[HN Gopher] Serially-attached SD for old PalmOS devices
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Serially-attached SD for old PalmOS devices
Author : dmitrygr
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-04-19 15:51 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dmitry.gr)
(TXT) w3m dump (dmitry.gr)
| adrianmonk wrote:
| That is quite a project! Hardware, firmware, protocol reverse
| engineering, hacking Palm OS itself to support the hardware, and
| writing apps to make it useful.
|
| And to top it off, it's all done while working within the
| limitations of a mid-1990s device. Desktop computers were limited
| enough back then, but this is a portable device and is even more
| limited.
|
| To those who haven't worked in this environment (I used to write
| Palm apps), it may be hard to appreciate exactly _how_ limited.
| For example, the article mentioned heap size. I forget the exact
| numbers, and it varied from one device to another, but the total
| heap for your entire program was something like 32 kilobytes on
| some devices.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I wrote some Java apps for Palm. The limitations made it a fun
| challenge!
| dleslie wrote:
| I'm still a little bitter that Palm failed. I have my Z22 kicking
| around, still charged, and I noodle with it from time to time.
|
| I feel like Android and iOS sort of forgot about the professional
| and semi-professional market segments, which have been drowned
| out by broader demand and had their preferred featureset designed
| out in favour of an experience with a broader market appeal.
|
| Opening a Palm device feels like you're being invited to schedule
| something, take note of something, or otherwise make a productive
| choice. Opening my phone feels like I'm supposed to respond to
| WhatsApp and browse shitposts on Reddit.
| causality0 wrote:
| I spent years ticking back and forth between Palm and Pocket PC
| devices. Palm hardware quality was bad and Pocket PC software
| was terrible. To this day I wonder why Palm thought it was ok
| that all their LCDs emitted a high-pitched humming noise when
| turned on.
| Lammy wrote:
| > To this day I wonder why Palm thought it was ok that all
| their LCDs emitted a high-pitched humming noise when turned
| on.
|
| Maybe it was designed by people who couldn't hear it? High-
| pitched sounds are supposedly the first to go with
| age/tinnitus/etc: https://mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com/why-
| mosquito/sound-de...
| markrages wrote:
| That was the era of the elecroluminescent backlight.
|
| This technology required a high-voltage (~100V) squarewave
| across the mostly-capacitive EL panel. This squarewave was
| at audio frequencies.
|
| The panel also happened to function as a piezo tweeter,
| depending on mounting.
|
| I worked for a cell phone company at the time. I have two
| memories of this technology:
|
| 1. Using the prototype phone out of its case and touching
| the 100 V squarewave to my ear. That's some tender skin...
|
| 2. Using a primary transformer in reverse as an audio
| transformer, to play the lab stereo over EL panel. It turns
| out the panel color changes a little bit with frequency.
| causality0 wrote:
| So why didn't pocket pcs or non-Palm PalmOS devices have
| the same problem? All of the Palm units in my collection
| have the buzz but none of the Clies do.
| omgwtfusb wrote:
| They mostly used LCDs with LED backlights (not sure what
| they used the some early WinCE laptop style handhelds
| with color displays)
| causality0 wrote:
| Yet another sad story. I wanted to love those but I
| couldn't put up with the passive-matrix display.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Palm hardware quality was bad
|
| They were definitely not perfect, but at the time (and at my
| budget as a middle school student), Palm devices were the
| only way to have a pocket-sized computer of my own that I
| could bring to and use in school.
|
| The shareware community was amazing, and it's almost
| impossible to imagine how much stuff I could fit into 2 MB of
| total system memory: An eBook reader and a couple of books,
| several games (shout out to Space Trader), a TV remote
| control, offline newspaper articles...
|
| Only to see it all disappear in a heartbeat when changing
| batteries, with no way to restore while traveling for the
| summer! (My m100 had a flaky capacitor and would sometimes do
| that.)
| causality0 wrote:
| The design was fantastic. They just made bad choices about
| parts vendors, in my opinion.
| marban wrote:
| Psion 5mx was where the magic happened.
| johndoughy wrote:
| The Psions really felt ahead of their time. I got a Revo for
| Christmas and good luck convincing 12 year old me he wasn't
| James fucking Bond.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Palm's webOS was ahead of its time, too. Apps were written in
| JS, HMTL & CSS, all messaging systems were integrated into a
| single inbox, there was universal search, and it took years for
| Android and iOS to adopt its card metaphor model for
| multitasking, too. The way app switching works in Android and
| iOS now is the way app switching worked from the beginning with
| webOS.
| buildbot wrote:
| The palm pre was possibly a decade ahead of it's time, I
| loved that thing. Amazing hardware keyboard, decent screen
| for the time, webOS, magnetic wireless charging!!
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's still hands down the best phone I've ever owned.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I feel like Android has mostly "caught up" on the things
| that the Pre was better at; maybe around 5 years ago? I
| do remember switching from my Pre to a Droid 4 after
| dropping the Pre on its power button, and it was a
| _massive_ step backwards in pretty much all dimensions.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is incredible reverse engineering work. Great job!
| billiam wrote:
| This old Palm guy loved the reverse engineering done here.
| blamazon wrote:
| If you liked this, check out the author's projects page. Lots of
| cool stuff.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I had a TRG-PRO which was a classic Palm Pilot, but with a CF
| card slot in the back and built-in software to use the additional
| storage. I suppose it could have used a SD card if you adapted it
| with one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Compact-Memory-Adapter-
| High-Speed-Ext...
|
| http://www.pencomputing.com/palm/Reviews/trgpro.html
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I used to use a palm III for "redboxing" payphones back in the
| day in a country which didn't use multifrequency tones to signal
| a coin drop. Was pretty much the most fun I had with the thing,
| it had a BASIC interpreter you could download so writing little
| programs that could do stuff like that wasn't actually hard at
| all
| orangepurple wrote:
| I miss the Palm OS and device aesthetic
| lxgr wrote:
| Then go and run Palm OS on your smartphone (yes, also non-
| jailbroken iOS) right now :)
|
| https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/
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(page generated 2022-04-19 23:01 UTC)