.  It was a concept phone running Android, but could also run Palm<br>
apps.<br>
<br>
Before Palm went under, they were working on a new version of Palm OS<br>
to replace Garnet.  It would be multi-threading and multitasking and<br>
would be called Cobalt. It apparently was actually completed, but<br>
never got used in any devices.  Japan's Access Corp picked it up, and<br>
announced plans to get it running under Android sou you could run Palm<br>
adds on an Android device.  Android would be the OS under the hood,<br>
and Cobalt would be the UI and provide what Palm apps wanted to see,<br>
converting the Palm OS system calls into Android equivalents as<br>
needed.  They vever3 successfully got Cobalt running, but did<br>
implement a VM in which Garnet could be run, and an assortment of Palm<br>
apps could be run under it.  It actually worked reasonably well.  Of<br>
course, using Android as the basis for a future Palm OS instead of<br>
trying to roll their own is what Palm should have done to begin with,<br>
but the business cemetery is filled with the graves of firms who made<br>
the wrong coice in which way to go and died horribly.<br>
<br>
My current PDA isn't a Palm OS device.  I got a pass-along Alcatel<br>
Fire phone from a friend who lost it, replaced it, and when it<br>
resurfaced it got passed to me.  It has a quad core 1.3 ghz processor,<br>
16GB of storage, and a 2.75 x 5" 23 bit color display. It runs Android<br>
Marshmallow 6.1. I don't use it as a phone. It's in a PDA form factor,<br>
and effectively, it's a PDA with Wifi and a decent 8MP camera with<br>
front and rear facing lenses, but I do the same sort of things I did<br>
on the Palm.  It's easier to connect to and share information with my<br>
desktop, which was always complicated with Palms.<br>
<br>
I still have a variety of Palm apps archived, so if there's something<br>
you are looking for I may be able to assist.  (I got free or open<br>
source where possible, so that's what I mostly have.)<br>
______<br>
Dennis<br>
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