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."

Comments

Why sue Palm?

[OpenSourced]

Why not the motherboard maker? Perhaps they are defective, perhaps they don't even conform to standards. It cannot be a very widespread problem or else we'd have heard about it before. (Well, except if it's one of the newest Palms)

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!!!

--

Have at you!

[GregGaub]

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.

Re:Have at you!

[sigwinch]

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.

Which article? As someone who designs things that hook up to a PC's serial port, I am very interested in learning how to not fry motherboards. Please post a link.

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.

Speaking as an electrical engineer who has designed RS-232C serial ports into several products -- with considerable familiarity with the relevant electronics and requirements -- I can say with assurance that 'hot plugging' RS-232 is perfectly safe. And on a practical basis, it is an operational necessity to be able to hot-plug serial ports. (Can you imagine having to turn off a mainframe that services thousands of dumb terminals every time a terminal has to be connected?)

That said, there is a lot of poorly-designed crap out there, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to meet a motherboard that blows itself up under perfectly acceptable conditions.

Sure, serial ports can take certain amounts of current, but obviously not as much as the ESD (electro-static discharge, yes?)

For consumer equipment, all externally-accessible connectors should be able to take some vicious ESD zaps on every single pin. In fact, the 'CE' requirements in Europe make this a legal requirement. As an example of how much ESD protection is in engineer's minds, take a look at this datasheet for the Maxim MAX3232E RS-232 transciever chip, which has built in +/-15kV ESD protection. (Again, there's a lot of crap being manufactured that can't take ESD like it should.)

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,

If the Palm cradle connects to a 'wall wart' transformer to recharge the battery, there is another failure mode: the output of many wall warts is capacitively coupled to the AC power line. The ones I've seen make an approx. 60 VAC sine wave on the output, as measured relative to earth ground. There isn't much current available, and a proper RS-232 design should be able to take it all day long, but I *have* seen equipment that is damaged by it. (At work we're very paranoid about explicitly grounding laptop computers in the electronic labs to keep from frying our prototypes.)

You might call me a damnass for not grounding myself, but you would agree with me about what actually happened.

Oh, bullshit. It's the engineer's responsibility to design things that will actually work in the real world. Walking up to a piece of office equipment and touching it should *never* cause smoke and/or explosions.

I would join because I want Palm to fix a design that they KNOW facilitates damage to computers.

It's almost impossible to accidentally blow up a properly designed serial port. Either Palm deliberately and maliciously designed in a destruction circuit, or your motherboard was badly designed. Knowing how crappy commodity motherboards are, I'd bet on the latter.

I fully expect even more repetitive flames from people, telling me I'm a moron, ... 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.

Given that RS-232 is intended to hook up randomly-grounded pieces of equipment with 50meter cables -- and is required by law to include ESD protection in Europe -- there's no point in handling it with kid gloves. Adding optocouplers would cost about US $1.50 per unit. Adding them would mean that the tens of millions of Palm owners with correctly designed computers would be paying a $25,000,000 tax to protect the few people with defective computers.

For now, PalmV users have three choices:

You're forgetting the fourth choice: buy a computer that actually complies with the RS-232 standards, and actually has the run-of-the-mill standard level of ESD protection. Serial ports should be able to take almost anything short of being directly connected to the AC power line. It costs only pennies more to manufacture, and it provides a much better customer experience. (The only catch is that the computer manufacturers have to actually care about doing a good job, as opposed to cranking out an extra few hundred thousand motherboards per month.)

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.

I think you under-appreciate how hard it is to design good ESD protection. It's not enough to zap your circuit, and say it has good protection if it keeps working, because ESD damage often just weakens the transistors. Doing it right takes a good theoretical understanding of the circuit, great technician-type skill at performing the tests, and a well-developed sense of paranoia. Designing good ESD protection is a lot like designing cryptographic systems: it's easy to make something that *seems* to work, but very difficult to design something that will be rock solid under years of hard use.

All motherboard manufacturers are under *tremendous* schedule pressures. The engineers are being pushed and pushed and pushed to get the design shipping as fast as possible. A two week delay (an ESD fix would probably take 3-4 weeks) costs the company more than a senior engineer's yearly salary, so the tendency is to say 'We zapped it, it works, what the hell let's ship it!' Keerist, with the Rambus and MTH fiascos earlier this year, Intel was shipping motherboards where *the engineers knew the digital functions didn't work*. Their priority for ESD protection was probably two notches higher than picking lint out of their belly buttons.

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.

Hint: the trolls want attention, and you're giving it to them. Act as if a forum is good, and it becomes better. Act as if it sucks, and it will suck worse.

An Ex-Dell Tech Post

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:An Ex-Dell Tech Post

[Rendus]

A not so quiet reader and former Dell Dimension Product Specialist posting to say that what the Anonymous Coward I'm replying to says is true. We replaced motherboards killed by Palm Vs constantly. The fact Dell replaced these things leads me to believe it's the MB's fault, not the Palms.

Come and get your $900 handheld?

[fmaxwell]

This is an example of the kind of attitude that keeps corporate users unhappy with their technical support.

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.

Static didn't melt the chip, but ...

[nels_tomlinson]

I used to do component level repair of computers and peripherals back when you could still afford to do that. I took a look at a web page which purports to detail the actual damage which is being sued over. They show a picture of a chip with a melted case. Pretty obviously, it was not a static discharge which melted it. The sort of lightning bolt which could do that would most likely have cooked the computer owner's finger too. That does not mean that static didn't cause the problem.

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?

Re:I did blow a processor before

[Gordonjcp]

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.

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.

Re:I did blow a processor before

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Not a very good article

[Mike1024]

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

Re:Not a very good article

[Anonymous Coward]

Greg Gaub seems like an ok guy, but his site has a some problems. He has this listed under his "flames" seciton:

"I have viewed the damage shown on the above websight. It is my opinion that a static charge from your body is not going to do that much damage to a IC (Integrated Circuit). You have something else wrong, probably the wiring in your house."
-JCZ

Mr. Gob, you moron, JCZ is not flaming you, just commenting. And, JCZ is exactly right: static discharge would not cause bubbling like that on a chip. Here's a test you can do at home:

1. Take a soldering iron and heat it up.
2. touch soldering iron to tip of index finger and hold
3. does the skin bubble up? yes.
4. take soldering iron and touch to chip and hold.
5. does the chip bubble up? no. chips can take a lot more energy than your finger.
6. repeat experiment with static electricity and your remaining good finger.
7. does your skin bubble up? no. neither will the chip.
8. conclusion: JCZ is right, and you are wrong.

Now, it is quite possible that your palm and/or the static did hurt your machine, but that chip has nothing to do with it. How did it happen? if some small percentage of all people have bubbled chips in their boxes anyway, but the only people who look are the ones who've just zapped them, that same percentage of the people who've just zapped them are probably going to attribute the bubbling to the static zapping... but that doesn't make it so.

furthermore, even if your motherboard was properly designed to ... oh nevermind, this is a waste of my time.

Try to be more smart and less stupid, please.

Only sweaty palms

[k-flex$]

condensation and all ;0

A true story of multiple motherboard death

[gladiatr]

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...

Okay - here's the REAL scoop.

[jungwirr]

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.

Hmmm, so not user error at all. Right?

[Dr_Cheeks]

I never heard this exact problem when I was doing tech support, but I got dozens of similar problems; "Since you unlocked my account my email's disappeared!", "Office 97 has broken my printer!" etc. Until I hear further details, I'm going to assume that this is down to users screwing up somewhere and trying to get compensated for it.

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.

Re:News: broken mother boards get broken more easi

[Lumpy]

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

I don't buy it.

[Fat Casper]

When my palm went bad (1/2 the screen stopped accepting input), Palm just wanted to know the serial #. I've never registered it or anything, so all it told them was that I was actually holding a Palm. They mailed me a new one, and I mailed the dead one back.

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.

here's the downlow

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hmmm, so not user error at all. Right?

[noelbush]

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.

I did blow a processor before

[Tribbles]

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.

Re:Hmmm, so not user error at all. Right?

[phaze3000]

You've obviously never had to deal with the sort of idiots that call tech support. If you did, you wouldn't be so supercilious.
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.

Re:AP mirror

[Matthias Wiesmann]

You mean people on ./actually read the article first and post after?

My god, this should be in the headlines...

They've got to be kidding

[DreamMaster]

The lawsuit is filed on behalf of *2* people, and they want class action status? ROTFL. Call me cynical, but this sounds too much like the people who try to get warranty replacements of their computers when their cats piddle 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.