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Syncing Your PDA w/ Obscure O/Ses?
Nomad7674 asks: "I am part of a team helping to build a site for discussing SmartPhones (i.e. combo cell phone and data function devices). We are trying to become a one-stop shop for SmartPhone-related information and have run up against one brick wall that the Slashdot community may be able to help with. We want to document every operating system that can be sync'd with a Palm or PocketPC or Symbian device. We already have information on the biggies (Apple and Windows), on the moderates (Linux and the Unixes) and a few of the more obscure including Amiga and BeOS. But we seem to have exhausted the searches of Google, Alta Vista, etc. and the knowledge of the general community elsewhere. What experiences have other Slashdot readers had with syncing their Palm, PocketPC, or other PDA device with obscure OSes?"
Nomad,
If you could give some examples of OSes you want information on, you will be more likely to catch the eye of the community that supports them.
Gryftir
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
I've synced my Palm III with PalmOS.
and you read that as "Weirdo"?
Here's a clue for you: as a desktop OS (and I think we can safely assume that people are not syncing their PDA's on the database machines in the server room), Linux is, so far, moderately successful at best, in the sense of popularity. In fact, I'd say that "moderate" is a generous rating. There are probably tens of thousands of regular Linux desktop users, which is a lot, except that there are millions of Windows desktop users.
He's not calling Linux obscure. He's saying they know about Windows, Mac, and Linux et al, and now they want to know about obscure OS'es, people who sync their PDA's with a ZX-81 or slide rule or something.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
The biggest limiting factor you're going to run into has nothing to do with core driver availability for your desktop OS, but what exactly you're trying to accomplish.
If all you want is the ability to transfer binary data between the PDA and the desktop, then any platform with a serial port should work.
If you want a bit more, you'll need a platform that the pilot-link libs + utilities can be ported to. That should give you the ability to "sync" data to and from specific programs on the Palm either by capturing raw text or the Palm's binary databases on the desktop. This may be sufficient to hack something that will work with some of the address-book/mail/PIM/whatever applications on the desktop. It will be a hack, it will be crude, but it may work. Calling this "supported" is a bit excessive though.
If you want full support for syncing the PDA with most of the major applications already found on the desktop, then you're limited to Windows + Mac, and possibly Linux if you're happy with how well the KDE or Gnome desktop applications sync with the PDA.
Of course, if you want support all for third-party apps that the user might install (either on the PDA or the desktop), then you're basically limited to just Windows.
Pick how much support you want and how much you need, and if you're not happy with where that leaves you for desktop OS choices, you'll either have to re-evaluate your needs or do a lot of hacking to get things to work.
It's only software!
Not all that obscure... really...
There is a nice page with some apps at http://www.perelin.de/stellarcom/palmstuff/.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
But we seem to have exhausted the searches of Google, Alta Vista, etc.
Then what you are looking for doesn't exist. Now kneel down and plead for your soul in front of the almighty Google! Google knows all! Google is the provider!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
checkout freshmeat I am faily certain I have seen projects meant to sync a palm with BeOS and AmigaOS... I may be mistaken though. You also may want to try palmgear as they have a huge repository of palm software.
I've tried a whole bunch of things, and I still can not get my Handspring to synch with any program currently on Linux. I've seen a few web links that imply the author had accomplished this task, but I am unable to reapeat it.
User MUST show picture ID
There's a project called jSyncManager that will sync PalmOS devices with a Java-enabled platform. It was originally written to support HotSync on OS/2. It's Open Source too.
http://www.jsyncmanager.org/
hmmmmmm --- I've gone through EVERY variation of the KDE pilot applet, plus every variation of the Gnome 2.2 applet.... my Visor goes through a USB 1.0 cradle, and I can not get Linux to "see" it. I'll keep on tryin'. Thanx
User MUST show picture ID
Have you read README.usb yet? It should get you started. I also have a bunch of HOWTO documents I've written that may also help you get things working.
Are you running 0.11.7 of pilot-link (which is required for USB to work with any of the other apps, KPilot, J-Pilot, gnome-pilot, etc.) I'll be releasing 0.11.8 shortly.
Is your kernel recent enough to support it? Use 2.4.20 or later, but not 2.5, if you want the most stable. Previous kernels had issues with the visor driver crashing, which have been resolved in 2.4.20 and later kernel versions.
Considered a donation to the project?
Good luck.
... it's the apps like your mail/calendar that make it less than satisfactory unless you just mean 'backup to' when you say sync ...