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Lawsuit Alleges That Palms Damage Motherboards
schussat writes: "This brief AP article describes a lawsuit that alleges that syncing a Palm Pilot "damages or destroys the motherboards on certain PC brands." Does anyone know more or have experience with this? Is it even possible to cause damage? The article is not very detailed."
that's not what gets on my palms after, um, reading websites for a while
Ok, now if I know what I think I know, then the hotsync functions use either USB or serial. On that premise I guess sending a certain high voltage to that port could certainly fry components. I do, however doubt that a palm product is capable of producing the necessary voltage to damage some part of a motherboard. IT couldn't be a short I doubt because (again this is only as far as I know) the highest voltave from either port is 5 volts. Maybe a short? to what? ground? that'll do no damage. a short to anything else would just register a + signal right? ok, enough from me.
- Hyperbolix
This could be a related problem. I have a Handspring Visor, with a USB cradle. For awhile, my computer would reboot occasionally when I dropped the Visor into the cradle. This was a sudden hard boot. The OS (Win2K) didn't decide to shut down or anything, the screen just immediately would go black, followed by the BIOS POST, OS load, and so on. It only stopped happening when I replaced the cradle with a serial one.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
What, they had all been overclocking their processors? They had all dropped their computer from buildings? What had they all done that so clearly made the problem with the product THEIR fault?
Dude, the customer is always right.
If customers cannot successfully use your product "correctly," it's your fault, not theirs.
This is the great flaw of the computer industry: this arrogant stance toward the customer. Developers expect customers to have the skill and knowledge of developers. They discuss their customers dismissively as "end users" and call them "idiots" if the products are too stupidly designed to figure out how to use. That's on the rare occasion when they think about their customers at all.
No other industry blames their customers for problems with their products like this. If a product isn't usable, it is useless.
Fight for your right to read books!
I had a Dell Dimension that would freeze on a regular basis. I narrowed it down to some sort of static electricity problem as it would occur when I moved my chair on one of those chair mats that the computer was partly standing on. The strangest thing is that putting my Palm V in the cradle would unfreeze it about 75% of the time. Another 20% of the time I'd have to press the HotSync button to get my computer up and running again. Strange stuff.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
As an ex-Dell tech, can you tell me why Dell lies about and doesn't provide new BIOSes and firmware for even thier servers? (Sorry this is offtopic to the parent thread, but it is a reply opportunity to a Dell tech) Read on and tell me why I have such a bad time with Dell and the Default install? Dell default installs are horrific. I also remove Linux from their servers, and reinstall. I used to get Dell machines - ranging from Win9X to NT4 and beyond. I always do a fresh Install with windows because the apparently know nothing about Windows. Now, for the Linux machines, they know nothing about it either. We have 31 Dell/Linux boxes (1550, 2450 and 2550), and after about 3 machines, we decided fresh RedHat would be far better. Its too bad they have the best deals on 1U servers, /.-ers, if you know of any other vendors for 'good' (good used loosely when referring to x86 servers) 1,2 and 3-4U servers in that price range, let me know. IBM and Compaq are pricey, Linux Vendors, like the former VA-Linux and current Penguin Computing sell garbage that you can build yourself (better). I think I'll switch to IBM as soon as I can convince the brass.
AND NOW FOR THE DELL SCAM.
Brothers of /., I must have you read the following: Dell "hides" the truth, and won't update BIOS of relabeled Intel board!
When I bought a Dell Dimension XPS Pro 200N, I got a Dell BIOS, A00. It was really a masked BIOS for an Intel VS440FX motherboard. I begged Dell at version A06 (Intel version 11) to give me the latest Intel version, 18. They claimed ignorance. After some hacking, I got the Intel BIOS to install and I was able to put more memory and a larger hard drive in. The moral. Dell withholds firmware updates to force obsolescence.
Another story. Dell Won't provide firmware updates again even on Servers!
We have OC12/ATM/POS cards from Intel. Fairly rare. They are called GigaBlade. They have two PCBs, a few Xylinx asics on them, nice silver flush mount jobs, and HP/Agilent optical framers. Cutting edge crap. Well, I wanted to put this card in a Dell box. It appears the AIC-7899 BIOS 2.X series doesn't like to behave well, and the 3.X BIOS for the Adaptec lineup fixes the problem, especially on RCC/Serverworks chipsets. Needless to say Dell has done NOTHING to help me, I have submitted about 10 requests through various channels and Adaptec has confirmed they gave Dell and all OEMS the 3.X code.
Finally, Dell has told me NO - they will not do it. The Intel GigaBlade cards are too rare to be worth their time.
I personally see why IBM charges more for their stuff - I have never been told to go screw in that manner by IBM. (MHO here is that IBM > Dell)
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Dude, after the ebola incidents at Jack In The Box the official cooking policy for every fast food chain is "well well done". In fact, a lot of chains won't even cook medium or medium well if you ask for it (I know someone who used to order his burger medium and laments that he can't find a place that will do it anymore).
Some McDonalds may still use a griddle, but almost all of them are now using these microwave ovens that they toss a pre-packaged/pre-sealed container of meat patties that are all nuked on high. The idea that maggots would still be alive is laughable.
Major chains get on average 2000-3000 claims for damages every month. Sadly, it's often easier to pay the amount than to research the facts. Risk managment is the cost of doing business in this litigious society.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Me too. I used to work at Dell. Oh man, I saw SO many of these. People should stop ragging on these poor fellows. They're right, I want to sue Palm too. Man, I can't tell you how many machines I saw blowed up because of Palm connections. For some reaons they were mostly Dell XPGX-Extreme 2300-2 machines. I know what I'm talking about, I worked at Dell for the last 30 years. Man, it just pisses me off to no end. How can I join the lawsuit? I have lots of inside information.
I have in the past blown out a chip on aa soundcard simply by connecting the left channel rca plug in the output plug for the second speaker. The chip on the soundcard actualy cracked and melted slightly.
A lot of motherboard/device manufacturers leave protection of output out, in order to save time and money developing the board.
Uh... no. They might use Intel CHIPSETs but they don't use Intel motherboards.
I have to admit I'm not all that familiar with off the shelf PC hardware. Having said that, I'd be astonished if this was possible.
:)
I would assume that serial ports are protected by fuses. If this isn't the case, surely it's a recipe for disaster. It's hardly Palm's fault, either - do you launch a class action suit against god when lightning zaps your modem?
In fact, going on that - I've heard of several instances of fried modems after a thunderstorm. These go into the serial port too. If motherboards were vulnerable to damage from bad serial transmissions, surely lightning would kill the computer too here.
Am I missing something?
http://www.themeparks.ie
That raises an interesting question. You have a problem when two pieces of equipment interact. One of them blows up. Who to sue? The one that survives, assuming it "broke" the other one? (That seems to be the option taken) The one that breaks, assuming it was a piece of junk to start with? Both?
And the answer is.............THE RICHEST COMPANY, STUPID!!!
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Components CAN damage a motherboard. This goes back few years, but Radio Shack sold computers with an unbuffered parallel port. If you connected a non-Tandy printer to it, the motherboard would get fried if the printer sent current down a particular pin. I forget which pin or what the current was used for, but I saw it happen twice. POOF!
Well, I'm not one for frivolous lawsuits, but
having hardware fry due to NORMAL EXPECTED USE of a product is NOT ACCEPTABLE.
P.S. MMR vaccine does indeed appear to cause autism. Children should get individual doses for measles, mumps, and rubella, not at the same time. This may reduce the risk.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
One day about a month or two ago, the guy I work with put his Palm Vx into the sync cradle. At the moment he did this, his PC died. It appeared to have switched itself off, but we never got that PC to show any signs of life ever again - the motherboard appeared to be toast. It just died instantly.
:-)
The only thing I could think of was static discharge, but perhaps this news item has the real reason
Tim
The company I work for has heard of some of these problems. This is only due to electrostatic disharge, and zapping the damn serial port when plugging your cradle in. I would not blame this completely on palm. I would say that the people plugging these things in should be more aware of the dangers of static electricity.
I was in Colorado last winter, using my computer in the basement of my parent's house. The static electricity was really bad. I had a big blue arc shoot from my finger into my logitech mouse and fry the serial port on my motherboard.
It was enough electricity to give me quite a zing, as well.
This is probably what happened with the Palms.
In my case, I don't blame the mouse. I don't blame the motherboard. I blame myself for not grounding myself before I touched the computer. I know better.
If this is indeed the problem, this lawsuit is bogus.
So, let me get this straight: you plug in an external device into your machine and the mother board gets damaged because of it. Since the article is completely informationless as to what the actual cause of the problem is, I'll assume it's a problem with voltage levels on the serial port (ie, the palm is using voltage levels higher than what the mother board is designed to handle).
Since I strongly doubt that the palm device is using voltage levels that are significantly higher than the expected levels, I'd bet that the "certain PC brand" mother boards are, um, well, some of the cheapest boards ever made. (Warning: If you don't use voltage levels between 0.000000 and 5.0000001, we can't be responsible for damage to your mother board).
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Amazing, the site is /.'ed and I haven't even gotten first post yet.
Try this AP link
the palm Vs have a metal casing which, if you have a static build, sends a shock to the "craddle" which is a straight wire to the com port, most of the time the com port is right on the motherboard.
I worked for a customer once that had a serial port connection to a Key Card controlled fence gate. Basically every time there was as lightening storm it would blow out the serial port. Not even a surge protector on the port would help. But the PC was never fried just the serial port. So we just kept a bunch of serial port cards on hand and swapped em out every storm. I find it hard to believe a palm could generate the voltages needed to fry and entire Motherboard.
this on on Yahoo! works.
Laptops are manufactured elsewhere.
Dimension is usually an Intel motherboard.
Optiplex, Precision, and PowerEdge are almost always designed in-house and manufactured under contract.
No, no, no. You got it all wrong--That's a *safety feature* to protect your motherboard from being fried by the Palm, not a flaw...
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
A customer had this problem fairly recently. He'd sit down in his big fabric-covered office chair (generating a terrific static charge), and put his Palm in the cradle. After a couple of rounds of this, the motherboard was okay, but the onboard serial port was dead.
Oh my god! This is so true - I had an AOpen motherboard running my PIII system with outdated 1998 BIOS, but no problems when synching my palm Vx. So, I thought "This is 2001 - new millenium, time for new BIOS!" :) Probably the worst decision I've made this year...
Just 5 hours after updating my BIOS to the latest 2001 version the system *literally* explodes - a smoking insurance writeoff. Apparently (according to the techies working for the insurance company) the 'smoothing capacitor in the PSU recieved a fatal overvoltage when connecting a peripheral'.
Sorry I don't have more details but I haven't been able to access my HDD (where I keep info on any upgrades I do) since the system fried....but I should be getting a new MB soon - fortunately the rest of the (rather expensive) components were spared.
So if you've got an AOpen motherboard with (I think) Award BIOS.....DONT UPDATE!!!
-Nano.
All right, people, here we go. For those who obviously only skimmed my article (not the one about the lawsuit, which I am NOT a part of), please go read it again, and pay attention to the facts, not the hyperbole. For everyone else who is making ASSumptions based on their own (non) experience, here are the facts again:
1) The cradle was ALREADY plugged into the port, and had been for several months. In case you don't understand what that means, it means I was NOT plugging the cradle into the port when this happened, alright?
2) serial ports, as I understand them, are NOT designed to be hot-swapped safely. This is why any device that connects to a serial port (or anything other than USB for that matter) tells you specifically to turn OFF the computer before plugging it in. Sure, serial ports can take certain amounts of current, but obviously not as much as the ESD (electro-static discharge, yes?)
3) the Palm IS designed to be hot-swapped into and out of its cradle on a regular and ongoing basis. Again, I'm NOT talking about the cradle and the port, I'm talking about the Palm and the cradle! The Palm, and in this case a PalmV, is designed to be connected and disconnected repetitively and daily.
4) I'm not an idiot or a moron. I would NEVER touch exposed electronics, or even plug devices into my computer while it's on. I know all about static and how it can damage computers. What I didn't know (and I do now, so you can all STFU about it!) was that the cradle and/or mobo is NOT protected against the ESD that happens when I put the palm into the cradle.
5) As I stated in my article, I walked across the room, dropped the palm into the cradle, and my computer died with a pop and a smell of burnt electronics.
6) I'll concede that the damaged UART might have been from something OTHER than just the ESD, but the sequence of events is so apparent that anyone in the room when it happened would almost certainly agree that the ESD is what caused, or at least was the catalys for, the damage pictured in my article. You might call me a damnass for not grounding myself, but you would agree with me about what actually happened.
7) I was, and still am a little, pissed about the whole thing, but I am NOT looking for a lawsuit, and certainly have nothing to do with the one being filed in Cali. Will I sign on if it goes class action? Yes. But not because I want a chunk of money. I would join because I want Palm to fix a design that they KNOW facilitates damage to computers.
8) I wrote my article to spread the word about how the PalmV (and others, possibly) connected to a serial port can damage the computer through normal usage. I didn't write it to be called a moron by all the holier-than-thou geeks on the internet, but that's sure as heck what I got, and I'm getting it all over again because of this lawsuit. Again, you can all STFU about it, ok?
I fully expect even more repetitive flames from people, telling me I'm a moron, that it's the mobo maker that's to blame, that it's my house's wiring, or anything else other than the probability that Palm decided that the risks of their cradle killing a certain percentage of people's computers didn't outweigh the cost of redesigning the cradle with it's own optical coupler to prevent ESD to the serial port. I'll certainly also get supportive e-mail as I did before, because guess what? THIS IS NOT AN UNCOMMON OR ISOLATED INCIDENT! It's just that most people take the punches Palm throws and never complain, because they're made to believe it was their fault even though it wasn't. With every new report of this problem, all you flamers will jump on it all over again. But, sooner or later, it will be reported enough for enough people to believe it that the problem will be fixed.
For now, PalmV users have three choices:
1) get the USB adapter and plug the cradle into that.
2) get a serial port surge protector (link at the end of my follow-up article)
3) ground yourself before ever going anywhere near your Palm's cradle.
I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, because I'll probably come back to read what drivel you people post in reply to this message. Heck, just posting this was like painting a target on my ass for you people.
Becuase I'm a trusting person, and I made the mistake of trusting Palm, Inc. to design a device to prevent those shocks from doing any real harm, and of trusting HP to make a computer that could stand the shocks if they did make it that far. The point is, while most people know not to touch naked electronics or open ports on a computer, they don't realize that the Palm cradle is, apparently, nothing at all more than an extention cord for the serial port, and it's just as easy to kill a computer by shocking the cradle as it is by shocking the computer itself.
Big talk from someone who doesn't post his email address.
I don't post mine, but then again, I don't go around telling others to use spam filters.
Better yet, don't quote Sagan at all. That fruitcake couldn't even concieve of the notion of life on other planets even though he smoke mass amounts of kind bud. Seemed like a self righteous, pompous ass to me.
There are way way way way too many fucking testimoials. I smell a rat.
I'm no longer in tech support, but when I was I experienced people attributing a fault to something that experience told me wasn't the culprit. Each time I checked (yes, I provided the best support I could regardless of my opinion of the user), my initial suspicion that it was actually user error turned out to be correct.
My original point was not that this is definitely down to the users. It was simply that at the moment experience tells me that the fault probably lies with the user, not the hardware.
And, for the record, my corporate users all seemed perfectly happy with my performance : )
When we get mod points, we don't all sit reloading every thirty seconds like f1r5T p0sT biznatchiz. I check back every 30-45 minutes or so, sometimes reloading as soon as I've read every comment (score=0, nested) if it's a really hot or interesting topic.
It was a DAMNED funny post, and if I had points today, I'd've blown one on that... it was one of the best jokes I've seen in a long time here. +2 Funny, +2 Subtle, +3 read three times to make sure you got it, +2 COMPLETELY on-topic, blah blah pak chooie.
As it was, I got in here with 72 posts showing and your rant was under a +4 Funny post. Calm down. I'd mod more if I had more points (I'd start some modding down, as well), but I only gets five points of love to share maybe once every week or two.
I find that most people quit bitching about moderators when they 1) read the mods guidelines and 2) actually mod a couple times. Nothing sucks more on /. than having a perfect comment (informative/insightful) and having to post it AC because you don't want the points you gave to some other post to be lost. Except maybe Taco's spelling and some lame complaints about moderators.
This will probably be modded down -1 Offtopic (rightfully so), but it needed to be said. Bu-bye, karma.
woof.
went out and bought these motherboards just to see it with my own eyes. Paid lots of EU.
tried to sync my Palm with this certain motherboard brand, just to watch the motherboard explode. (Even wore my bicycle helmet)
Guess what?
Motherboard intact. Palm crashed.
i lost 5 telephone numbers i had registered and a free solitaire game i don't know where to download it again.
Sue them! Sue them! Sue the man who wrote this stupid article! let him dial random numbers till he contacts the five missing person from my agenda, in order to be permitted to write shit again!
...I have had my PC reboot when dropping my Vx into the serial cradle. I receive a static shock as soon as the Vx (which I'm holding) makes contact with the cradle contacts. The jolt causes my machine to bounce. This sucks with ext2fs - you never know if the machine will come back up or not!
The Palm, OTOH, does run on batteries. You can charge it up from mains, but it's not a particularly high-power device. In addition, they're manufactured to much higher standards than speakers need to be.
In addition, I'd expect serial/USB ports to be designed/engineered to be far less likely to allow a power spike to fry anything on the motherboard (or at least anything beyond the port controller).
I'll admit that this is all based on stuff that I can remember off the top of my head, and a bit of sensible conjecture (this is Slashdot after all : )), but I'd be horrified to find out that something like this was possible without gross negligence. Essentially, I expect that the chances of a Palm repeating your speaker/mobo problems are incredibly slim, and if it does happen then someone has screwed up badly.
I have been using a palm on a daily basis since the "Professional" model came out, I now own a Vx. The only time I ever had a problem with a palm syncing was when my department purchased four new palm IIIxe's. The palm would snyc with all of the computers with a brand name motherboard, but when I installed it on a computer with a no name "crap" motherboard it would not snyc, until I turned the snyc speed down to 14000.
I've learnt an invaluable trick when it comes to responding to posts on Slashdot; stop, wait a couple of minutes, then read the post again. Chances are what I thought it was saying isn't actually what it was saying.
Which is a long way of saying that I didn't take your comment personally. Oh, and thanks for having the courtesy to respond (though don't feel obliged to respond to this post, or we could go on forever : )
Now who's being off topic?
If the Palm's case is metallic and is connected to the Palm's ground, then I think it might be possible to avoid static discharge through the motherboard if a simple ground wire is soldered to the 0V pin of the cradle. I've never seen a Palm cradle, but they surely use a simple AC-DC converter for power which hasn't any ground wire.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I've always put this down to the build quality of Dell laptops, I've also had the screen, keyboard, CD writer and battery replaced over the last year and a number of other people have had the same serial port problem in my office.
In the end I gave up and got a USB serial adapter to fix the problem, as I came to the conclusion that the port on my laptop wasn't properly earthed.
Their may be something in this, but I think they should be sueing their motherboard supplier. I ran the Palm V on my old Gateway laptop without problem for over a year.
Dave.
I can say that I personally saw this occur several times in tech support and those of us who cared to research it saw it as a problem of static electricity and the Palm V cradle through the serial port. The real problem though was ever figuring out if the Palm V's cradle (one of the ones that plugs into the wall to charge the PDA while cradled) was truly at fault or if the motherboards were not grounded properly. Either way, it's gonna be expensive for someone because one of the units isn't quite right. We always replaced the motherboard once but warned that if the cradle was bad, it'd likely zap the replacement motherboard and we wouldn't be keen on constatly replacing a $100+ motherboard because of a $15 cradle. Eventually new revs came out for both units and it seemed to take care of itself like a lot of tech issues do. The proper people get notified and replacements are issued. I don't see why lawsuits need be filed. There are plenty of worse things happening out there to people's systems.
-A Quiet Reader
"No matter where you go... There you are..." --Buckaroo Bonzai
McDonald's doesn't microwave their soy patties, at least where I worked:)
i could accidentally put a metal wire between the +5V and ground available on any serial or parallel port. that won't be good for the motherboard (or the cable connecting it to the motherboard which will probably melt first).
sheesh. use a fuse.
do we have to attach everything with an optocoupler these days?
No, it is the kind of attitude that keeps Palm handhelds from costing $900. A firm that sells a $200 handheld cannot afford to do a failure analysis each time some customer claims that they want a free computer because the handheld 'blowed up the motherboard.' The manufacturers need to use statistics and engineering expertise to recognize if a given problem could conceivably be caused by their product. If not, they can't afford to spend time and money on it.
The argument that this company shipped more than 13 million units is hardly support for the premise that they can't screw up.
It is statistical evidence that Palm does not have a design flaw. It's hardly surprising that, with 13,000,000+ units sold, that two people may have experienced a motherboard failure coincident with Hotsyncing their Palms. Probably two others experienced motherboard failures when inserting CD-ROMs, two others had failures while opening Word, and so forth. Things fail and often that failure is coincident with some action, but it does not prove that the action caused the failure.
Both the computer hardware and software industries get away with far too little responsibility to ensure quality in their products.
Software, yes. They hide behind the argument that they are selling a license to use a product rather than a product, thus circumventing consumer protection laws. Hardware manufacturers are a different story. I have gotten notices of class action suits against Iomega, HP, and other firms whose products I have purchased. Intel has recalled CPUs, support chips, motherboards, etc. Hardware manufacturers receive lots of scrutiny.
Okay, let's hypothesize that you are running Palm. What would you do in this situation? Replace the motherboards as a goodwill gesture? That could lead to a loss of confidence in your product and might make others think "free motherboards", after which you would be awash in fraudulent claims. Do you send a team of engineers to investigate the claims? How much will that cost? Do you do it each and every time someone claims that your product caused some failure? Or do you look at statistics (number sold vs. number of reported failures) and your product's engineering and decide to stand by your product? Tell us how you think Palm should handle this.
I thought everyone knew. Sheesh.
Did she plug it in while the computer was running? Assuming of course it isn't a USB cradle which is supposed to be hot-swappable.
Personally, I don't know if the voltages in the serial port are enough to do damage (I think the parallel and video ports are the hot ones) but still, if she's tooling around with a metal-ringed connector with her fat greasy fingers in the back of her computer who knows what she could short out?
Honestly, I look at this claim with as much skepticism as the people who find live maggots in a McDonalds hamburger that just went through frying in a microwave for three minutes.
Besides, even if one Palm cradle was faulty and shorted out something on the motherboard at best Palm is liable to have that single motherboard repaired. Class action status means a bunch of people need to have problems with this and this is the first I've heard of it. Devices have been using the serial/parallel ports since time began, what's so special about Palms?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
A static discharge could fry a sensitive control chip, which might fail short, and cause another chip, "downstream" of it, to overheat and bubble its plastic casing. I have seem similar problems on the old Epson dot-matrix printers, where a $45 control chip would periodically fail, causing the printhead to fail, and usually taking some of the power transistors which drove it along. Fortunately, the $60 (?it's been a long time) printhead and the $3 transistors would fail so quickly that they would save the $0.25 fuses.
The point? Yes, static could have caused the failure. How to prevent that? Ground things properly. Make sure that the case of each machine is grounded ("earthed" if you are in Britain), but that the cables connecting peripherals to computer have the ground wire connected at one end only (that's case ground, not signal ground). This prevents ground loops, which can also melt chips in houses with wiring problems.
Reading further down that page, we can see how Palm turned an upset customer into an extremely upset customer. He tells us that he got the run-around, that the story kept changing, and that Palm made it quite clear that they didn't care about keeping a customer happy; it wasn't their fault, and he couldn't prove it. On this page, he concludes his story. He's bitter but resigned. I have to wonder, now, whether I want to spend hundreds of dollars to buy something from a company whose service and products leave one bitter and resigned, and hundreds of dollars poorer. HP, on the other hand, has promised him a check for $100, to help defray the cost of a new motherboard. I wonder which company will get better word-of-mouth out of this epsiode?
See what I've been reading.
I see alot of "this can't be possible", but how many of you have experimented to be sure? With the proliferation of cheap old machines, I'm sure it would be easy to set up a testbed of machines with serial Palm Pilot cradles. Then test if walking across a carpet and building up a static charge really does fry the mobo. Now test again with USB cradles. Imagine that, using the scientific method to find the truth instead of spouting off at the mouth.
The problem is very common and is due to a grounding problem. The PSU of the PC uses a net filter which has two Capacitors connected from the live wire and the zero wire to the metal shield of the PSU. This is a high impedance voltage divider. This means that when the PC is not grounded it has a voltage of approximately half the net voltage which is in the states 55 volt and in europa 115 volts. The problem is that when a RS232 or PARALLEL device which uses a power supply is connected to the computer this voltage will be on the connections for a short while. Normally the earth connection should be the first one to make. This is the reason why in a USB connector the earth shield is connected before anything else it is mechanically longer !. However the RS232 connector is a bad design and when not carefully connected the signal pins will make contact before the shielding. This means that when there is a 110 volt on the case that the input will have a 110 + 5 or more volt logic level. The RS232 port does not like this and dies. When using any external device which is not designed to be hot plugable switch of everything. Or connect all the equipment on the same power outlet. Keep in mind that many modern PC do not really switch of ATX only go into some kind of standby mode in case of doubt remove the power cord from the outlet.
Dude, this is a good comment and you should log in with a real name so more than 1% of users will read it.
You can trigger the Palm into the HotSync sequence by licking the connections? I'm serious. It just shorts out two of the pins or something. We used to think this was neat in high school. Relevance? If I could barely feel the current on my tounge, chances are the voltage output was pretty low. I'd say not even up with licking a 9V battery.
I have hot plugged SCSI cables before ( I know it isn't meant to be hot-pluggable ), and I have never experienced a dead motherboard or SCSI connector. The most I have got is the OS wondering what happened to the SCSI drive.
If the connector is not tollerant, then it was probably a cheap SCSI card or connector on the computer.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Avoid Handspring. I got a Visor about a year ago. Screen loses calibration on a daily basis, construction leaves much to be desired, and the plug in modules cost an arm and a leg.
PalmPilot:
*13 million units sold
*2 people with problems
*Class-action lawsuit
Windows:
*1 unit sold per home PC (on average)
*approx. 1 crash per week on average purely caused by Windows
*No comeback
WTF is going on here? It really is about time someone saw sense on these kind of issues, software companies can release whatever they like and we have no call on them - if only a tiny percentage of users have problems with hardware, they start a class-action lawsuit!
If the head happened to be over the partition sector and/or the static charge caused what looked like a spurious write request to the heads, you could scramble all or part of a sector. I wouldn't expect it to be common, but anything could happen in the death throes of a shocked machine.
Hmm... More likely, actually, that the static mangled a couple of bits on an access request to the hard disk. That would seem a MUCH more likely cause of a bad write (offhand... I'm not an EE).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
That *is* pretty interesting... It shouldn't do that.
Perhaps what's happening is this - when you slide the contacts across, you briefly short the +5v and 0v contacts, causing the power supply to drop out for a moment. That would do it.
I haven't seen a Palm cradle, but if it was designed poorly - say as a huge capacitor on a cord that conveniently plugs into your motherboard's USB slot - they could conceivably be at fault. The palm cradle is supposed to be designed as a conduit for charge to flow, but only within certain specifications. I can't hook an arc welder up to my USB port and blame the motherboard manufacturer when the board is reduced to a charred mass of plastic and silicon. I can blame Palm if the design of their device is such that in as prescribed usage it exceeds design specifications.
Things don't accidently brush against ports usually, especially USB (or Firewire) ports, the electrical contacts are recessed from the exposed surface and have a rather small clearance around them.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I think maybe they mean the Windows 3.1 emulation for OS/2.
(This is actually not about PDAs, but more about electrical connections)
Use a branching box. This should bring all connected electrical devices into one and same electric potential, whether they are grounded or not.
A word of advice though: don't do your electrical connections as I did: I plugged my computer and peripherals into a branching box with grounded sockets, but the box itself wasn't connected into a grounded power outlet. Therefore, if any of the devices should have failed and leaked, say, a 115V spike through the grounding pin, it would have only be directed against the other devices, since the grounding wasn't going anywhere from that branching box..
So check your connections, people, because they might be dangerous, not necessarily to yourself but to your precious pieces of equipment.
(Oh, and could someone more electric engineering -oriented person verify or correct my intuition on this, thanks.)
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
static and heat are two very different things.. take 3,000volts of extremely low current voltage, perhaps off a small open ended ac flourescent light driver (one for tiny electronics flourescent displays, i had one once, took a 12v input) and hold then end of the connector, touch metal. Sparks come out of your hand, but it is high frequency and doesnt burn but yet arcs nicely. (assuming you didnt use a battery to power it and give it some current.. i did that once.. but anyway) now run that same electricity through a chip and boom it will often blow out the middle. Static electricity can be anywhere from a couple volts all the way up to 14,000 volts. I've seen displays at tech-museums like The Tech museum in San Jose and the Exploratorium in SF that measure static electricity on your person after rubbing your feet.
Heat and static are very different.
"Try to be more smart and less stupid, please."
on a side note.. has anybody checked to see if its the same types of motherboards or motherboards with the same type of UART chip?
I had the same problem until I installed service pack 2 for win 2000
When the United States switched from two vaccines to one (I belive from MR & M 20 years ago), there was a rise in cases of Autism.
This could be deemed coincidence, but about a decade later, The UK made the same switch and also has seen a decade long rise in Autism cases.
The recomendation then would be to switch back to two vaccines, instead of one.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
The V charges the same way. Just because the power plug plugs into the same housing as the serial pins, doesn't necessarily mean the power goes to the serial pins. More than likely, the power is routed straight to the cradle on it's own wires.
The parallel port has a ground pin. Did you plug in the cable while the computer was on?
A while ago, when death by mobile phone was newsworthy, a woman was on television every fifteen minutes telling the world that her husband used a mobile phone for hours every day, then he go brain cancer. Result? Lawsuit.
Earlier this year, thousand of foolish parents refused to give their children MMR vaccines because shortly after it was given to a tiny percentage of children, they developed autism. Never mind that autism is detected at around teh same age as vaccinatin' time. Result? Lots of unvaccinated kids. Probably a few lawsuits.
What've got here? A couple of people whose motherboards blew while their pilots were plugged in. Result? Lawsuit. I bet Genius are delighted; they'd probably have been blamed if the first thing our litigious chums saw after the crash was a mouse.
nope - doesn't charge in the cradle.
The USB spec explicitly says that the data lines must be able to withstand this sort of thing. In practice, they have bloody great clamp diodes (you've seen them on circuit diagrams, they're the ones connected "backwards", cathode to signal, anode to ground), which absorb the voltage spikes.
You'd have to be hot-plugging a MIG welder into your USB ports to spike them that badly.
Here's the specs on the ones that are the culprits. Cradles for rechargable Palms. Only a couple months worth of cradles (as Palm made a change to them). This is a combontation of factors.. one is cheaper serial port chips on PCs (one is HPs).... Any electrical engineer should be able to tell you what the other was from the desciption of which ones caused the problems.
Yea, I blew a CPU - two of them, while I was working on a program for the palm. Seems lightning struck nearby and took out the box and the printer and the well. Even had the box on a UPS. Good thing the insurance paid for it all. -- does this mean I have to wear a wrist strap while programming my palm???...
I fried the motherboard (at least the serial port, but there seemed to be other damage as well) while synching my palm to my old PC. There's not much doubt in my mind how it happened... I picked up a static charge walking across the carpet with the palm, which then transferred said charge to the serial cable and ... well, boom. Since then, I always touch a grounded surface with the palm in my hand before setting it into its cradle. No problems since on any other machine.
P.S. I wouldn't necessarily blame Palm for this, but it seems like better design on the serial port, or on the cradle, could reduce this problem...
It does seem likely that a FUD campaign is at work here. If it is, then slashdot management is contributing to it.
Salon.com is running a very important piece on the new payola in the music industry. Without doubt, similar payola systems are in place in every area of commercial publishing, including web publishing, movies, and television.
This is the sort of thing you don't notice until you look closely. Once you do, it seems to be obvious, and everywhere.
Salon articles on music industry corruption can be found here. Check the "Pay for Play" link.
On one occasion I had a systems controller connected to a PC via a 3 metre serial cable. Oddly enough that afternoon, we had a lightning strike next door ... no direct damage, but the induced potential was enough to destroy the UARTS at both ends of the cable. Wish I could suit the weather!!! BUGGER!
My last job wasn't tech support, but it did involve interacting with a lot of average Joe users and talking to them and trying to fix their computer-related problems. I was always (well, almost always) very courteous and did everything I could to help them and make them happy. However... the fact is, almost without exception, these people simply didn't know what the heck they were talking about. They weren't evil, or stupid (in most cases), they were just ignorant. I learned very quickly that accepting a user's description of a problem as accurate is very nearly always a big mistake. That's just the way it is.
My TI-99/4A, on the otherhand, did not survive a cup of milk when I was 6 years old. :)
you're not autistic, it's just a learning disability
I heard there's an operating system out there which can damage users' wetware, making them stupider and more complacent the more they use it.
My deviantArt site
Looks like the win CE marketeers are alive again. First bluetooth now this.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
No it isn't. It was quite easy to use actually. Part of a final year project I was part of was designing a module to communicate with the palm (and we tested comms with the PC RS232 serial port).
The circuit construction (the board we made used the UART in the PIC16xxx uC) was relatively simple to design with average voltage regulators.
.. otherwise I would think they were holding a ton of puts.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
HEY! You just got me fired from AOL technical support. I'm gonna sue you! :)
Nice job on getting that snap judgment in fast enough to be modded up, kiddo. You're soaking up karma like white bread soaks up gravy.
So return it for a replacement. I've had two Visors and no such problems with either (now, dropping the sucker from six feet onto a hard floor, that's another story.. but they replaced it under warranty)
... on two Dell Dimension motherboards ... each time a single pin on the serial port was fried. The first time I called Dell they said that they stopped supporting Palms on their PCs ... this was MONTHS ago.
You know the IIIc, the first color palm. LIon battery and all.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
In the days of serial mice, I could plug and unplug them willy nilly. IMO, technology has gone backwards here. We need to get rid of copper all together for external devices, (except for the AC mains). Then damage will be impossible.
I used my Palm to surf the net and get my mails, and i noticed that hotmail crashed!
Can i have the names of the lawyers? I smell money!!!
Sometimes if I plug it into it's cradle(USB) while another program is up on the pda( for example: Rally 1000) and press the HotSync button on the cradle it reboots my machine, and it will occasionally do the same thing, but not quite as often, when I try to plug it into the cradle while it's off.
It's more of a USB problem, but I think it's the way they designed these cradles, because I don't have any problems with any other USB devices on my machine. *shrug*
http://www.themeparks.ie
I dont know about killing my mboard but when I plug my Palm into its USB cradle it restarts my computer for me
This happened to me as well. I later learned that the box I plugged into the serial port had a "buildup" of static electricity that pased to the serial port of my computer. It didnt "blow" but my computer lost all of its bios information.
I wonder if this causes problems if the motherboard is not properly grounded?
1) Dells have dodgy serial ports (not related, but still interesting)
2) Palm V's have problems because of metal case and cradle and buildup of static charge
3) Static buildup zaps motherboard somehow, when hotsink button is pressed
4) Motherboard isn't grounded, hence charge just dissipates into the components, killing one of them
5) Hence user error - probably using a non-grounded power cable to the PC.
In whatever case, it appears that the problem is not with the Palm, but with either the motherboard being defective, or the user being defective. As people have said, it takes a damn lightning strike to kill a motherboard, or even the serial port on the motherboard. There is no way someone could build up that amount of static, even if their surname was "Nylon" and they work in a balloon rubbing factory... :)
But secondly, this does not mean consumer users are losers. Every one of us is a "loser" in some avenue or other. For instance, how many posts have you seen here with misspelled words or very bad grammar? Probably a lot. This does not mean that those people are "stupid," even if an English major might say that.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Assuming this *can* happen, is there a possibility that this could happen via a USB port? Mine came with a USB attachment, and although I am yet to get it to sync, I'm wondering if I want to bother.
I am tech support for roughly 600 users, and I noticed that I was getting a large number of fried serial ports (thus, motherboard replacements) on a certain type of pc. When I checked, every pc with a failed port had a Palm on that serial port. Not all pc's w/Palms fried of course - but when, out of 600 pc's, every bad serial port has a Palm Pilot attached to it, I get suspicious. And yes, hardware-identical pc's had devices attached to the serial port and yet did not lose the port. Hmmm... To date, I have ONLY lost serial ports to Palm Pilots.
Yup, It happened to me. One day I placed the Palm V on the cradle, there was a spark between the palm and the cradle, and my computer lost power. And then there was that ever-so-pleasant smell.
I pulled the motherboard, and there is a visibly burned out component.
I have had only one problem with pilots in the few years I've been working with them. They will not sync when plugged in to a Compaq Armada port replicator. When plugged directly in to the laptop they are fine. I suspect it's a Compaq flaw.
I know... sue Compaq.
-- Spammers: My E-mail server is in California. Consider yourself warned.
Eventually it was totally fuX0r3d when I tried to update the BIOS and it hung half-way through.
The motherboard was replaced and it's working fine now, but I wonder if this was the cause. Anyone else had this problem with a Gateway? or with a Palm IIIx?
wugga wugga
SCSI is meant to be hot pluggable, it is in the standard. There are some rules you have to follow depending on the hardware's ability to handle the extra load on the power and SCSI bus. Plus the operating system/adapter card have to look for new devices periodically, lest the device just sits there undiscovered. Read it at www.t10.org.
Did the processor like it?
Actually, it's with the serial port version of the V. It's putting a very large amount of voltage into the serial port and that's killing the UART.
A RS-232 serial port RS-232 by its standard has to be protected against short circuits and bursts of +/- 15V without bursting into flames. How would a Palm with batteries be able to accomplish such a feat?
We managed to save the data on the hard-drive using Linux fdisk. Though why the partition table was nuked by a static discharge, I don't know.
Rich
Somebody must have a reason to spread fear and uncertainty about palms.
As a Quality & Reliability engineer for computer systems at a major manufacturer, I can confirm that while ESD can be a major issue and CAN damage integrated circuits quite easily, I find it EXCEPTIONALLY unlikely that the damage indicated in this photo is from ESD. In order to get bubbling on the surface of the PDIP, you have to a voltage differnce high enough to cause a temperature increase that exceeds the melting point of the PDIP. Human body model or even charged device model ESD in expected ranges should not be capable of doing this. This looks like either a manufacturing defect from the board supplier or the PDIPs power or ground was shorted out.
I've seen a couple of motherboards that have had their USB electronics damaged by the new Palm USB cradle, and I could understand how the serial cradles destroy serial ports. If you open the palm cradle you'll see it is not buffered at all, so effectively you are plugging a serial device in and out. Dangerous!
I don't know about that - I just got a new processor and everything was fine. None of the other components failed (and I'm still using it now). Luckily I ended up with a faster processor ;-)
The processor went bad in a very strange way - every 8th byte or so would become randomly corrupted in the cache. It also depended on the MMU. It was very disconcerting writing code to see stuff change as you ran it!
My friend's apartment had pretty thick carpet, and the static electricity was particularly bad that winter day...
When I put the handspring into his (USB-connected) cradle, I felt a jolt, the Visor reset itself, and the computer rebooted! Fortunately, the palm and computer came back up, neither the worse for wear.
I bet this will get worse as flash-mem mp3 players proliferate...
Oppose software patents! Authors of free-as-in-speech software should remain free-as-in-Dmitri!
I've managed to kill loads of semiconductor stuff by being charged, including memory, power transistors, graphics cards etc..
It is quite easy to build up a static charge so that your body is over >200V. I've even measured myself as reaching ~3KV, though I was trying quite hard...
Now I ALWAYS make sure I'm earthed before touching ports, or the inside of machines. If there is any inadequate earthing of an external component this could allow the ports to get zapped.
I wouldn't be supprised if the plantifs win. Since we now live in a society which has "Caution, contents hot" written on coffee cups to avoid litigation, equipment would then come with "Caution, do not apply high tension electrical sources to port connectors" :)
On the other hand this kind of thing is always written in manuals for motherboards and PCs.. I guess they will have their day in court...
There is of course one simple solution to what may be an increasing problem. Standardised optical interconnects or optical isolation of ports...
A simple IR port, which I understand a lot of machines come with these days, means no physical connection and therefore no discharge possibilty..
Unless of course you get hit by lightning.... :-)
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
I have been an avid Palm user for years (Palm 1000, upgraded to Palm Pro, to Palm V). I moved from Palm to Handspring in March of 2000 because Handspring completed the USB drivers for Win2000 first. Today, I use a Visor Prism. I have never experienced a problem with a motherboard BUT about 6 months ago, my father-in-law who owns a Palm Vx could no longer sync. Palm sent him a new Vx, we tested the serial ports, the computer was working fine but no hot sync. Finally, he called Dell and they replaced the motherboard and all was well in the world again. After reading these postings, especially the ones from the Dell techs, it appears there is a problem with the Palm Vx and motherboards.
We have had at least 6 MB serial ports die on us, and even the second one on the same motherboard. Where I worked before we had like a dozen Palm V deployed and it just keep happening, maybe once a month. We even did some tests and sometimes we would get overvoltages when the palm was cradled. There just seems to be no protection for the serial ports.
I've done the same thing. I went to plug in my nice shiney (metallic) Palm V. saw a spark jump, and was treated to the wonderful smell of ozone mmmmmm. Now I always ground my self bfore I plug in. I also do not blame palm for my stupidity but a surge protector of some sort would be nice.
I have a Visor Prism -- a rechargable model. On my Win2000 box at work I can cause the machine to crash by sliding the Prism sideways across the contacts while inserting it into the cradle.
It's been a while since I've done this (and I'm not testing it right now :-), but what I recall is that it took the machine down immediately -- as if I'd hit a reset button.
If it can do that, I guess I might believe that inserting it incorrectly might in some unusual cases, maybe damage the MB.
But like I said, I don't really know much about what's going on in there...
Sean.
That's no different from hot-plugging any other devices, be it a mouse, a printer or a modem. Hot-plugging always contains the risk of damaging the chip that sits behind the port. That's nothing special to the Palm.
Hey,
The article implies that this is somehow software-based, and most people probably thought 'Bullshit', and rightly so.
A google search for Palm damage motherboard turns up some better articles: This one, and a follow-up here are both pretty good.
The guy making the claim has a page here. The guy (called Greg Gaub) details his story in which his Hewlett packard desktop computer's motherboard was ruined; Greg's claim is that the motherboard was damaged because of a faulty or badly designed Palm V cradle which doesn't dissapate static charges.
Quoth I: As you may be aware, The PalmV and Vx devices have an aluminum casing. They also have a cradle with, in my opinion, a design flaw that does not dissipate static electric charges that travel from a person (holding or reaching for their PalmV) into the cradle, and on into the desktop computer's motherboard via the serial connector.
It does seem a somewhat unlikely problem, but I suppose it could be possible, in theory at least.
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I work for Palm as a technical support aggent and I know that it is not Palms fault for the mother board damage. The damage is caused on Dells computers because Dell takes a cheaper approach on their computers and doesn't ground their com ports, so when you plus something in it is directly to the mother board, so a shock from your finger could ruin one of the mother boards.
It might thus be possible, on a defective socket, for the power lines to get shorted to the data lines, and cause damage to the main computer. I'm no expert on the serial/USB interfaces of computers, but it's entirely possible that even the low voltage coming out of the power-pack could do some damage.
If this was the case, then they'd certainly have a firm basis for suing Palm.
I've heard of people being very fond of their computers, but that's taking it a bit too far! :-)
Seriously, though, the USB ports on my work machine (Dell Precision 220) stopped working shortly after I plugged my Visor Edge's USB cradle in. At first I thought it was a problem with Win2K, so I reloaded the OS, but that didn't help. I did some tests, and found that the ports no longer send out any signal of any type. No power. Nothing. Win2K detects the ports, but I can't get them to function.
Since I don't use any other USB devices at work, and I have a serial cradle for my Visor, it hasn't been a big concern.
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
And in my case the low voltage side was connected by a not high enough impedance to the hot side of the mains!
You have a ton of feedback about this and you still tilt at windmills.
I had two PCs sitting next to each other. I had a shortage of UK power cables but I did have a US 2-pin power cable so I plugged that into an adapter and that powered computer #2. Computer #2 was headless but had a PSU with an oultet socket. I needed to power my digital camera so I used a hot-connector and plugged it into the outlet on computer #2 and the serial of computer #1.
OK, turns out that because it didn't have a proper ground, case of computer #2 was floating at around 90V. Therefore ground in camera floating at ~90V, therefore ground on serial cable floating at around 90V to computer #1 ground. When I plugged the serial into computer #1, I must have brushed the 90V shield against some pins. Dead serial port. When I noticed the serial port wasn't working properly, tried plugging it into the second one...
Ended up claiming on the house insurance (hardly worth it) and buying another.
Rich
If I were Palm I would sue the court for slander. They should be much more specific!
-- Cheers!
condensation and all ;0
What this sounds like to me, is that somebody wired the front USB ports on the case incorrectly to the motherboard. I know on some motherboard/case combo's, the plug block was wired incorrectly, or it wasnt even a block at all, so it was very easy to confuse which way they needed to be plugged in. So in effect, when the user plugged in his palm pilot to the USB port, the wrong voltages were going on the wrong wires, thusly frying the motherboard. I've seen it happen with joysticks and mice, theres no reason it couldnt happen with a palm. Note however, this has nothing to do with Palm, and everything to do with the original PC manufacturer.
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
never had a problem with either. My palm will even sync with my thinkpad in the docking station.
If someone can find any doc on this I'd appreciate it.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I agree that the bubbling seen is very strange and certainly not caused by static electric discharge, but your soldering iron example is not a good example. The fact is, chips cannot always "take a lot more energy than your finger" Different kinds of energy will yield different results. I have worked for 6 years in electronic disty and alot of money is spent on preventing static discharge because it does not take much static electricity at all to ruin an IC. So little, in fact, that the shock you get when touching a lightswitch on a dry day is tens of times more powerful that needed. In fact, the charge necessary to ruin most ICs is not even perceptable by human touch.
The plastic or ceramic casing of the chip and metal leads are designed to withstand heat sources, such as you soldering iron. This was probably a design specification from back in the days when soldering irons were used to solder the chips to the board. However, the fine wires _inside_ cannot take much of a shock. Kind of like if you were to run 100 amps through a 5 amp fuse. The leads on which you applied the charge may show little or no effect, but the filament on the inside is cut.
As an aside, the picture posted is quite dramatic. As first glace, I would guess that the guy is not using a sufficient surge protector. Remember, he is in California and their electricity situation has not been very steady lately. When a power grid is on the verge of failing, power wanes, and surges all the time. I would not be surprised at all if this is the sort of thing that happened. Either that, or the cat chewed through the power cord...
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
The motherboard: Tyan dual PII/PIII series motherboard. The palm culprit: Palm Pilot V from 3Com. The damage: fried (literally: burned, cracked and crispy) 65550A UART chipies (you know, the ones that sit right next to the 9-pin serials on an ATX form factor)
Now, for all of those who believe that this sort of thing couldn't _possibly_ happen, this happened 5 times to my dad. He's a good guy, but not terribly adventerous when it comes to computers. The only device he has ever plugged into a serial port since obtaining that system was (gasp) the Palm V cradle. After having the same problem with a replacement cradle (suggested by 3Com) and after 3 motherboards, another call to 3Com put him in touch with a 3Com/Palm engineer who was kind enough to inform my father that there is a design flaw in the electrical interface to the cradle.
For those that haven't seen the design, it involves a wall wart connected directly to the 9-pin RS232 connector--used for recharging the Palm V's battery.
At any rate, the problem is very real. I'm forwarding the URL for the article to my father. Who knows? Perhaps motherboard manufacturers that have replaced large numbers of units should join the class...
My ex was a level 2 support agent for Palm. The V and M500 series palms (the ones with integrated rechargable batteries) have an undocumented voltage leak in their charging system that feeds a stray voltage to certain pins in the serial port. If your motherboard does not have shielded serial ports (read: your motherboard was manfactured by cheap bastards - like Dell) your serial port will eventually be fried from said voltage. If you want to prevent this from happening, do not keep your cradle plugged into the wall and to the serial port at the same time. Palm may fix this in newer models - hell, they may have fixed it in the M500 series cradles already - but they sure as hell won't admit to the problem, as it would entail a massive recall of cradles that would further upset their delicate financial position.
No, you really can blow the entire motherboard through the serial or parallel port from static alone. I blew three of the same model 486 mobo back in the day. It is probably the result of a poor design by the manufacturer that can't handle variation on the input pins.
I used to work palm tech support this happens only with the rechargeable palms models. When I worked there they thought it had to do with improper shielding on the com ports. It happened especially with the dell optiplexes.
I blew out both serial ports from my old motherboard once, so I'm tempted to believe this story is true.
When the first serial port stopped working, I thought it was coincidence, but then I switched the cradle to the other one, and it eventally went out, too.
-Karl
My mobo is a quality Asus, her's is a cheapo Fry's special.
Am I (er, either on of us) in danger?
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
I have Windows NT 4.0 on my work PC. We got it from a company called "Microsoft". The operating system hasn't crashed for a lot longer than a week, in fact I cannot remember the last time it did.
I'm not a rabid Windows advocate by any stretch of the imagination, but these posts are flamebait.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
I mean, really; "damages or destroys the motherboards on certain PC brands" - just a little too vague there for me to take it seriously. Especially with a company that's shifted as many units ("more than 13 million") as Palm.
A technician, upon opening a box to work out modem problems a customer was having, found no modem card, but a phone cable spliced directly onto the main power cord. Upon asking the customer why on earth that was, the customer replied "Well, whoever made the computer forgot to install the the modem card, so knowing a bit about Electrical stuff I spliced in a cable myself.
It never fails to amaze me just how dumb some people are. ;-).
"hi my modem doesn't work"
"have you changed any settings"
"no"
I proceed to have them check the properties of their dialup to find, shocker, changes have been made.
The customer is not always 'right' dude. That does not excuse being rude or unhelpful to them but anyone who assumes the end-user is right or even telling the truth while providing support is going to waste 90% of their time.
At the computer store where I work, someone fried a motherboard simply by pushing a pin through a mouse cord when the computer was on. Must've shorted the wrong wires because there was actually a physical burn on the board. Could be a shorting problem.
You are correct about the lack of amperage. But when it comes to punching through semiconductor gates that are only insulted by an extremely thin layer of oxide, it doesn't take much, as long as the voltage pushing those few electrons is high, and that doorknob (or little brother, heh, heh ) spark is the result of a charge (a difference in potential) of several thousand volts. A *lot* higher than 12.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Save ESD! I personally think this is a tragedy!
Many static discharges that you see after you rub your feet on the carpet then touch a doorknob or your little brother are actually higher then 12 volts. The reason it doesn't kill you is the extream lack of amperage. Therefore, it COULD be possible, I think, to short out a serial port with a static shock, as it would raise the voltages past its protective thresholds. The only way I can really think of about how to fix this is to use an optical connection or to have better grounding.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
Love,
Cumsucker
My handspring visor prism at work seemed to be having conflicts with my dell pc. When setting the PDA in the USB cradle, sometimes the entire computer would just hang. The monitor goes blank, and I had to use the power button to reset it. After a couple weeks of this happening intermittently, with our local tech support not being able to help, the PDA stoppend syncing at all. We tried several different things, and it became apparent that the usb controller wasn't recognizing any device connected to it. Our local tech support people called Dell, who walked them through a few steps, and ended up coming out to replace the motherboard. I obviously don't have enough information to say that the PDA directly caused the motherboard problems, but after seeing this, it seems like I may have fallen victim to the same thing. Or maybe it's just a weird coincidence.
Tribbles, something must have happened between the time you plugged in the speaker, and the time the processor went bad, because there is no direct connection between the audio line output and the processor.
Probably a surge destroyed the power supply, and that destroyed the processor.
Bush's education improvements were
I don't think any of the serial lines tie directly into the motherboard.... if they were gonna blow anything, I'd think it was the UART that sits on the serial port. I also find it hard to believe you build up THAT much static that you send it through the serial port and fry UART and motherboard... maybe if the Palm's power supply somehow got shorted across a serial line, but not static.
Tinfoil, bubblegum wrappers, some copper wire and a late-night fix of MacGuyver episodes ISN'T enough to make your own home-made cradle...
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
A friend of mine had a lightning-induced surge hit the phone line of a BBS we were running a few years back... weird effects. It pretty much torched the external modem, came up the serial cable, lightly browned the UART (yes, the chip casing turned brown!), hopped down the bus, and grounded out through the power supply (blowing the lids off a few electrolytic capacitors in it in the process)... everything else in the box was fine.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Crackling sounds followed by thunder so loud, I was struck into an almost drooling catatonia. External modem was smoking and dead forever but motherboard and everything else was fine.
Since you have left the company, and your are posting anonymously, surely you could let us know who this company is? My investment is important and I would rather avoid a motherboard from a company with such a policy.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Whenever I change the batteries, the bloody thing resets itself and I have to do a HotSync. I also get "battery too low to recharge transmitter" messages a lot--even after I put fresh batteries in. If you can help me at all, email libertas "at" goldmail.ru
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change
If you are talking to an external device with something like a serial port and that device draws too much current, then you are going to burn out whatever chip is associated with that serial port. Its not *that* unlikely that palms draw too much and hose some serial chips, what *is* unlikely is that palm created something and didnt make its interface conform to the voltage+current standard specifications for that protocol... Its probably some motherboards that have cheapo controllers that dont conform to the spec.. just a thought.
Why stick up for big business?
I had a Palm Vx, and synced it frequently on my Dell Dimension XPS-R400. Everything was fine until one day, for no apparent reason, the hotsync operation simply stopped working. Following a lot of calling back and forth between Palm and Dell, it was determined that this was a known problem. Over time, syncing had caused the serial port controller chip on the motherboard to fry. To remedy this, I had Palm send me a free USB connection kit, and Dell graciously agreed to replace the motherboard (the computer was still under warranty). It was all a bit of a hassle, but I got it taken care of eventually. I tend to be good at getting what I want from customer service reps, but I'm guessing that we all are, considering how much contact we have with them.
what I mean is that my mouse isn't hooked up to an external power source like your monitor or your speakers. It runs off the power that comes from the computer. Now try and tell me that the mouse and a palm are the same... that would be funny.
I read his account, and I don't think his case has much merit. But I'm quite impressed that he was able to figure out how to get his HP case open.
Evil is the money of root.
For palmpilots you plug/unplug them all the time by design, which actually is kind of strange and not compatible with the design of the serial port. From this POV it is not so strange to hold Palm liable for bringing such a product on the market (at least without clearly warning for the risk or telling people to only plug/unplug while the computer is shut off).
Of course with the newer USB palms, this is no longer an issue.
Seems ti be a frw kiys in the wrohf place.
What about serial???
Just for the purpose of being picky, it would be "Voltage Levels between -12.000000 and +12.000001" for a 16550 series UART.
And I though it was supposed to be a chicken head in a box of Chicken Mc Nuggets...
And unless you're suggesting that you're somehow causing a flow of current to exist by some mysterious (magnetic? thermal?) property, which in any case would act more like a voltage source and thus be current-limited by the resistor, a potential-difference on the connectors will have to be drawn THROUGH the resistor, hence the current will be the dependant variable, not the voltage, since the potentials are fixed.
A more likely problem is just a high level of potential difference between the two devices before they are connected (static electricity), so that a high potential is developed, which can quite rapidly pop the insulating layer in a MOSFET if not properly clamped with big diodes.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Since I bought my Palm 5, I've blown a few pieces of hardware. I always thought that the failure was related to sticking the palm in the cradle, but I could never actually prove it.
Now I have a MB with a dead serial I/O, a toasted CD drive, and a toasted HD. It may just be coincidence, but the funny thing is that these devices failed at nearly the same time I put my palm in it's cradle.
It isn't as if I was syncing my Palm every day or anything... maybe once a week or so.
Perhaps it's a coincidence. Now I'm not so sure.
Dell Dimension, as well as most other lines of Dell hardware, have Intel-manufactured motherboards, seeing as Dell is an Intel-friendly (and only) shop[1].
The Palm V, serial version and specifically the Dimension 4100, which has an Intel 815 chipset, will cause, if the computer is running in the cradle for the palm is plugged in and on, when plugged into the serial port the system to lock and the serial port will blow out.
The fault lies with the motherboard manufaturer, not Palm. Palm's serial design is conforms perfectly to the standard. The motherboard designers desiced to skimp on serial design because 'who uses them for anything these days?'
Wings, not nuggets. Makes more sense, right?
Serial ports should be able to handle at least +/-12 volts, and since the palm pilots I've used run off 2 AAA batteries, the best it should be able to do directly is 3 volts. There may be circuitry in the cradle to increase this, but the serial ports should be protected from any serious voltages if they are designed properly. RS232 was originally designed to run using signals operating at -12 and +12 volts, and must handle noise occurring at hiher voltages. Most current serial ports will work reliably using signal going from 0 to 3 volts, but they still must handle the +/-12 volt transitions. It also needs to be able to handle static because serial ports can be plugged in/out without powering down the system. The only thing that I can think of that should be able to damage the processor board would be a very badly designed serial port (which would make the problem the fault of the serial port designer), or a massive ground loop (would require the palm pilot to be plugged into a power plug on a seperate circuit from the PC using a badly designed wall wort, and would likely destroy the palm pilot too). The only times I've ever seen damage to serial ports has been due to lightning (which is impressive), or some serious voltages shorted onto the cable (direct short to power line).
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
1 - RS232 ports can handle a lot more than 5 volts, and ordinarily have circuitry just behind the connector to make things all nice-like.
2 - USB ports are made for hot-swaps, and the connector is unlike any other, so they're probably also not the cause of this complaint.
3 - Some Palm docks (like the one for my V) have to be connected inline between the keyboard and the computer.
4 - Some keyboards lock up when the keyboard is plugged and unplugged, and I've seen some CPUs conk out when this happens under power.
Unfounded conclusion: This is related to someone not knowing what can be plugged/unplugged when the box is powered up, that being the keyboard.
Unfounded conclusion 2: or just some idiot attorney who will believe anything he's told if there's a fee attached to it.
If you just wanted to prove you're clever enough to take 4 characters out of an email address, you could have just emailed me, you know.
If a tree falls in the forest, and it falls on a mime, does anyone care?
Windows O/S damaged my motherboard. I wanna class action lawsuit, too! Anybody eles want in on this?
The RS232c standard actually allows for a fairly wide range of voltages between -24/+24vdc although this is generally not fully respected on domestic PC serial ports. Industrial serial cards can cost hundreds of .
/. account for a one-time contribution)
The issue here is that the serial port is not intended to be "hot". Sure, the cable "should" carry a ground and "could" be shielded but this doesn't help if, in the process of plugging in a device, either static or normal voltage hits the wrong pin. The device "must" be capable of being isolated to allow installation/removal while the host port is active.
Another of the problems this raises is that many modern mobos use onboard...erm, everything! AT motherboards -- apart from a few proprietary boards for branded machines -- would use expansion cards for all external comms. This generally meant that if a port was blown by an unfortunate experiment, it could be replaced fairly cheaply.
I still ensure that I use an off-mobo port for anything that I reckon might "break" (read "explode!") and old ISA i/o cards can be picked up for pennies these days.
Ideally, mobo manufacturers should be looking at integrating opto-isolated ports...this ought to prevent these kind of accidents from happening.
The point to remember is that we are discussing two expensive consumer devices -- the Palm and the PC -- that have insufficient safeguard against static damage. I would suggest that at least one of the vendors has a degree of liability and that the poor guy has a real cause for complaint.
rb (Bitbucket)
(no coward...just can't be bothered creating a
FYI, a couple of morons + a lawyer = three morons.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I've had my share of Dell Latitude's with broken serial ports because of the Palm V Cradle, and these MB's were replaced by Dell Technicians multiple times without any problems. But it's a pain, especially if you are trying to emergency-flash a cisco router over the serial console, with some very impatient client watching your every move. Bad timing to figure out that your laptop's serial port has been blown to smithereens just hours before :).
Palm's Cradle has zapped many-a-MB, but filing a class-action suit is probably a bit overreacted. That's what you get for living in the land of the free.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
rs232 is -12 to +12 volts for representing a 1 and 0 respectively. Rs232 ports can usually handle a surge up to 2X that voltage range without damage and the max232 chip which is normally found in mo-bo's today (or it's cheap chineese copy cousin) can sink a larger surge. Cince the serial port is used to seeing a 24volt span (-12+12=24 in volts math) then a surge of 48volts can be handled easily. Therefore in order to damage the driver chip you need to supply greater than 48 volts to the pins, and way higher than that to get past the driver chip to the PIO chip... which being cmos will die a horrible death at 7-8 volts.
there is now way this could happen. (I have seen computers sit there with close to 55 volts AC on the serial pins being inducted from a long serial run in a factory. with no damage to the PC or the serial hardware.
Short of a direct static shock to the port, which will only take out that serial port, you cant damage the mobo with a serial device (unless your serial device is a lamp cord and plug wired to a 9 pin plug.... I could see 110V ac could create a bit of trouble in the pc
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If any of you remember C64's, this could happen on the joyport as well.
It's the touchy CMOS stuff, or the current equivalent that might be the problem.
I saw an NT machine reboot after putting a Palm in the cradle. After seeing that, I would touch on of the screws in the back of the PC first and raise up the sliding cover on the palms connector, touching it to discharge any static build up before I put it in the cradle.
So, I wonder whether they really mean that the cradle causes the PC to be vulnerable to electrostatic discharge.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
To get an ungrounded motherboard these days takes lots of work! First the power supply has to be ungrounded, the ports (ATX jack cluster) must not touch the case, Screws missing mounting the motherboard, and the video card etc. must not be touching the case. Roughly translated, to get an ungrounded motherboard, the entire PC must be ungrounded. Be sure the outlet is properly grounded and everything should be fine.
The truth shall set you free!
A search for "palm pilot sync motherboard" on deja.com returns 250 results.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I wonder if that helps. 14 (or so) years ago, my mother statically zapped a keyboard (which was mucho expensive back then), and that prompted us to start using anti-static stuff in the laundry. There has been no fried equipment since.
One day late at work I crossed the room and reached for my Palm Vx. Zap, big shock. Worried about the Palm, I check it out and everything seems to be working ok. The next morning I slip it in the cradle and start my normal sync. Surprise! It can't establish communication. I switch to the other serial port, change the software setting and everything works. Change back and still nothing...the serial port is dead. It's at this point I remember the big shock the night before. Incidentally, it's an Asus motherboard that now has a dead serial port.
Finger to spiritual emptiness underlying everything - pointer to void in a translated C manual
This happened to me. I had just bought a brand new Palm m505 that I had delivered to work. I plugged the (USB) cable from the cradle into the Dell Precision 220 on my desk. I then placed my m505 in the cradle at which time I heard a pop and the light went out on my Microsoft (USB) optical mouse. At the same time the computer reset but never started back up. It never even got to the bios screen. I powered down the computer, powered it back up and the USB port appeared to be dead. I tested the Microsoft mouse on other computers to verify the port was dead and not the mouse (The mouse worked fine on other computers). Nothing else beside the USB ports appeared to be damaged. Luckily it was a work computer and I was able to use a USB->PS2 adapter that came with the mouse. When I took my m505 home it didn't toast my home computer, so I didn't really care. Richard
This is one of the best posts I've read on here in a long time. Not the usual "users are stupid!!!!" messages.
You are absolutely right. I'm the only network admin for a company with about 200 users. We do have a couple of desktop support guys that work with the end-users. My job is mostly servers, and only end-user support when needed. We've had a HARD time finding good desktop people..people that HELP the user and don't call them "lusers" as soon as they walk away. We've finally gotten good people in but we're still dealing with all the damage the last group did.
A lot of computer admins and support people forget that their customer is the end-user...not the company they work for. If it weren't for them we wouldn't have jobs. So the top priority is to make them happy. My servers could be barely getting by, but if the users are happy I'd still have a job. Flip that around, if my servers were flying along with full backup and great performance but the users weren't happy and had problems I'd be fired.
I work int he same buidling as Palm Tech Support And I've heard of this happening, or atleast their reps talking about calls from user who fried there MB I don't think the issue was with hot syncing with USB, but the serial link and some crappy motherboards.
Oh, it can happen, believe me! I've seen something similar once debugging an embedded system. We were using a ROM emulator attached to the PC via the parallel port. The PC and the target machine happened to be plugged into different AC circuits. The PC went *poof* suddenly. Turns out the cause was a 300 mV (yes, 300 millivolt) differential between the grounds on the two circuits.
The moral of the story is, some PCs will put up with a lot of electrical abuse, while others are pieces of junk with no isolation whatsoever. It can happen. However, in a case like this I'd say it's the PC at fault, not the external device.
Oh, and always use a common ground!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Nooo, that would havae been MaryAnne
See my .sig.
You're right, of course, which is what I was saying. Perhaps you meant to reply to the parent to my message?
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
I had the cradle connected to the serial port, and one day when I dropped the WorkPad into the cradle, the serial port broke. I'm using COM2 at the moment and watching my cradle suspiciously each time I put my palm into it. Does anyone know if IBM and Palm have any stock shares in motherboard companies?
http://www.themeparks.ie
The law offices of
Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe!
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
I figure I might as well put my "me too" under someone else's post, but all these "it couldn't possibly happen!" posts are damn irritating when it happened to me. Put the Palm in its cradle, hear a tiny pop from the speakers, system freeze, no boot, mobo dead.
this sounds too much like the people who try to get warranty replacements of their computers when their cats piddle on it. ;-)
;)
I knew someone who tried to have thier answering machine replaced under warantee after one of thier many cats vomited on it.
Their computers probably just broke down and they're hoping Palm will settle out of court and give them new ones just to get them to shut up.
Exactly, just like these people that put a mouse head into a bag of frozen peas and then try to extort a years supply of frozen peas, etc.
Scumbags. Or perhaps, they're just the type of people who first tried to use thier mouse as some foot peddle device to "make it go" (and then after accidentaly killing it, put it into a bag of frozen... Nah they could'nt be that dumb, could they?).
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
To everyone wondering about the power sources on the HotSync cradles, one thing to keep in mind is that serial ports are built to take much higher AND lower voltages than the palm cradle. Those run off 5V IIRC...
Serial ports are built to the EIA-RS232 spec, which requires it to handle at least -10V to 10V to barely come within spec. Recommended tolerance for EIA-RS232 is an even larger swing.
About the only thing I can see is that there was a short, and it toasted the UART. Since many systems are integrating the UART onto the southbridge, this could be a possibility. However, I doubt this will ever make it to class action status. Palm will pay for the mobos and fix the cradle's design, and that will be that.
I try to make a habit of not plugging in keyboards while the computer is on. Most of the time nothing happens, but if you are unlucky you can FUBAR(tm) your motherboard.
-Jeff
If you assume they're not hucksters, they are doing this to get people who may not have known about the problem to come out and join their effort to right the wrong.
If you're a realist, they are doing this because they are trying to get greedy and/or stupid people like themselves to jump on the bandwagon and get enough mass to force a settlement. Unintended Acceleration Syndrome, anyone?
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
'smoothing capacitor in the PSU recieved a fatal overvoltage when connecting a peripheral'
Hmm, sounds good. dummy mode on!
But seriously, I agree that the customer should be able to use your product as it was intended without having any problems. But if someone drove their Ford into a tree they wouldn't have any claim against Ford, would they? Question is, what were these people doing that caused their Palms to break their mobos?
Now, I accept that this could be a fault with the Palms. Or it could be a fault with the motherboards (I wonder why they've not gone after the motherboard manufacturers).
All I did was speculate that the problem could have been caused by something other than the Palm. This was based on my experience of people similarly mis-diagnosing problems (and often causing the fault themselves either through understandable software problems or through genuine stupidity [yes, it does exist and sometimes there's a limit on what you can do to overcome it]). And the fact that there's just two of them filing this suit makes me even more suspicious. OK, so it's a negative attitude, but it's only that way because of what I've seen previously.
Lack of proper grounding can allow or contribute to this kind of problem.
Yup. I can see credibility to this lawsuit. I am the IT Manager at the company. The president of my company used a Palm Vx. The com port on his computer blew out twice. After the first time we replaced the motherboard on his PC with an ASUS motherboard. Several weeks latrer it blew out too. The computer and all its peripherals were plugged into a APC UPS so it was not line voltage that caused the proble. After replacing the board again, I added an APC serial port surge protector between the palm and the computer.....no more blowouts.
At the time Palm denied there were any problems to the cradle that would cause this. But after exhausting all other possibilities, I believe it has something to do with the Palm's. I might just contact these people and help them in their fight
A lawsuit asserts that VALinux Inc's Slashdot "News for Nerds" has damaged desktop monitors when users visit the website through their computers. CmdrTaco has refused to comment on this issue.
In 99.9% of the time there is no problem, but the palm is typically a device that gets plugged/unplugged very often, thus the chance for damage may indeed get quite high.
This reminds me about my old IBM PS/2 P70 portable pc. After 10 months or so it could not boot anymore. The IBM service guy told me that all the P70's with a serial number lower than xxx50000 did not have ground connecting on the floppy drive so the mainboard slowly got fried from static charge transfer from people inserting floppies.
Uh Yes they do. I can show you the actual MODELS on the intel website. They are intel made. I had to do alot of work to get an old Dell 233 working with a celeron. Dellwouldn;t support it but the motherboard was made by intel and I was able ot get drivers from their website that would do it. Yes Intel chipsets but also YES to the boards as well.
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
Oh yeah! Screw Palm (and CE), get an iPAQ and install Linux!
I called them with a stupid problem and they mailed me a new one. I'm guessing that the first Palm heard of this mess was when the reporter asked them about the suit. If they got an off the wall complaint like that, they would probably have gievn the customer a new box so they could tear apart the old one and see if it had actually happened. From a curiosity standpoint, it'd be worth the money. "I wonder if our product can do that?" Trying to duplicate the results wouldn't work. Getting your hands on a box that (allegedly) it's already happened to is much better.
Sounds like a couple of morons and a law firm willing to spend a couple of associates' time on a crap shoot. Business as usual.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
And what makes you think you get free replacement just because you used your hotsync cable to make a serial/USB to 120v adapter? 8:o)
Help us build a better map!
What you do is make a document and make sure your default printer is one that one that has more than 2 papersources. Make sure that paper source for the document is source 3 (or whatever). Save the document, and go to another pc with a HP2100 connected to it. Print the document and watch the printer wait for paper to be inserted into the manual feed, even though the internal magazine is full. This will happen not only for the document that was just printed, but for all subsequent ones too. Or anything that is dumped to the printer.
What happens is office resets the printer settings, and you have to use the DOS control panel to reset the default paper source in the printer. Can't do it from the windows control panel, oddly enough, because that setting isn't saved. Somehow word can pull it off, but HP's application can't. Weird.
I've had my Handspring Visor suddenly up and reboot my machine the instant the metal contacts touch the hotsync cradle. I've called Handspring about it only to get a "We'll have to return your call" answer, with no return call of course.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
The voltage plugged in to a Palm cradle is around 4.1V DC (unless you have a broken transformer which is easy to check with a voltmeter). The transformer is on the mains plug, not in the cradle
Looking at some of the links posted it seems to be happening mostly on the V series. I guess the metal case makes a good conductor for static.
Was it a powered speaker (i.e. containing an amplifier), and if so, did the power supply for it have an earth pin on the wall plug?
I have an unearthed, regulated switch-mode power pack: 240V AC input, switchable 3 to 12V DC output in 1.5V increments (except 10.5V) output. After feeling a tingle when touching a device powered by the plug pack, I checked the output with a digital multimeter. Since there is no earth connection, the negative output is floating at around 114V AC; the current is around 120uA. This is probably not an issue if the device is earthed, but would probably kill sensitive electronics. A floating voltage like this may explain why the Palm V powered cradle allegedly fries motherboards.
I can attest to the fact that it doesn't matter. At my last job (as posted above) I had it happen with 2 different machines (none of them Dells) 1 motherboard was ASUS and the other was a TYAN. Both machines had a 3 Pin powercable and power bar with surge protection and both used a serial cradle.
And was it good for you?
The Palm V is actually destroying serial ports. It's outputting far more voltage than specs. It's possible with many systems to just plug it in and watch all other serial devices stop working on that system.
Some motherboards don't have a problem with it because the UARTs are designed better. Standard UARTs like those in Intel reference design motherboards will have a problem with the ESD output by the Palm V.
Computer OEMs like Compaq, Dell, and HP no doubt know about this problem but haven't sued 3com because at this point it would likely put them out of business with all the follow-on suits by just about everybody else.
Static discharge is in the THOUSANDS of volts.
With people it's the "volts that jolt, but the mills (milliamps) that kill".
With electronics, even a low current, high voltage static shock is deadly.
If a static shock is enough to stimulate your nerve directly to cause sensation (after passing through a relatively high resistance of your skin), it is MORE than enough to punch a hole through the oxide layer of a CMOS chip, creating a new electrical connection (short) where one does not belong. This is permanent.
In addition, such a short can cause increased heat production which can cause thermal runaway (more heat and more current in a vicious cycle).
This can easily melt/burn a chip.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Reading off of the back the power supply 4.1 VDC 0.4A 6.0 VDC 0.1A
Science is most definatly not a religion, and the moment that it is treated as one it becomes completely unreliable. See Carl Segan.
Because of the magnesium case, she had repeatedly discharged static to the Palm whenever she took it off the cradle.
Dell was gracious enough to replace the motherboard once, but warned that they won't do it again. Told her to ground herself before put the Palm on or taking it off the cradle.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Has a lot of sympathy for Palm. At least we can be sure that the M$ FUD machine didn't have anything to do with this.
I've got a user who doesn't seem to get the total concept of passwords. His password is static (IE. it doesn't change or expire). However he insists on changing it at seemingly random intervales, and everytime he does he forgets it the next day. When ever this happens he phones me up and accuses me of changing his password. Like with a 1000+ users I've nothing better to do.
So I reset his password and force him to change it on login. And he's fine until the next time he gets the idea to change his password. I often think he has a split personality or something.
I've probably got hundreds of examples like this. It's one of the hazards of working tech support for ten years. The moral is that it sometimes IS the user and good support often means resisting the urge to use the LART.
You have to be on crack or stupid to insult them when you know nothing about their claim. The palm V has a metal case, which could easily transfer a static charge from your hand into the serial port if, for example, the case or the ground pin of the palm brushed against one of the data pins in the cradle. Your wacom tablet, external modems, and other serial devices, not being hot swapped regularly on a port not designed for hot swapping, are unlikly to have the same problem.
Heh. So they're suing Palm? Why aren't they suing the motherboard makers for making such crappy motherboards? It seems to be a much higher likelihood, since it only happens to *some* motherboards. My guess would be that palm has deeper pockets.
Either that, or the users in question here don't know jack about what really went wrong... like if they put a cup of coffee in their "cup holder" and when they hit the hot-sync button, it closed.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I used to work in Heathrow, FL doing tech support for Palm 7 and also seperately Omnisky. On very rare occasions normaly involving Dell Laptops and a dockinstation or Port replicator, the serial port on the laptop quit working. and then that lovely smell of burnt chips. From what the customer said, the laptop was in the docking station and the running, and they plugged in the craddle and they smelled something burnt. From then on the serial port was either dead, or just spit out garbage. In working there 2 years I had 1 call like this and heard of 2 others.
I actually had serial ports on a Gateway machine quit working. The only thing ever plugged into them was a palm cradle. Coincidence? Dunno. Sys was under warranty, so I don't care really.
"Thus Spake", dumbass.
P.S. Nietzsche is a degenerate.
-- Klimov
Electro Static Discharge? I guess it's possible...shag carpet+palm V....
this only seems to happen with palm V's, it also doesn't seem to be restricted to specific motherboards. when the palm is in its craddle and you connect it to the pc, it will fry the port. in my experience its more of 'when' than 'if'. in fact, the [nameless major PC brand] that I was previously employed at has a policy of NOT REPLACING MOTHERBOARDS THAT HAVE PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE SERIAL PORT IN CASES WHERE A PALM V HAS BEEN INVOLVED.
The new palm that ships with the USB cradle zapped the USB port on a G4 desktop and G3 laptop in my company.
One way we avoid this is only hotsync with the power unplugged and only charge without the USB plugged in.
Ugly.
And I can assure you, and the BOFH will concure. 100% of problems are user induced, my networks are perfect!
Do you have any idea how many stupid thing I hear in a day. Like the other day when some one told me their laptop was 'broken' wouldn't work at all. "I can't do anything at all" they say. Turns out they 'forgot' to plug back into the RJ-45 plug in the wall. If they can't access the network:
1. Its 'broken'
2. My fault
3. A stupid computer
4. all of the above
4!!!!!
STUPID (L)Users
YAY TECH SUPORT
This is an example of the kind of attitude that keeps corporate users unhappy with their technical support. It's not right to assume that just because you can't imagine the causal connection between (your example) Office 97 and a printing problem that there isn't one. Haven't you personally had many experiences in which changing one variable (say, plugging a printer into a different USB port) immediately precedes something else, seemingly unrelated, "breaking"? No matter how fastidious you are, no matter what operating system you're using, an OS + thousands of programs + all the variability in hardware configurations in the world is far too complex a system for you to intuitively know whether the report of a problem's apparent cause is right.
If you're in a service profession, your job is to serve -- to assume that your customers are reporting, to the best of their ability, what they understand about the situation, and to use the information they give you, however flawed, to find the source of the problem. Up with "stupid users", I say.
The argument that this company shipped more than 13 million units is hardly support for the premise that they can't screw up. And it's a cop-out to lay the blame at the feet of pejoratively-labaled "users". Both the computer hardware and software industries get away with far too little responsibility to ensure quality in their products.
As the always paranoid, I ask this question: Do MS CE based PDA's do this? This type of publicity would fit well into a campaign to discredit the Palm and its OS with relation to Microsoft using products.
Where I work we have a couple of the SGI visual workstations (320, 540) Nice machines BTW :). Syncing a Palm fried the serial port on one of them. Because of the unique machine design the entire board had to be replaced.
We use USB sync now, but it is not as good as the serial. (Don't know why...)
Blogging because I can...
If you're talking about the case speaker (the one that's there to go "beep", not one connected to your sound card for playing MP3s), if the speaker had a short across the terminals, it can draw enough current to melt the insulation on the wires running back to the 4-pin (position) header on the motherboard. Also speakers, because of the voice coils, are inductive devices, so it's not impossible for them to send a spike back into the motherboard. If there isn't sufficient isolation and filtering between various power lines on the board, a spike on one could damage a component on another.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Sounds to me like somebody and their lawyer thought that Palm would make a good target. If I were the judge, I'd dismiss the suite on lack of evidence, i.e. they should specify which devices had problems. You could make the same claim about anything.
How can they claim that it is the Palm device anyway? A well-designed motherboard should be able to handle any of the pins on any of its external ports shorted together. If their motherboard malfunctioned, they should be going after the motherboard or PC manufacturer. If they also have a defective hotsync cradle, they should be able to get a new one from Palm.
science is a religion
i would disagree. at a distance it is hard to tell the difference between a user and a rhesus monkey. the latter might even be smarter. just a thought LOL.
What a situation like this calls for is a whole mess of diodes. Probably hi9h-rated zeners. You'd be surprised how few engineers actually design products (especially computer products) with the absolute maximum rated stresses in mind. Just think about how easily you could kill most of the Palm's by dropping them.
Adding big diodes could bleed away such static before it kills the system, although an even better solution would be a hinged door over the socket on the cradle (like on game consoles) with semiconductive plastic in the cradle itself to ground out any loose charge on the palm.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Having said that, the hotsync is triggered by shorting two pins on the palm's connector, and on li-ion palms the cradle also supplies a charging voltage, but I'd be very suprised if it was possible for these to feed back along the serial cable and do any damage.
And surely any damage that's done via a serial connection must be down to the motherboard manufacturer? The RS-232 spec (and I'll admit my knowledge here is next to zero) surely must have a fixed maximum voltage on the pins?
If a tree falls in the forest, and it falls on a mime, does anyone care?
In other words, the story is so hard to believe that it must be true. Could you have made it up?
Please note that connecting your telephone system and electrical wiring is something that should never be done. Electrocution (of utility workers and neighbors as well as anyone in your own household) and fire are distinct possiblities, even probabilities. If you don't understand all the reasons why, you definitely do not know enough about the subject to be doing anything except hiring someone who does.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You know, they really should make Mod -5: What a friggin' dick an option.
I have a Palm Vx which charges its battery everytime you place it in the cradle. There is a mains adapter which plugs straight into the serial cable/adapter which then goes into the serial port on my pc (as oppose to plugging into the cradle itself). This could explain how a _higher_ voltage could make it to the motherboard. I'm not sure what the voltage is because I don't have the cradle with me. What you then have is essentially a mains/power adapter feeding straight into your serial port and then straight to the motherboard. The consequences of connecting the two together with everything switched on is probably similar to connecting a live SCSI cable to a SCSI interface - lots of sparks and a real p**sed off motherboard. just a thought. Maybe I'll turn all my gear off next time I plug my cradle in - just in case ;)
The serial port that the cradle on my Boss's machine was attached to just died.
Hmm, a new project for the HardOCP? :)
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
I've had a few cases where plugging in a Palm and an HP printer at the same time would make the system try to do a network boot. Which was easily fixed by fdisk /mbr but nothing big...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I plugged in a speaker into the computer while it was on, and the processor blew. It was probably to do with the voltage differences, causing a spike in the PSU.
I can imagine that the Palm may do the same thing, but I'd hope that there would be warnings to tell people to ensure that if they're plugging different things in which are connected to the mains that they'd better make sure everything's off.
Of course, with connectors that earth levels properly, and with spike protection, this shouldn't be an issue.
I am not an electrican but as far as I know RS232 is a horrible standard to implement, requiring +15V and -15V signals - requiring voltage converter chips to run from a battery. In my limited experience some devices get away with using +/-10V, 0 and 10V and other levels. The problems here may be due to both the Palm and the motherboard using half-baked RS232 implementations - if the motherboard was expecting 0-10V and actually got +/-15V.
I'm sure someone more versed in electronic engineering could correct or confirm this. Then again, it may be a USB problem anyway.
Seems to me they use Intel Motherboards. Not saying they the best way to go as I prefer to build my PC from ground up, but they do NOT manufacture their own motherboards.
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
...doesn't even have an electrical charge through it
This one of those new non-electric mice? Are these the ones that run on telepathy?
As someone who worked Palm Support for two years (Including Level 2, escalations, etc), I can say that I've never heard of this. What I have heard of is unbelievably stupid users... "I have three businesses, I keep all the relevant information on my palm, and now I dropped it. Hotsync? Of course I don't." Or... people who want to Hotsync without having the Palm connected to the computer? Or.... the staggering number of people that thought the contrast adjustment was a volume control. I could go on for hours... I doubt this will get very far...
This problem seems to be entirely due to static. Here's an anecdote - over the last several years my brother has destroyed too many motherboards to count. I have never lost a motherboard. I am careful about static - he rips his computer apart every week and leaves the case covers off.
I remember when people were advised to touch the case of the computer before even using the mouse? And yes, there have been reports of motherboards dying because of static discharge through the mouse. I haven't heard such stories lately, perhaps that was when serial mice were more common. However, this story seems to be the exact same thing, only with Palms instead of mice.
Moral of the story - ground yourself before you use your computer and take common sense precautions.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Hey don't say palm couldn't have done that. Personaly my new mouse keeps crashing my computer and doesn't even have an electrical charge through it. Don't think these people are lying cause something simmilar happend to me. Next time I might... read the manual before going and plugging in that evil mouse. So watch out the palm v sounds like the nuke of all nukes!
... and this is known to happen with Palm computers blowing out USB and/or Serial ports because of cradle design flaws which send too much voltage back to the computer. In most cases the computer is fine except now with one less port, but I have seen them where the entire motherboard is damaged because of it.
So, the vast majority of people who don't think it's the Palm's fault seem to agree that the mobo wasn't up to spec and didn't properly protect itself from ESD.
For the curious, my mobo was/is Asus brand, and the computer is an HP Pavilion.
Does anyone know of a mobo maker that DOES make their boards to spec, or provide some better protection from ESD (such as optical couplers that some people have told me about)??
Thanks!
-Greg
Basically, the Palm cradle will fry certain serial port hardware. It happened to a co-worker of mine and it took _long_ time on the phone with both Dell and Palm before an engineer at Palm said "oh, that problem .... " and blamed the fry-age on Dell.
Its a real problem, and Palm knew about it.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
My friend fried 2 serial ports syncing with his Palm. He now plugs it into another computer on the network and syncs across it.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I work as an L1 tech for Dell systems, and the Dimension XPS systems are vulnerable to having the motherboard fried from static electricity when hooking a palm up to a serial port (NOT a USB port). The specific systems affected are the XPS L, XPS T, XPS B, and XPS R (the ones without a letter). If you have one of these systems, do NOT use the serial port on your system to sync with a Palm unless you want to make the sheepish call to me saying your board is dead. Please note that, if you do have a Dell, your service contract will cover replacement of the fried board, but ONCE and ONLY ONCE. The support person will replace the board and warn you to not do it again. If you've used a palm and your Dell PC serial port, and you want to know if your motherboard is damaged, pop open the case (no, that doesn't void your service contract like with other manufacturers) and check the board for burns. If there aren't, hook something else up to the serial port and see if it works. Usually the damage is only that it shorts out the controller for the serial port, but I have seen a case or two where it fries the entire board, turning the system to a paperweight.
The ABSTRUSE One
Jason Byrons
"You all laugh at me because I'm different
I laugh at you because you're a
Sorry, but one customer's inability to keep track of abstruse, opaque sets of "settings" on his computer does not make him an idiot. It also does not make the problem his fault. Somehow that software allowed him to change something important without knowing what he'd done. It's the software's fault.
Hell, I'm no slacker, but sometimes I get surprised when I look up my connection settings. That's mostly because Mindspring/Earthlink's software sometimes tries to "fix" things for me. I know enough to fix things back the way I want it, but not all computer users have the time to figure these quirks out for EVERY piece of software they use.
That's why tech companies should provide their own tech support, and use feedback from the support crew to find out what parts of the products people just aren't figuring out.
I repeat: if your customer can't figure out your product, unless your product is made explicitly for a technical audience, and unless the customer (NOT "end-user") threw their box out the window or hooked it up to jumper cables or something, it's not the customer's fault, it's product design.
Fight for your right to read books!
Far more likely to be a problem with Windows, than with Linux. Linux is built as a bunch of relatively independant modules. Windows is designed as a monolithic piece of spaghetti code
(well, maybe not quite that bad, but "Oh my god, the Web browser is surgically attached to the core OS!" is a pretty bad sign. I have also seen things like changing the settings on the printer spooler messing up the mouse driver (! .. Only on windows)).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
of course palms can damage motherboards.
so can the occasional fist or foot.
that's what happens when you get physical and "boot" your computer whenever it misbehaves. i don't think you have any right to sue...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Rather than saying 'up with stupid users', how about we continue to call them stupid until they can prove themselves otherwise?
More than once before I have suggested to those calling me for tech support that they might like to read 'The Demon Haunted World' by Carl Sagan as an excellent primer for how to apply basic logic and scientific thinking ftoeveryday life. One of them actually took this advice, and since they've not called for tech support again I can only assume this worked.
Warning: I only do tech support as a summer job whilst at University; if your life depends on your tech support job (and $deity help you if this is the case) then recommending books on basic logic skills to those requesting tech support may not be an advisable course of action. You do so at your own risk, and I will accept no responsibility.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
"I worked at Dell for the last 30 years"
Would that be Dell Computers founded in May 1984?
Thirty years ago, Michael Dell was 6 years old.
Perhaps the AC is Michael's mom?
how often do people unplug their cradles? everyone i know just leaves them plugged in - the Palm moves around, not the cradle... there's no reason to be pluggin/unplugging that all the time.
It would have to be ESD
In fact, that suite could have some basis.
This is purely hardware issue, having nothing
to do with OS, software or HotSync function.
Palm cradle habe power supply plugged into it.
Since they use 2 contact plug (not 2) under
certian circumstances you coud fire serial port by producung 110V (or 220V) on serial port.
Since mose motherboards have now integrated serial ports
ther reffer to it as damaging motherboard.
apparently the sarcasm detector didn't go off. :)
I've got an infrared device built into my PC, and I use it to HotSync my Palm Vx. No risk of frying anything from static in serial lines or design flaws in cradles, period. Just pull out the stupid serial cable if you're worried and put in an infrared device - they are not very expensive, and installation is a no-brainer to the average /.'er. It's way faster too, but nowhere near USB speed though...
Besides, the gizmo factor of your PC would go up a bit :-)
Black holes are where God divided by zero
is it possible that the componants used by the PC manufacturer are just of extremely low quality, and there have been an inordinate number of failures within their offered waranty... Perhaps the MoBo manufacturer is simply looking for a scapegoat. IF so, it certainly iss a creative solution. Do a statistical analysis of users with dead motherboards, and I'm almost certain a significant percentage would own palm pilots. Therefor, it must be te palm pilots causing the damage. Simple statistics. Vary useful when trying to trump up a frivilous lawsuit.
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
im doubting that its the palm pda that damaging the motherboard. the error lies within the user.
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
Somebody must have tried to plug their Palm Pilot directly into a pci slot or something...
I suppose you could damage a motherboard if you were to throw a palm at it... or dip the cradle in a tub of water or something....
...are the ones suprised to find that their computer comes with a retractable beverage holder.
...use AOL, because its the 'best' ISP out there.
...invest in tech stocks.
...propagate e-mail worms.
The palm pilot runs at RS232 levels (or USB levels if you have the newfangled versions) and transfers at rs232 datarates.
If the palm is damaging motherboards, then my wacom tablet, external modems, and other serial devices are doing the same....
Whoever is claiming this is either on crack, stupid, or just trying to make a quick buck.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's surely possible, although unlikely.
The problem occurs if there's any static charge on you. You pick up the serial cable and touch one of the pins, the cable may also end up with a charge on it. Plug it into the PC, and the serial port gets a static shock. This could (although you'd need quite some charge!) damage the serial port. Or you could do a similar thing by touching the serial port pins during the process of plugging the cable in. A really severe static charge could break through the serial port chip to the power supply and cause a spike on that which would damage other devices, although that's highly unlikely - you'd really have to be trying to build up that kind of a charge on yourself.
Of course, if the serial port connector is mounted on the mobo, then the force of plugging and unplugging it could bend the mobo slightly, which in the case of a badly-made and badly-mounted board could be enough to break a track. Or the connector could simply have failed through overuse.
More details on this are required. To win this, the plaintiffs are going to have to prove (a) that their mobos are damaged, (b) that the damage could have been caused by the Hotsync, and (c) that it was Palm's fault rather than the mobo manufacturers releasing a dodgy product. Frankly, (c) sounds a much more logical option.
Grab.
It's not their job to not be stupid. It IS your job to help them. If you don't like this arrangement, get another job. Although, with an attitude like that, I'm not surprised that all you can get is tech support.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If you are going to beg, at least beg properly. What the hell do you do?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Their computers probably just broke down and they're hoping Palm will settle out of court and give them new ones just to get them to shut up.
"M$ Ambushes Users to Force Upgrades!!!"
"Micro$oft Turns Innocent Customers into Unsuspecting Prey!!!"
Stop and think a second. What if the Palm claim is true? Hasn't that possibility crossed anyone's minds? Admittedly it's very unlikely, but blind dismissal isn't prudent either.
I think I'll stop here.
I saw this happen with 2 motherboards and 3 serial ports. This happened with 2 Palm Vx with the serial Hotsync interface. I have heard rumors about them blowing the serial ports on older motherboards.
But yes, RS-232 are supposed to have rediculous amounts of clamping (the signal lines come in through resistors, and are fed through big clamping diodes). On BOTH sides of the interface chip, they're supposed to fry before they let the connected equipment fry, and they're supposed to be really paranoid about signals anyway.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Hmm. If your motherboard gets fried by static through the serial port, it's because it isn't grounded properly. Hence sue Dell, not Palm. Unless of course you're being paid by someone else to bring this bogus lawsuit against Palm.
Maybe we can get together and sue memory manufacturers for defective memory modules causing static damage to motherboards on installation.
Or maybe they should be suing the US govt, after all they are the ones responsible for the US's pathetic domestic electrical connector standards. How many bets these Dells were just plugged in with a two-pin plug? Hence no ground return path.
But come on. The real issue here is that the majority of Palm users, particularly the V and above, are relatively financially successful, and can afford bringing forth lawsuits. I owned a Palm iiie for a while, and while I loved it, I found the system itself and its assorted peripherals to be far too expensive. I'd love to grab a Compaq PocketPC model at this point, but I have the same issue. Maybe I'll grab a Handspring instead.
Dude, the customer is always right
This is one of the most pernicious fallacies in marketing.
The customer is not "always right." In fact, they are very frequently wrong, sometimes fatally so. The true statement is "the customer is always the customer." This means that you must treat them politely and respectfully, and often you must tell them they are right even when they are not. It does not, however, make them right.
Our company uses the Palm as a device that gets sent out with our software loaded on it only. Our production team must hot sync 100 times a day at least, and that number is growing as our business grows, from a pc and we've never had a problem. Everyone in the company has a palm and hotsyncs. I've been supporting palms in a business environment for three years, not had this kind of problem. Granted, they haven't disclosed what pc brands. But come on.....I know in my experience the correlation between motherboards frying and hotsyncing does not exist.
You'd have to be hot-plugging a MIG welder into your USB ports to spike them that badly.
Just like to point out that welding is a relatively low voltage operation, typically not much if any more then 20V.
It just uses a LOT of current
It's arrogance on both A great many people know little to nothing about computers. That's fine. What's amazing is how many of them attempt to diagnose problems with certainty - I've had people who don't know what a server is tell me they think "something is wrong with the server".
Such users aren't stupid or evil or subhuman. They're engaging in a normal human behavior - trying to not appear ignorant. Nobody wants to admit they have no idea what's going on. But it's still INCREDIBLY frustrating to have to deal with people who are irate and clueless. A friend of mine who used to work in auto repair would have customers come in and INSIST that "something is wrong with the carberator (sp?)" on fuel injected cars! These people, again weren't stupid, they just wanted to sound knowledgeable to the guys at the shop.
A modern PC (or network) is like a modern car - most people haven't invested the time necessary to understand what's going on or diagnose and resolve problems. It's not that they aren't smart enough, it's simply that they chose to specialize in other things. But many people can't admit that they're incapable of knowing about everything (this seems especially true when it comes to their computers). I've never attempted to diagnose serious faults with my cars because I know I lack the knowledge to do so. If I can't fix it in an hour, I pay someone who knows what the hell they're doing to do it for me by describing my problem and hoping he can diagnose the fault and repair it. And I know the last thing the guy at the repair shop wants to hear is some software engineers half-baked ideas about ignition systems. Ideally, everyone with little knowledge about a complex system would accept that all they can offer an expert is a description of their problem.
There is a remote chance (although it doesn't seem so remote now) that the Vcc pin (that's the power supply to recharge the palm to you not so technically inclined people) may leak some voltage to the DTACK or TX pin on the HotSync cradle due to a voltage spike on the Palm Circuit board during the recharge cycle.
Some mobo's utilise the more advanced serial controller chips which regulate signal voltage which keeps the signal at a good +5V but there are some controller chips which lack this function and this voltage generally leaks into the into the motherboard's voltage controller circuit causing devastating effects since the voltage controller circuits are contolled by logic ICs.
I'm not certain which mobos utilise the more advanced chip, but my advice to prevent such a problem is to avoid charging your palm/visor while you hotsynch. This may also apply to other palm devices such as the iPaq so i suggest everyone with a PDA that recharges with their synch cradle/connecter to be careful.
[The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
I don't think that, except for the famous opening phrase of the Second Amendment (and of course the preamble), there is anywhere else in the Constitution where the founders felt the need to explain WHY they were promulgating a law or delegating a power.
It's pretty unusual for a law (except perhaps in its preamble) to EXPLAIN itself. Laws are pretty dry -- they typically state a proscribed behavior and the penalty for it. They don't say "Becase such-and-such is harmful to the public blah blah blah".
For instance, the First Amendment doesn't do this. It doesn't say WHY the press must be free. The founders perhaps thought it obvious, but perhaps rather they would have found the wording of an explantion too difficult and controversial -- should an reason-for clause have spoken just of political speech, or explicity covered commercial speech, or just all speech, or with an exception for profanity etc.? At any rate, they left it for later generations to interpret.
They didn't do that with the copyright/patent clause. They SPECIFICALLY extended to Congress this power ONLY to "promote science and useful arts". By useful arts, they meant craft, engineering -- today we would probably use the phrase "science and technology". Same thing.
I THINK that they had a REASON for that.
That's the thing about the Constitution, you know. The words in it MEAN something, and they were put there for a REASON. And the first part of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, is pretty straightforward.
If the clause read "to promote science and useful arts, and for any other reason as Congress shall determine...", that would be different But of course, that would have made the phrase meaningless. I think that we have to assume that It DOES have meaning, and that it means what it says.
It's clear to me that the purpose of the explanation is to restrict Congress's copyright/patent powers over the people to a narrow area. Semantically, the meaning of the phrase is basically "to promote science and useful arts, and for no other purpose..." Now it doesn't say that, and that perhaps would have been too strong for the founders. But that's the gist of what they were saying.
The Constitution does NOT say "To promote the Stability of Business...". It does not say "To Reward Those who have Striven to create Works of Beauty...". It does not say "To Protect Those who have Organiz'd such Associations as may Represent Men who are as Moguls in the Distribution of Artistical Treasures". It does not say "So that Outrageously-Tress'd Youths may Prance upon Stage whilst Garb'd in Tight Tunics which Mimic the Hide of the Leopard and produce All Manner of Disagreeable Cacaphony whilst Disrespecting their Elders and Recieving the Fair Regard of Maidens, and Yet be Rewarded for their Efforts by a Sume of Monies which shall be Sufficient to Obtain all of the Noisome Ingestants in Newe England, with Sufficient Remaining to Purchase a newe Fast Coach for each remaining Day of their Lives..."
No, it just says what it says.
Now, of course the Constitution is a living document open to interpretation. And even though by "useful arts" they meant technology, I guess it would be politically necessary to fudge that include artistic works. It's not what they meant, and it's a HUGE fudge, but let's allow that for this discussion.
But do we have to COMPLETELY ignore its intent? Can we apply SOME of what the founders clearly intended? Can we at least pretend the Constitution of the United States mean SOMETHING?
If we did, the courts would apply this simple rule: "Does this use of the law of copyright materially promote science or technology (or, at least, artistic endeavor)? If not, it is unconstitutional."
Of course, anyone can CLAIM that that it will.
Disney can SAY that if they don't get their 75-year extension (or whatever it is) on Snow White etc., well, they just won't make any more movies. Not worth it anymore if they can't count on reaping the income from Flight Of The Navigator through 2093. You know, their investors, well they just count on that 75-year recoup cycle.
They can say that, but of course they're lying. No judge that was applying the actual constitutional standard would put up with that.
Any rock band can SAY that they'll stop recording if anyone can copy their recording. Sure, that will put a huge dent or outright kill their income from live shows, but hey. Always dreamed of working at a car wash anyway. Or maybe landscaping. Or McDonald's, man they have cool uniforms AND great benefits.
Hey I have musical favorites. I'm sorry if they would feel that the Constitution treats them unfairly. But sorry enough to give up a Constitutiona right. I mean where does it end? Can Aerosmith demand to take my house, too? Why not? They're big stars and all, and well they just DESERVE it don't they, for being so artistic and all, right? And what's an old house anyway, compared to a natural human right explicitly protected by the Constitution? You gave that up, didn't you? So what are you whining about now?
Whatever. It's over, anyway. Business rules, nobody a damn about the Constitution or the founding fathers. Bah.
When I'm hired for a job, I regard my first responsibility as being to the company as a whole, secondly to the systems I maintain, and lastly to the individual users. Let's face it, if we were administering spacecraft instead of computer systems, the users would be coming to us saying
Frankly, I think your boss has his priorities wrong if this is his attitude. Wait until something crashes and you have to tell him there are no recent backups because you were too busy keeping the users happy...which doesn't bring the money in."Turn up the oxygen! It's stuffy in here!"
"If I turn up the oxygen, we'll eat into our reserve, which could put us at risk if something unexpected happens."
"So what? That's not my problem. It's still stuffy in here. Turn up the oxygen!"
I told palm that setting up the palm tore up my serial port about a year ago and they told me I was full of it. Maternal fornicating fatherless children. So where can we make a formal complaints on this? We just need a Johhny Cochran type of line. "If palm disrupts the boot, file a lawsuit"
Anyway, I connected the Palm cradle up to one of the systems I had. (It was a palm V to a 200 MMX and had being the operative word.) It first blew out the serial port on the PC. I was unable to map/identify any COM ports to where I couldn't make use of mouse or modem. Mainly because I couldn't assign the COM port. But after that other controlers on the motherboard near that area started to fail days afterwards. Such as the hard drive and floppy controllers.
Anyone else run into an issue with this. It kind of pisses me off that they will probably just keep denying this and get away with it. Damn. Screwed by someone's lust for benjamin again. Look I'm so upset my grammer is just horrible.
When I was your age we didn't have music file sharing utilities. We had to go out to a store and shoplift the CD.
Fortunately, it took out my serial ports and nothing else. At the very least, Palm should acknolege that this stuff actually happens, even if they don't take the blame.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
It is not specific to Dell serial ports. It is an issue with ANY motherboard that uses one or two particular ASICs to control the serial ports. Essentially, a static charge will travel through the metal case on the Palm V, through the cradle and into the serial port affecting its ability to SEND data. 9 times out of 10 you can connect a serial mouse to the same port and it works. If Palm would have put a GROUNDED plug on the AC adapter, this probably wouldn't be as much of an issue. Now, about the voltage, it only takes around 50-60 volts to fry a component AT MOST. The human body can store a static charge greater than 20,000 volts. WELL more than enough to fry ANY component in ANY computer.