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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."
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/
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
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.
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.
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.
Look! I got Linux to work on my Dell PC!
Wait, something broke? Why, I'm sure that Dell will support it.
*cough*
No, I doubt Dell gives a shit about supporting everything under the sun, either.
Noone owes you anything. You want to hack wifi into the thing? Go for it. Still expect the manufacturer to support it? Are you high? That'd be like me asking for support after hacking an Xbox.
Give the company a reason to support it, they might. Otherwise, bitching about it and acting as though it's your birthright - well, that's just idiotic.
Vocera makes them, but if you have to ask, you really can't afford it.
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/
Well, now that I've read the article (should I turn in my /. membership?) it seems that Sprint was the reason these features weren't supported (didn't want anyone getting anything for free...) If PalmOne is interested in selling more phones, maybe they should support the end user. Just a thought...
Send whiskey and fresh horses!
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
read the forums linked in the article for the whole process before making a judgment call on how clever it was (a nice 20 minute read), his hack was pretty clever saying he basically did it blind via emulation with a little help from other people (mostly idea wise and testing wise, and notice he would probably not have gotten it done alone, at least not so fast as his first attempts failed horribly and were aimed in the wrong direction) he didn't actually get a real wireless card to test with until the very end when he made it work... hacking open source software (this is a software hack remember, not a hardware hack) is by far easier than what he did, even if in the end it turned out to be a 'simple' fix.
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
The point, and PalmOne seems to be unable to see it, is that the Treo is a PDA with phone functionality, and the way to sell PDAs these days is not to sell crippled devices! They goofed enough with the T5, and if they don't start learning from their mistakes (and disabling DUN and wi-fi on the Treo, for political reasons, are exactly that), they'll lose business. As happened to Sony and the Clie palm device: Out of business, and what for? Because they insisted on sticking to the Sony-only memory stick (because another division of Sony sells them), and not supporting SD which almost every other PDA on the planet uses (and lots of other devices). Excellent PDAs, _except_ for that braindead memory stick issue. Uh, and that's also why I'm not buying a Sony Ericsson phone.. memory stick, no SD. Can't exchange flash with my other gadgets. Pure phone geeks are not so worried about memory techonology as more PDA oriented geeks so they still sell lots of phones. But they would sell more if they used SD.