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Enthusiast Hacks WiFi Into Treo 650
Sammy at PalmAddict writes "Shadowmite, a Palm enthusiast has managed to hack his Palm One Treo 650 smartphone, enabling it to work with the Palm One WiFi card, despite Palm admitting the Treo was never designed to use WiFi technology. Shadowmite managed to get his hands on the Pa1m One WiFi card and modify it so that his Treo 650 could use it. The experiment was a success, and is causing quite a stir -- putting pressure on Palm One to provide support and fully support the new drivers."
So, if I somehow shoved a Gamecube network adapter onto my N64, Nintendo would need to provide full support for it?
I don't think so.
now I won't have to use GPRS all of the time... as soon as they're freakin available on GSM. my blog: http://www.smashsworld.com/
Is it just me, or is it difficult to get any useful information off of that website? Not to mention that it has a "techie supervision warning" at the top, despite not having any real instructions.
You know, don't you hate it when cell phone companies disable some features of your cellphone and then add somre more "features" that allow you to do absolutely nothing?
im trying to get the same thing working on my Tungsten E... SanDisk says their card works with a little hack, but the palm card verifys the model... is there a way for me to get my palm to think its another model, or some third-party drivers to work?
I'm still waiting for my non-cellular Wifi walkie-talkie. Just imagine the possiblities... Like IM for voice...
More
Somewhat OT...
This brings up a question I want to ask T-Mobile.
My BlackBerry 7100i can be used as a wireless GPRS modem connected to my notebook via the USB cable. It works; I *know* it works, because:
(1) I've read the forums where people tell how they got it to work (after getting T-Mobile to unblock some ports); and
(2) I've done it to send/receive e-mail via Outlook when I enable their t-zones service.
Now for the question:
When the products the carriers promote have these capabilities, why do they not support them? I would be willing to pay for the service if T-Mobile would admit that it works and support it. If a Treo 650 can handle WiFi, that's a selling point and likely to result in more sales.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
It would be nice, now, if somebody wrote some SIP software that could take advantage of this hack. A Treo would make a sexy as hell cordless phone, which presumably would then be able to roam onto GPRS/GSM if and when the wifi network is unavailable.
You're doing it wrong.
putting pressure on Palm One to provide support and fully support the new drivers.
I have a fully functional Handspring/VisorPhone unit. At the point where the new treos offer something more (802.11) then I will consider paying $500+ for new hardware.
It is palm's loss. At the point where I have VOIP and 802.11 working everwhere else will I look to make a change. If Palm does not have a solution, I WILL jump to Windows CE or Sybian.
I left the Newton to Palm....I can leave Palm.
Pressed to your ear, this would be the most innocent looking wireless sniffer yet (if someone can get it to run as one).
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
Sure, Gamecube isn't doing nearly as well as Playstation, but they've got their niche. Palm, on the other hand, is losing marketshare rapidly to Windows Palm PCs, which means Palm is vulnerable, and will latch onto good PR and do more to avoid bad PR.
I've got a few pieces of hardware that still work, but doesn't have support in Windows XP. No practical reason for it, but the hardware was inexpensive and purchased maybe a year before XP came out. The cost was based on the level of support the companies anticipated providing, so good equipment becomes paperweights with a system upgrade.
Don't buy cheap and expect more than you pay for. This was a clever hack but I'm sure Palm sells stuff with WiFi for a little more than the Treo 650 goes for. As with printers, you need to spend more on handheld equipment if you expect reasonable performance and reliability.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Good news to see people aren't limited by these inane limits companies place on consumers. Reminds me of my recent dealing with Verizon Wireless and their draconian multimedia system. However the good people at http://bitpim.sourceforge.net/ have an awesome piece of software to help getting your pictures, sounds, and contacts.
I wonder the Treo 650 has software access to the mic and earpiece? If it does, you could use a WiFi card to connect it to a VoIP service, bypassing the normal wireless rate structure...
Drivers for Wifi SDIO cards on Palms like the Zire 71 are held up because of licensing issues. Translation: they don't want to undercut their expensive models. Ok, I'll buy a Pocket PC then.
Palm is losing marketshare rapidly to Windows Palm PCs, which means Palm is vulnerable, and will latch onto good PR and do more to avoid bad PR. That's capitalism for you
I'm sure Palm sells stuff with WiFi for a little more than the Treo 650 goes for
They do, but it's a PDA, not a phone (or a really crappy phone in some cases). That's why they bought the Handspring Treo.
Besides being a cute hack, this does actually fill a void in the product line.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
This was my biggest complaint with my Treo 600. Not only was there no WiFi built in, but no aftermarket support of any kind was available. That's just nuts.
I'd happily give up my Treo's pitiful dialup connection (which works like crap), for even a substandard WiFi link. The initial connect delay and the approx 10 kilobit connection makes the Treo a dog when moving packets. Maybe WiFi could fix that.
Trust a hacker to do what a major corporation won't...
Randy
This was a clever hack but I'm sure Palm sells stuff with WiFi for a little more than the Treo 650 goes for.
Actually, PalmOne doesn't *make* anything more expensive than the Treo 650. It lists at a full $200 more than the next cheaper model.
Frankly, this has nothing to do with what PalmOne does or does not want, it has to do with what the *carriers* want PalmOne to do.
http://www.uneasysilence.com/index.php?p=1719 Skip the digging and get it now...
It seems to me that the common thread in mobile device deficiencies is not the hardware or software companies, but rather the cell phone carriers. They are the perennial pessimists when it comes to new technologies, myopic in their fears that a handful of geeks will bring their business crashing down. Instead of embracing and developing them into new and exciting money-making, experience-enriching features, they castrate their own products solely in order to frustrate users. Swap castrate and frustrate freely in the previous sentence.
Imagine 10 years ago if a cell phone carrier told Motorola that their new cell phones were "way too small, anyone could just carry this around in their pocket. What will happen to our public telephone branch?! We have too much invested in the current infrastructure!"
"Ask me about Loom"
Are the Treo 650s any good? Anyone have any experience they can share with me?
Or, you could buy a supported card, put your wep keys in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts, and plug it in. It will beep twice and work.
Bitchin about manufacturers who don't support linux doesn't solve any problems, but boycotting their products just might.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Crap, "Buy It" link I meant to say.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Some type of sound tone...either volume, or speed of tones...like a metal detector? Or maybe a system of them...one variation for quantity of signals...another variation on the sounds for quality of the signals?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
...IS DYING?
This was a clever hack but I'm sure Palm sells stuff with WiFi for a little more than the Treo 650 goes for.
OK, so you don't know what you're talking about. palmOne (there is no such company as "Palm" anymore, hasn't been for a year) sells exactly ONE model with integrated Wi-Fi, the Tungsten C. They also support Wi-Fi on 3 other models via their Wi-Fi SD card, which is an imperfect solution. (It takes up the card slot.) The Treo 650 price varies with the carrier, but is typically in the $500-$600 rage or up. It's NOT a cheap product.
Meanwhile, most new Dell PPCs and HP PPCs come with Wi-Fi now, and the PPC world is now being inundated with variants on the BlueAngel/Harrier design: Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, AND Wi-Fi. All three wireless types in one fairly nice handheld. (Still uses Windows Mobile, which bites, and it's not against-the-face-friendly, but it's still a good device.)
Your point about "don't buy cheap and then complain" is valid, but has nothing to do with this issue. The Treo 650 is NOT cheap, it's a top-shelf product. Other products in similar price ranges all have Wi-Fi. You're NOT getting what you paid for here, that's what people are upset about.
(That said, I still want to get a GSM/EDGE Treo 650 when it comes out. The lack of Wi-Fi is just annoyingly stupid.)
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
that some hellspaw^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyer will come up with some sort of DMCA excuse to go after this person?
almost make me wish that PDAs weren't dead and dying.
Haha, no karma points for you.
Here's the link to the original discussion posting on TreoCentral.com.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
I have been following this site the last few months and they seem to be on top of all the cool little do it yourself hacks/tweaks coming out these days for electronics. http://www.hackaday.com/
I'm in the market for a PDA and have been researching for the past couple of weeks. I've come to the conclusion that Palm is going to quite deservedly kill itself over the coming year.
Look at their feature matrix. They have a seemingly random distribution of features throughout their model line. One has 256MB of memory. Some have cameras. Some are phones. Some have bluetooth. Some have wireless. All have different processors and ship with different versions of the OS. And most are very, very expensive.
But this is what I want:
* Bluetooth - So I can go online via my phone. I want to be able to check my email in the line at the mall.
* Wi-Fi - So I can sit in the conference room at work, take notes and email them.
* Compactflash slot - This is the standard that high-end digital cameras are settling on. I want to be able to slip in a CF card and manage / view photos. Ideally so that I could reduce and email a photo on the road if I was so inclined (but still have the high-res copy available).
The only product that fits this description is a PocketPC. Palm can offer models with cameras, phones, flash storage, blah, blah, blah - but nothing that is actually useful to me. I want the Tungsten T5 - but only after replacing the flash drive with Wi-Fi and giving it a CompactFlash port.
So I'm holding off on purchasing for now, waiting for Windows Mobile 2005 and getting whatever Dell is selling at that time (their current X5 would be perfect - bluetooth, wireless, compactflash - except that Microsoft's newest OS revision is supposedly due Real Soon Now)..
You could have read about this last Friday as posted on hack a day.
- Nick Busey
www.pedalbmx.com
www.nickbusey.com
Palm is VERY quickly losing my respect with the way they treat their customers.
I started out with a Handspring Visor, my girlfriend has a Palm 3 series PDA. Almost all my friends and family uses Palm PDAs. That said, my Palm T3 will most likely be the last Palm PDA that I'll buy.
Started out with me purchasing my Nokia 6820 video phone in Asia - naively thinking that, "Hey, it's bluetooth, it'll be supported". It took almost half year after that phone's release before Palm would release drivers for it in their phone update - but, the drive only works as a modem driver. SMS and remote dialer apps for the phone isn't support. It *is* supported fully for the Palm T5 though.
Side by side comparison the T5 really isn't that much different from the T3 - minor tweaks in OS, faster processor and more memory. But what if I were to upgrade to the T5?
Forget it. I'd be ditching the "Collapsing PDA" feature that makes the T3 small and compact to carry, the silent, vibrating alarm for when you don't want to be obnoxious, the voice recorder functionality. I gain the ability to use the PDA as a flash drive, which I already own a few, and can add into the PDA via 3rd party software. They tossed out the Palm Universal Port which up till now most accessories use, as a standardized interface to the PDA - and for a top of the line product, the damn thing doesn't even come with a cradle.
What the hell are they thinking?
With the improvement of Pocket PC handhelds - and more vendors resulting in more selections - I'd have a hard time justifying purchasing another Palm PDA.
-=- Terence
"Violá, custom ROMs!"
Captain Hair aka Derek Kessler is obviously not French
Sprint doesn't want the Treo 650 to have the WiFi features since they want you to subscribe to the $15/mo Vision (CDMA 1xRTT) service. It might cost more per month for PDA phones.
Sprint especially doesn't want people to connect their phones to a PC or laptop through a USB cable or Bluetooth, because they want you to pay $80/mo for the unlimited wireless internet (Vision) through a PCMCIA card.
Verizon is even worse since they cripple their phones a lot more. But I still switched to Verizon from Sprint since it gets better reception for me (GSM is horrible over here). But at least Verizon's wireless internet is much more stable than Sprint's was for me. I use USB cables to connect my phone to my laptop to get free wireless internet using my minutes on off-peak hours.
How to install SIS900 card : nothing to do, it works. How to install intel 2200BG : guess what, nothing to do, it works. not even a cd, no install program, no reboot. When there is support, its easier than Windows.
We've been discussing this hack over at treocentral for quite a while now. Shadowmite's most impressive accomplishments are the custom roms he developed, stripping much of the crap out and adding a few critical apps (like notepad and DUN support- so you can use the treo as a modem). It's no secret the 650 has some major memory issues and by flashing his bare bones roms you can get rid of buggy apps like versamail and realplayer and instead run 3rd party apps like snapper mail on your sd card. Shadowmite deserves alot of credit for helping make the treo650 a decent product. -BT
That's Mister Spock.
Why not pick up a Compaq 36xx for 50$, an AirCard for 40$, and GSM/GPRS Sleeve for $100. Total comes in a lot less, than a Treo. "Performance The Compaq iPAQ Wireless Pack enables impressive call and data functionality with a rechargeable 1000mAH integrated battery and Tri-band functionality. Users receive up to 180 hours of standby call time and four hours of talk time on a single charge. The Wireless Pack is a Multi-slot Class 10 data device that provides extensive, reliable, wireless data communication that is "always on" in GPRS-covered* areas and has packet-switched data at speeds of up to 144 Kbps in GPRS-covered areas. The GSM/GPRS network requires a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) to assure user authentication and enable private data transfers.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
The ONLY reason why it's not supported is the Telcos don't want you using it- partly because of VoIP capabilities and partly due to the fact that they want you using their expensive data service instead of a potentially cheaper/faster WiFi hotspot.
In this context, they should own up the lie and, at the minimum, come clean on it. This is the same sort of crap about crippled Bluetooth on some Moto models except worse, they came up with a lame-ass lie to cover for the real reasons. In all honesty, they should eat the pain from the Telcos and the Telcos should be revealed for what they are over all of this.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
putting pressure on Palm One to provide support and fully support the new drivers.
.....!
Oh yes, Sammy. The whole 10 people who've posted on Internet forums claiming to have done this hack will really make those guys at Palm One to feel the pressure. I hear their developers will take time away from profitable projects just so you can hack an old phone.. They would really like to do that instead of selling you a next generation phone.
No wonder america is in trouble, nobody took economics 101.
Because you'd then be tethered to a brick everywhere you go.
I went through a period of dissatisfaction with my Treo and I did basically the same thing you describe above. It was incredibly inconvenient, to say the least. And, I looked like a total tard.
My Treo is the best cell phone I've ever had, but it still has a ways to go, imho.
test
What do you expect when the carriers subsidize the cost of your phone?
Perhaps if we had the option to pay less just for the services we want, without giving up our ability to choose any carrier we want, it would balance the slight increases to the cost of the handsets? We'd have more choice, more competition, and more innovation.
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
I can understand that, I guess. I am in a rural area, and the services, these phones offer, are not readily available here. I mean they say they are available, but to try and actually use them, is another story. Now I have a friend, that works for Charlotte City proper, and is 60 miles away,he has a Trio, and loves it to Death. There lies the difference to me ...60 miles.. Might as well be 3000.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
While this guy is a troll, I must admit that I got a great laugh thinking about having to install my own network card into my notebook then rebooting into windows and using the install wizard.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Maniac hacks Wifi into a tree?
If you dont know this great device, check out this review: Qtek 9090 or Dopop 700
With Mac you don't have to do anything...
I only knew one from Fujitsu, but it seem it has been removed for end users.
Due to tremendous number of inquiries from our System Module Products prospects, Fujitsu will be basically selling the System Module Products to OEM customers only, unfortunately, it will not be available for end-user. Sorry for the inconvenience. Fujitsu appreciates your understanding in advance.
SD cards
...?
While I won't go there, I'm sure someone did/will.
It looks like Sammy submitted a story and has managed to repeat all of the information from his first sentence in the second, despite the fact that posters almost always make fun of such occurences. Sammy at PalmAddict managed to make a submission where the second sentence repeated information from the first. The quote was a failure-- it makes me wonder why Slashdot supports these posts and fully supports them.
WiFi on Palm devices has been a disgrace. The Tungsten C is underpowered. We finally get a WiFi SD card (Sandisk's) after months and months of waiting past the publicised release date, and it only works on one discontinued device (Zire 71) and not too well at that - I'm lucky to get five page views before a soft reset. Now we have a new PalmOne WiFi card, which is severely limited in the machines it will work on. Possibly intentionally.
It's not a question of Treo owners being cheap - unless you're saying that we should be buying additional PocketPC's especially for Wifi.
Amusing. He tries to make a valid point, but the example is actually backwards. I run Windows XP and Linux, and getting my wifi card to work under Linux was easier than under Windows.
/etc/network/interfaces file. And then it worked.
Under Linux, yeah, it's harder than it should be, but it's not as hard as that. I had to install the 'wireless-tools' package, and add my network info to the
Under Windows XP, I still haven't gotten it to work. And while you could list 6 steps in excruciating detail for what Linux needs for wifi to work, all anybody knows about Windows XP is "click 'automatic'". When it comes back with "failed!", you're SOL.
So uh, ya gotta have that... Far as I know there was not one?
We at palmzone.net have already reported this on Christmas Eve...
i le =article&sid=332&mode=&order=0&thold=0
http://www.palmzone.net/modules.php?name=News&f
http://www.palmzone.net
>...it's a top-shelf product. Other products in similar price ranges all have Wi-Fi. You're NOT getting what you paid for here, that's what people are upset about.
You're getting exactly what you paid for. It's no one's fault but your own that you overpaid for something and missed out on a feature you wanted. Vote with your dollars.
What you say is very true but with the way the capitalistic society is now working the "long term" is next year so unfortunately all the corporate management cares about is next quarter results, so short term profit to increase the value of the brand, then sell it to a big company paying top money and retiring to the bahamas with 26 bikini babes serving pina coladas... Bottom line is if someone CAN "hack" the marketing departments of some big corp willing to "upgrade" their products by releasing features already included but soft dsabled that's all good with me, now palm has top REALLY work to make the "660" model they were planning to release next year "With WIFI ENABLED", they'll have to find something else to add to it
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
as the subject says
You're failing to process this. One of the largest PDA companies in the business has made it so that the only phone-enabled model running their OS will not support a certain feature in order to restrict VOIP trade. The models without phone hardware, simpler models, have the feature enabled. The more expensive model has been deliberately crippled to please another company.
That's illegal restriction of trade. It's a per se violation of the Sherman anti-trust act. You can't collude to prevent the development of a market. Not all anti-trust violations are monopoly based.
I didn't want to upgrade to the 650 after the news about the chip problems that were covered on slashdot a few months ago. Will this hack work with the 600? Or is it unlike the T5 internally? Can a similar mod be done?
This is very cool, between this and bluetooth dun I might consider a 650 for my next pda however I'm not really comfortable giving my money to a compnay that seems to make handhelds for the cell companes needs not the users.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
Sodomization it seems... very appropiate nickname, though...
Your head a splode
Engineer: This would be a cool feature, it would add value, make the device more useful to our customers, and we might well more!
Marketing: I don't know how to position that, besides, if we release too many features, our customers will get stubborn and not upgrade every 6 months for just 1 new feature.
Management: Make it like the old one, but constructed cheaper.
They are all afraid of competition I suspect, but it's annyoing to try and develop a new idea only to have it squashed simply because the hardware vendor won't tell you anything.
I think the 8nix community is having the same problem, though I havn't work on anything in particular.
I for one, encurage anyone with the skills to put pressure on companies like Palm and the WiFi vendors to release their specs in a timely fashion!
Considering the built in memory on the Treo is a joke; this hack is really worthless. Almost everyone I know with one of these uses the SDIO port for additional memory. And who the hell wants to have to keep swaping between the WiFi card and SD memory card.
If it was just the cell phone companies then devices like the Tungsten 2 would support the WiFi card, and not just a handful of devices.
This isn't about the Cell Phone companies, this is about Palm trying to force users to buy more expensive hardware to get the "built-in" wi-fi support. the only reason there is a Palm Wi-Fi card that has even minimal device support is because they're giving a slight nod to customer demand.
They have purposely refused to release drivers to let the Wi-Fi card work on lower end devices like the T2. This is their choice, and how they want to go about gouging their customers.
The T2 is the LAST Palm device I will ever own, not because I expect it to last, but because I expect to replace it as soon as I have the finances to do so.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Just ask anyone who (like me) was stupid enough to buy a Tungsten 2. How is it different from the higher end models that do support Wi-Fi? Simple, no drivers. It has the OS, Battery and most the internal parts of the devices that do support the card, but Palm has refused to release drivers, because it could eat into sales of the higher end devices.
It's kind of sad that so many people on slashdot are blaming the cell phone companies, because they have nothing to do with it. This is something Palm has been doing with their entire product line. The SanDisk SDIO Wi-Fi card was originally intended to support Palm devices as well, but licensing issues, not technology issues, have kept the drivers from being released.
Yes, Palm has been using licensing excuses to keep Sandisk from releasing their Palm drivers for their SDIO Wi-Fi card.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but this has nothing to do with the Cell Phone companies.
Look at the list of Palm devices that were available for sale in the last year and a half that have SDIO ports, but not integrated Wifi. There's a lot of them, aren't there? Did you know that Sandisk has drivers that would let any Palm device with an SDIO port running Palm OS 5.x use the Sandisk wifi card?
Did you know that Palm has been blocking Sandisk from releasing these drivers with what the Sandisk web site used to describe as "Licensing issues"?
The cell phone companies certainly gouge us at every turn, but this has nothing to do with them. This is Palm's doing, not theirs.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Wait, the box says its got WiFi and when its opened and turned on it doesn't?
Then there's a good damn reason to be pissed off. You didn't get what you paid for.
But I suspect you're saying that the fact that you didn't get a feature that wasn't claimed to be in the product means you didn't get what you paid for just because other products in the price range have it?
Well shit, I'm going to sue Dodge because my $30k truck didn't come with navigation, traction control, front ABS, side curtain airbags, an MP3 player or any other feature available on vehicles of the same cost. I mean seriously, I don't even have a trunk! WTF does Dodge think they're doing? They can't get away with that!
Maybe I'll sue Dunkin Donuts, too. My ham egg and cheese didn't come with sausage this morning, and another comparably priced sandwich they sell does come with it! The nerve of those FF's.
What is false. They said it did not support it. And they don't. Everyone is talking about devices replacing the PC the truth is computers in general are replacing devices. As a device becomes more software driven the less control the manufacture has over what that device can and can not do. Linux just makes this problem all the worse. It is so easy to use Linux as the basis of a device but once you do you pretty much open it up for mods. For a company making a product they figure we can put in these functions and sell it for this amount of money. Then we can use the same hardware and add these features and charge this much more. Heck why even write two versions of the code we can just write one and one version we change a bit to turn it on and wham you have the extra features. It works great you get a product line with very little extra expense.
The problem is when somebody figures out how to flip that bit and there cheap version becomes a top of the line model.
Before anyone gets all bent. This has been going on for a very long time. IBM did it for years on there computers and I think the Z-machines can still be upgraded with just a phone call.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I've understood that when you buy a phone subsidized by (say) Verizon, they cripple the shit out of it. But what about when you but it from the full-price?
Here's my example - I had a handset that came with my contract. Cost me twenty bucks. About a year later, I got drunk at a party and lost it. So I went back to the Rogers store, and wante dto buy another handset, whereupon I was told that since it wasn't the start of the plan I had to pay C$250 for a SonyEricsson T226 - which they called "full price." (BTW this was all in Canada).
So a few questions from that:
- Is what I paid the full price, or is it subsidized still?
- Assuming that there were features locked out on the subsidized one I got earlier, would they be locked out on the second one as well?
Cue The Sun...
How to http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:rzg-BJl8ECYJ: sastools.com/b2/post/79394291+wireless+modem+black berry+7100&hl=en&client=firefox-a
I find it rather interesting nobody yet posted shadowmite's own website: www.shadowmite.com
What bothers me about the phones for sale today is that they are crippled in their usefulness. my wife is more document/spreadsheet/calendar oriented, my kids just want to get their homework done, and learn to socialize with their peers, i on the other hand weep quietly for a hand held that i can do development on, and have access to the internet.
now in steps a solution that will allow me to have 4 treo 650's configured for the users needs. i think who ever builds the treo might want to double check their verdor agreements for extra parts.
Get the Siemens SX66 from Cingular if you want a PDA phone with Bluetooth and WiFi. The SX66 doesn't have that dopey-looking antenna sticking out of the top, and it has a slide-away QWERTY keyboard. The SX66 also has an infrared serial port and a SDIO slot. What more do you need in a PDA phone? Truthfully, I would have bought the Treo 650 had it been offered through someone besides Sprint.
It looks like Microsoft is actually trying to kill the palm. All the MS trolls are out on Slash today.
managed to get a Treo 650 to use WiFi?
"Shadowmite, a Palm enthusiast has managed to hack his Palm One Treo 650 smartphone, enabling it to work with the Palm One WiFi card...
Shadowmite managed to get his hands on the Pa1m One WiFi card and modify it so that his Treo 650 could use it."
650 coming out? I am dying to get a 650, but I'm really not interesting in buying one on a network that has 2 or 3 times as many users as the network can handle, forcing them to drop my calls like clockwork every 10 minutes or less, and more often than not just sending callers straight to my voicemail without ever ringing my phone. And yes, this is with one of their best phones with updated software and 100% signal strength in flat-as-a-pancake San Antonio. Oh, and it would also be nice to have a carrier that knew what Caller ID was - right now if I get local "unavailable" I know 100% it's Sprint cellphone customer.
Why do you think AT&T sold off AT&T Wireless to Cingular? VoIP. They're rolling up their sleeves and are already providing service over your internet connection. It's only time before they're selling handsets / handhelds that can do the same.
The difference, really, boils down to Open software. Treo 650 owners paid for a Palm device with an SDIO slot. This SDIO slot is sufficient for a WiFi card. However, the WiFi cards don't work, because PalmOne has not released any drivers for it, even though they've released drivers for other Palm devices with similar OS versions, SDIO slots, and a very similar NVRAM filesystem (The T5.)
It's like buying two different laptops from the same vendor, both running Windows XP, both with USB 2.0 ports, but only one of them supports your flashdrive, even though it plugs in and gets power in both systems, and no one's willing to provide you with a driver.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
No doubt... but the claim that the buyer didn't get what they paid for is rediculous. Neither the 650 nor the SDIO WiFi card said that they worked with each other...
So it may not make sense, it may be stupid, but in no way did the buyer not get what they paid for. They didn't get what they wanted, or what they may have assumed they paid for, but they got precisely what they paid for.
How does Sprint charge me for minutes when they can't lock me out of the network for nonpayment? Maybe if I'm using their "phone" SW/firmware on the WiFi Treo to run the call, it could authenticate with Sprint before/after the call transaction. But if I run a SIP softphone with UMA roaming between their EV-DO and some WiFi hotspots, how can they meter me?
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make install -not war
What on earth are you talking about? This has nothing to do with PC's, PCMCIA Wifi Cards, or Linux.
Read the article.
Here's what SanDisk's site used to say about the matter. Most PalmOS 5 devices don't put out the correct spec power on the SD card, and so using the network adapter could physically damage the machine.
Palm is saying using the SD WiFi in a 650 could potentially damage the SD slot.
SanDisk requires an SD I/O compatible slot. TapWave devices have one SD slot that's compatible, some Palm devices have slots that can do SD I/O, others have a reputation for burning out SD I/O cards. Veo's website used to have a list of ones that could run their camera reliably and ones that would become paperweights if you plugged it in.
The units with full SD I/O (and not just SD) slots typically can be identified by the vendor trying to sell you a host of SD cards you don't really need.
Anyway, from the article and from what the Palm and SanDisk sites say, and from what previous SD I/O devices are known to do, I would be extremely cautious with this unless you're prepared to lose the card, the phone or both.
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.