Posted by
Hemos
on from the fun-with-my-screwdriver dept.
Griffone writes "The Gadgeteer has four quick photos of a dismantled Palm VII. Question though - you can see its rechargeable battery, but what are the OTHER two holders for? Batteries? "
40 comments
Huh?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Nobody would buy that. How would you browse the web or read your email!? 99% of the public doesn't have a unix shell account... (though all the people I know do:-)
Well DUH... It's NOT for everyone, it's for all us admin types who companies feel should be on 24 hour availability.
Ever tried lugging around a laptop and a cell phone and a beeper to go bar hopping for in case something crashes at work durring your not-so-free time? THAT's what it's for.
Why do you need a moble "web browser"? If you're gonna browse, stay at home and browse or go to some coffee house with web access.
Unfortunately, no PalmPilot other than the Palm V use power supplied by the cradle. The Palm V has a NiCd rechargable battery inside it (no AAA's) which is part of the reason why it is so thin. --
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Minor correction, the Palm V has Lithium Ion (Li-ion) batteries. These are better, no charge "memory" if you are recharging without running it all the way down. Also better power characteristics in a smaller space. Most laptops today use this battery technology.
Okay, the palm is neat and all, but what I want is the following:
Small, folding form-factor, that could easily be shoved in a pocket (roughly palm sized when folded) with a screen and keyboard. Small (64K?) memory, ROM burned OS, terminal emulator maried to PCS phone technology. It would need almost no processor power, minimal long term storage (to keep config info) and with modern batteries could have a LONG battery life. If connected to the PCS net properly, it would have little bandwidth, and that could be made CHEAP.
For sysadmins like myself, this thing would be heavenly. Imagine ALWAYS being at a terminal. Imagine all the down time you could pick up (waiting in line at stores, eating lunch) without the need for all that bulky crap that comes with a laptop, or the cutesy crap that is imbedded in most PDAs.
But because I represent a VERY marginal section of the market, I doubt it would be made. (a pda with no OS? horrors!!)
Have you checked out the Nokia 9000 and 9110? They're GSM based phones that have a keyboard, screen, modem, telnet, a terminal emulator which can be married to a RS232 cable, as well as _lots_ more, including a fax, IMAP based mail, web browser, and other goodies. And it's about the size of a 4 yr old traditional cellphone.
My clearest reccolection of this machine being extremely usfull was when I had a machine in San Francisco blow up while I was sitting in a park in Singapore doing sight seeing. I got the call that there was a problem, logged in, found the issue and resolved it, and got back to my trip... total time expended was less than 10 minutes.
sdm preferred to avd
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Re:sdm preferred to avd
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
But do you have a picture of van Dam? A picture of vam Dam spewing would be highly valuable. I also bet that the moderators do no know who van Dam is. Obviously, he is not RasterMan.
In my experience a pompous ass who works his undergrads like they were grad students, but provides no credit or job security.
When I took his intro to CS programming course, he appeared in the same sweater you see in the picture, with Birkenstocks and red socks. Eek. Ah well. I now make more money than his professors salary. Without his damn class.
Clearly I am bitter. : ).
Re:Palm Power and Wireless Clarification
by
PapaZit
·
· Score: 1
hardware options already exist to connect Palm Pilot/Pro/III/IIIx/VII to wireless LAN's.
URL?
I'm looking for a way to hook a Palm to a wireless ethernet (IEEE 802.11) network. We're using Windows CE devices now, for lack of alternatives.
We wanted to use Palm devices, but couldn't find any wireless network cards. Ricochet doesn't seem too interested in selling its base units, even though they don't provide service around here.
--
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Re:Palm Power and Wireless Clarification
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
There must be a big capacitor somewhere in this unit as I hear a pop pop pop when listening to my walkman while waiting for my email.
Palm Power and Wireless Clarification
by
GoRK
·
· Score: 1
The yellow thing you see at the top of the device is not a rechargable battery. It is a capacitor. Wireless transmission (and simeotaneously running the computing functions, screen, serial port, etc.) from the Palm device requires more current than the batteries can provide on a constant basis. To preserve battery life and improve performance, this capacitor is charged during normal use, much like the capacitor that drives the high-current xenon strobes in point-and-shoot cameras. If the device is transmitting lots of data it will actually tell you that it needs to recharge the transmission circut and make you wait.
As far as I know, the Palm VII does not support battery charging through the cradle as the Palm V does.
On a side note, the communications frequencies used by the Palm VII are in the FCC licensed frequencies for cell phones and/or pagers. You won't see a way to connect the Palm VII to your local network with it's built in wireless without either illegal equipment or internal modification. Besides, hardware options already exist to connect Palm Pilot/Pro/III/IIIx/VII to wireless LAN's.
~GoRK
Re:Palm Power and Wireless Clarification
by
mmontour
·
· Score: 1
>The yellow thing you see at the top of the device is not a rechargable battery. It is a capacitor
You mean the tube with the "Ni-Cd" recycling symbol on it?
Nah; my Palm IIIx has the same "feature". When the unit experiences a slight impact from the spring side, the springs may allow the batteries to come unconnected from the unit for a moment; having both springs on the same side means there's one fewer side for a hit to cause this. The springs are on the side that would not break the battery connection if it slipped out of your left hand, the hand a righty would most likely drop it out of. Pretty smart.
-- personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
Re:PalmVII == wireless terminal??
by
mmontour
·
· Score: 1
Sort of... you can use a Palm as a line-of-sight (IrDA) wireless terminal to a Corel Netwinder. I don't know if anyone's maintaining the package (and I never got it to work), but it's at www.netwinder.org/~ryansh ("Corel Palm Administrator").
Re:other holders are for the AAA's
by
Mr.+Flibble
·
· Score: 1
According to O'Reilly's ultimate palm pilot guide the capacitor will actually give you about 11 min of charge while you are replacing the batteries. Nice to see that palm was really conservative about the specs on the capacitor though!
other holders are for the AAA's
by
stripes
·
· Score: 3
It uses two AAA's like a normal (non-V) Palm. The batt you see is the one for the wireless crud which gets charged from your AAA's automagically. Why? I donno, maybe it needs some odd voltage Palm couldn't get from the AAA's, or the wirelsss goop was from another compony and that was the way to tack it on with the fewest changes, and therefore the lowest time to market.
It's a bit of a kludge.
Re:other holders are for the AAA's
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
They are likely to ensure that you don't lose things when you change your batteries. If they had to use nvram it would be SLLLOOOWWW.
Re:other holders are for the AAA's
by
Russ+Steffen
·
· Score: 1
That has never been a problem before. Older Palms use a capacitor to keep the memory alive whily you put in new batteries. In practice you get a good 30-40 seconds to get the fresh batteries in before the memory goes bad.
Re:other holders are for the AAA's
by
Snowfox
·
· Score: 1
It's a Palm Hybrid.:) 70 miles to the gallon to boot.
yep, batteries.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Speaking as someone who had a Palm VII (and sent it back) I can tell you fer sure that those are slots for a pair of AAA batteries.
PalmVII == wireless terminal??
by
nemo
·
· Score: 2
Has anyone come up with any linux/open-source solutions to making your palm a wireless terminal within your own home?
I don't care about the commercial wireless net access through the PalmVII, but I would be VERY interested in having the PalmVII act even as a vt100 terminal over the wireless. 20metre range would be perfect for in-house:)
I guess what's needed is the frequencies the PalmVII talk on (and can possibly talk on), and appropriate software at each end... anyone have info on this kidna stuff?
Re:PalmVII == wireless terminal??
by
Joe987654
·
· Score: 1
I would suggest that you look at http://www.ricochet.net with your current Palm Pilot Althought you would have to buy two modems.
Re:PalmVII == wireless terminal??
by
rickyradio
·
· Score: 1
The Palm is supposed to be on the old RAM (Ericsson) now Bell South Freqs. Native protocol is mobitex, don't know if IP is in the mix now. The upper battery is labeled "NI-CAD" which you would need for a few hundred mills of 900Mhz RF packet. The VII freqs are old SMR or Trunking freqs not available to the public. The RF modem is about at 8k baud slow................900 narrow band requires this. You need a base station the size of the fridge. This is not for the house or the dorm. Wait for a new setup using part 15 - free freqs.
Re:And this means ... ?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Perhaps if those were capacitors and resistors coming out of his mouth, then yes, you might have a shot of being featured...
The batteries
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
If you will notice the two empty battery slots, both springs are on the same side, yet the polarity on the batteries is on opposite ends. This would make insertion and possibly connection a difficulty.
Re:The batteries
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Nah; my Palm IIIx has the same "feature". When the unit experiences a slight impact from the spring side, the springs may allow the batteries to come unconnected from the unit for a moment; having both springs on the same side means there's one fewer side for a hit to cause this.
I image they wanted to keep the Pilot's power supply and the wireless power supply seperate - as each has dreastically different power requirements. If the wireless drains the batteries at least you can still use the Pilot offline until you get some new AAA's.
The question is, will is use the cradle's supply for wireless when docked? That would be nice.
-josh
Re:Battery holders
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Could allow better isolation... wireless circuitry could easily pick up noise from the logic circuitry and corrupt the signals. Seems like a cheap hack either way, making the thing larger.
Re:Battery holders
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
That's right, it's for the radio. It's not uncommon for low-powered infrequently-transmitting wireless devices to use an extra "permanent" battery to drive the sporadic high current needs for xmit. Positive-ack and two-way beepers, for example, often have this structure - you get the least power out of a battery with bursty current, and the most with constant low current.
The Palm VII is on the Mobitex network, running only custom-designed low-bandwidth protocols. As always, this palm design is quite good at doing what it is intended to do. It is not indented for interactive login; at one packet per character you probably wouldn't get too many characters before the battery went kaput. Beleive me; I run all sorts of things over a CDPD modem powered by regular alkaline batteries, and the Palm lasts forever in comparison.
For the guy after a wireless LAN-esque palm, get a ruggedized wireless ethernet palm from Symbol or the like; several models are or will soon be available.
Not an AC; rather, Slashdot is incompatible with my anti-spam measures. Grant Taylor (gtaylor+slashdot_ccbfh062999@picante.com).
by the way
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
The Palm VII is significantly bigger than the Palm III, probably due to the extra space taken up by the antenna and extra battery.
You can do this with one of the palm clones. symbol technologies makes a palm with a wireless 10 mbitps ethernet connection. (www.symbol.com) the unit also has 8 mb of ram and rom. you basically need the symbol unit and a wireless ethernet bridge...
-- -------
Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped...
-Great OM
Hope it will have Bluetooth radio communcation now then the development kit from Ericsson has been released. Would be nifty to have it speak with my celluar phone in my pocket or bag without any cables or IR.
Re:other holders are for the AAA's - not a kludge
by
BenW
·
· Score: 3
The rechargeable battery is just a reservior to smooth out the load. NiCads have a much lower internal resistance (and therefore higher current capability) than alkalines. The radio needs short bursts of relatively high currents on transmit.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody would buy that. How would you browse the web or read your email!? 99% of the public doesn't have a unix shell account... (though all the people I know do :-)
Unfortunately, no PalmPilot other than the Palm V use power supplied by the cradle. The Palm V has a NiCd rechargable battery inside it (no AAA's) which is part of the reason why it is so thin.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Minor correction, the Palm V has Lithium Ion (Li-ion) batteries. These are better, no charge "memory" if you are recharging without running it all the way down. Also better power characteristics in a smaller space. Most laptops today use this battery technology.
You're a prat.. it's a pic of a Palm VII.. Palm III's weren't even around in '95.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Okay, the palm is neat and all, but what I want is the following:
Small, folding form-factor, that could easily be shoved in a pocket (roughly palm sized when folded) with a screen and keyboard. Small (64K?) memory, ROM burned OS, terminal emulator maried to PCS phone technology. It would need almost no processor power, minimal long term storage (to keep config info) and with modern batteries could have a LONG battery life. If connected to the PCS net properly, it would have little bandwidth, and that could be made CHEAP.
For sysadmins like myself, this thing would be heavenly. Imagine ALWAYS being at a terminal. Imagine all the down time you could pick up (waiting in line at stores, eating lunch) without the need for all that bulky crap that comes with a laptop, or the cutesy crap that is imbedded in most PDAs.
But because I represent a VERY marginal section of the market, I doubt it would be made. (a pda with no OS? horrors!!)
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
try here
hardware options already exist to connect Palm Pilot/Pro/III/IIIx/VII to wireless LAN's.
URL?
I'm looking for a way to hook a Palm to a wireless ethernet (IEEE 802.11) network. We're using Windows CE devices now, for lack of alternatives.
We wanted to use Palm devices, but couldn't find any wireless network cards. Ricochet doesn't seem too interested in selling its base units, even though they don't provide service around here.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
There must be a big capacitor somewhere in this unit as I hear a pop pop pop when listening to my walkman while waiting for my email.
The yellow thing you see at the top of the device is not a rechargable battery. It is a capacitor. Wireless transmission (and simeotaneously running the computing functions, screen, serial port, etc.) from the Palm device requires more current than the batteries can provide on a constant basis. To preserve battery life and improve performance, this capacitor is charged during normal use, much like the capacitor that drives the high-current xenon strobes in point-and-shoot cameras. If the device is transmitting lots of data it will actually tell you that it needs to recharge the transmission circut and make you wait.
As far as I know, the Palm VII does not support battery charging through the cradle as the Palm V does.
On a side note, the communications frequencies used by the Palm VII are in the FCC licensed frequencies for cell phones and/or pagers. You won't see a way to connect the Palm VII to your local network with it's built in wireless without either illegal equipment or internal modification. Besides, hardware options already exist to connect Palm Pilot/Pro/III/IIIx/VII to wireless LAN's.
~GoRK
Nah; my Palm IIIx has the same "feature". When the unit experiences a slight impact from the spring side, the springs may allow the batteries to come unconnected from the unit for a moment; having both springs on the same side means there's one fewer side for a hit to cause this.
The springs are on the side that would not break the battery connection if it slipped out of your left hand, the hand a righty would most likely drop it out of. Pretty smart.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
Sort of... you can use a Palm as a line-of-sight (IrDA) wireless terminal to a Corel Netwinder. I don't know if anyone's maintaining the package (and I never got it to work), but it's at www.netwinder.org/~ryansh ("Corel Palm Administrator").
According to O'Reilly's ultimate palm pilot guide the capacitor will actually give you about 11 min of charge while you are replacing the batteries. Nice to see that palm was really conservative about the specs on the capacitor though!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
It uses two AAA's like a normal (non-V) Palm. The batt you see is the one for the wireless crud which gets charged from your AAA's automagically. Why? I donno, maybe it needs some odd voltage Palm couldn't get from the AAA's, or the wirelsss goop was from another compony and that was the way to tack it on with the fewest changes, and therefore the lowest time to market.
It's a bit of a kludge.
Speaking as someone who had a Palm VII (and sent it back) I can tell you fer sure that those are slots for a pair of AAA batteries.
Has anyone come up with any linux/open-source solutions to making your palm a wireless terminal within your own home?
:)
I don't care about the commercial wireless net access through the PalmVII, but I would be VERY interested in having the PalmVII act even as a vt100 terminal over the wireless. 20metre range would be perfect for in-house
I guess what's needed is the frequencies the PalmVII talk on (and can possibly talk on), and appropriate software at each end... anyone have info on this kidna stuff?
Perhaps if those were capacitors and resistors coming out of his mouth, then yes, you might have a shot of being featured...
If you will notice the two empty battery slots, both springs are on the same side, yet the polarity on the batteries is on opposite ends. This would make insertion and possibly connection a difficulty.
see subject :-)
iSKUNK!
i just need to say thank you
----
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
Steven Wright
That picture's practically as old as the web - the multimedia aspect of the web anyway. I remember seeing that pic back in '95.
I image they wanted to keep the Pilot's power supply and the wireless power supply seperate - as each has dreastically different power requirements. If the wireless drains the batteries at least you can still use the Pilot offline until you get some new AAA's.
The question is, will is use the cradle's supply for wireless when docked? That would be nice.
-josh
The Palm VII is significantly bigger than the Palm III, probably due to the extra space taken up by the antenna and extra battery.
You can do this with one of the palm clones. symbol technologies makes a palm with a wireless 10 mbitps ethernet connection. (www.symbol.com)
the unit also has 8 mb of ram and rom.
you basically need the symbol unit and a wireless ethernet bridge...
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
It would be much more interesting if Andy van Dam or Scott Myers were in that picture.:-)
Bite em Bears! Or more appropriately Bite em Beers!
where it belongs....
AC
Hope it will have Bluetooth radio communcation now then the development kit from Ericsson has been released. Would be nifty to have it speak with my celluar phone in my pocket or bag without any cables or IR.
The rechargeable battery is just a reservior to smooth out the load. NiCads have a much lower internal resistance (and therefore higher current capability) than alkalines. The radio needs short bursts of relatively high currents on transmit.
:)
Think of it just like a very big capacitor.