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PalmPilot Fullsize Keyboard

Posted by Hemos on from the and-you-can-play-simcity dept.

Several people, including Lexie, wrote to us about one of the coolest Palm accessory that's rolled around in a while. It's a full size keyboard, looks like it folds out - and will be coming out sometime later on this year. Looks like yet another Christmas idea.

1 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Happy Hacking universal PS/2Palm keyboard by GoRK · · Score: 3
    For those of you who just HAVE to have your old IBM clickey keyboard on your palm pilot -- or ANY other (Non-XT) keyboard for that matter -- why don't you just pick up one of THESE nifty little cradles from the Happy Hacking Keyboard people that lets you use ANY PS/2 (or AT with adaptor) keyboard on your palm?

    Here's the dirt that they don't really publicize though. Some of it very cool some of it is kind of a gripe.. anyway, here it is:
    • The thing doesnt support the Palm V or Vx without a serial port adaptor. It should work fine with an adaptor though.
    • The keyboard is powered by 2 AA batteries located in the cradle assembly. I would guess that some keyboards can really suck power. I've powered many devices with the 5V on my kbd port, so i know it puts out :) No mention of an A/C adaptor, although it wouldnt be all that hard to create that feature yourself...
    • You can attach a modem as well as a keyboard with this cradle; which is very good for e-mailing and other fun things. Again, if you want to use a Palm V modem with it, you'll need yet another adaptor. On the other hand, if you use a Palm V in the cradle, you could confortably attach a non Palm-V modem on the cradle.
    Anyway, it's not a bad accessory. I like devices like this that take the proprietary hardware out of the Palm. I seem to remember a PCMCIA (sic.) slot attachment somewhere that allowed you to use standard wireless network cards or standard modems; etc. Very cool.

    ~GoRK