I lent someone my old
Palm
IIIe as a data entry device for an exhibition
this week.
I don't use it much since
I got a Samsung K608i
last year.
They weren't comfortable with using
their smart phone as a data entry device.
I can understand that: I'm still pretty slow
at phone-typing and it corrupted data when
its memory filled recently.
The batteries had been removed from the Palm
to avoid them leaking, so it needed reloading
with
useful Palm free software
for data entry.
The first problem was that
I decommissioned
bouncing
a while
ago and that was the last machine to sync
with the Palm. I wasn't keen to pull it
out of the store cupboard and connect all
the wires, but
my current desktop machine
nail
doesn't
have a 9-pin serial port for the cradle
and that's the only connector on the Palm.
Actually, it's not the only connector: the Palm
has an InfraRed emitter and I have
a Belkin F5U230 USB-IrDA
dongle thing. I don't use it that often,
but it worked enough to connect
nail
to
the internet through my old mobile phone.
That was a while ago and I forgot the
specifics, but eventually I noticed the
key phrase in the
irattach
man page:-
"Note that there is another USB driver for those devices
called ir-usb
which is NOT compatible with the IrDA stack and
conflicts with irda-usb. Because it always loads first, you
have to remove ir-usb completely."
Sure enough, I checked the
lsmod
output
and found ir-usb there, screwing stuff up.
A few modprobe -r
commands, then I simply ran
"irattach irda-usb"
and saw the irda0 network device appear.
Still one thing to do: beam the actual
applications. This was pretty easy because
I remembered reading that
obexftp
defaulted
to IRDA sending when I was getting bluetooth
working.
All I had to do was enter a command like
"obexftp --irda --put db.prc"
and the Palm asked if I wanted to accept it!
Yes!
First test with
obexftpd
for receiving
files wasn't encouraging,
though and I can't see how to use
sobexsrv
for this: I'll probably write next week
whether we get any data off the Palm!
The Palm IIIe is too old to hotsync over
infra-red, as far as I can tell. I've got
a roundabout route through the K608i but
it doesn't seem to be very reliable.
Anyone got any expert tips?
