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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 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.
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!
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.
Amazing, the site is /.'ed and I haven't even gotten first post yet.
Try this AP link
this on on Yahoo! works.
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.
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 : )
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'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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
My TI-99/4A, on the otherhand, did not survive a cup of milk when I was 6 years old. :)
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.
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!!!
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.
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
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 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
condensation and all ;0
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 ?
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 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
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. ;-).
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.
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
- Firstly, lightning packs a much much bigger kick than anything a Palm could muster. Way bigger than mains voltage too.
- Cook the modem, and you'll have trouble sending any data to the mobo. I guess you might just about manage to do this, but only if the kit wasn't designed too well. I'd expect that Palm would be producing fairly high-quality kit.
- Your point about suing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm sure a lot of people would sue God if they could : ). But seriously, if a garage put new tires on my car, and that somehow caused my engine to explode (I know, stupid example, but I'm trying to do my job at the same time as post) then you can bet I'd be going after the garage for compensation. Assuming I could prove something so improbable....
Not trying to flame, just trying to help.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.
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
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.
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.
And I though it was supposed to be a chicken head in a box of Chicken Mc Nuggets...
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.
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.
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!
I have the same problem with a Dell port replicator. Sync starts and drops before completion 90% of the time. Dell says the Palm hardware is no good... yeah right. Anyone have any ideas?
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.
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.
http://www.themeparks.ie
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.
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.
Anyway, technically the coil becomes a magnet when it's got a current flowing through it, but I'm just splitting hairs now and blatantly trying to cover up my mistake.
Ahh, everyone point at the dumbass [me].
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'
woof.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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 ;)
Hmm, a new project for the HardOCP? :)
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
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.
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?
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.
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
Somebody must have tried to plug their Palm Pilot directly into a pci slot or something...
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.
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.
Even an internal modem that gets fried will protect the computer itself from being fried. My first question zwen a British customer calls that his modem went completely dead "all of a sudden" is:"So, what was the weather like this weekend?".
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
"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 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.
FYI the problem I'm experiencing is with sync over the serial port, not over USB.
Since I've had the same problem with 2 different Palm units now, AND they sync fine when NOT plugged into the port replicator, I tend to think the problem is the port replicator.
To be a touch more pedantic about it, a class of people (all victims or relatives of victims of x, y, or z) join together to enter into a legal action against whomever they consider responsible for x, y, or z, rather than, as indicated above, taking separate actions against those they consider responsible. This way, what could potentially be hundreds, thousands, or more, of lawsuits are replaced by one, making things easier on the court system and reducing lawyers fees and other legal expenses for both parties.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Are you sure about that current generating voltage part? The way I always heard it, it's voltage, i.e., a difference in potential between 2 points, that causes current to flow. Provided, of course, that there is a sufficiently conductive path between those 2 points.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.