Serially-attached SD for old PalmOS devices

[dleslie]

I'm still a little bitter that Palm failed. I have my Z22 kicking around, still charged, and I noodle with it from time to time.

I feel like Android and iOS sort of forgot about the professional and semi-professional market segments, which have been drowned out by broader demand and had their preferred featureset designed out in favour of an experience with a broader market appeal.

Opening a Palm device feels like you're being invited to schedule something, take note of something, or otherwise make a productive choice. Opening my phone feels like I'm supposed to respond to WhatsApp and browse shitposts on Reddit.

[heavyset_go]

Palm's webOS was ahead of its time, too. Apps were written in JS, HMTL & CSS, all messaging systems were integrated into a single inbox, there was universal search, and it took years for Android and iOS to adopt its card metaphor model for multitasking, too. The way app switching works in Android and iOS now is the way app switching worked from the beginning with webOS.

[marban]

Psion 5mx was where the magic happened.

[causality0]

I spent years ticking back and forth between Palm and Pocket PC devices. Palm hardware quality was bad and Pocket PC software was terrible. To this day I wonder why Palm thought it was ok that all their LCDs emitted a high-pitched humming noise when turned on.

[adrianmonk]

That is quite a project! Hardware, firmware, protocol reverse engineering, hacking Palm OS itself to support the hardware, and writing apps to make it useful.

And to top it off, it's all done while working within the limitations of a mid-1990s device. Desktop computers were limited enough back then, but this is a portable device and is even more limited.

To those who haven't worked in this environment (I used to write Palm apps), it may be hard to appreciate exactly how limited. For example, the article mentioned heap size. I forget the exact numbers, and it varied from one device to another, but the total heap for your entire program was something like 32 kilobytes on some devices.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I wrote some Java apps for Palm. The limitations made it a fun challenge!

[zubiaur]

Dmitry, the author, is nothing short of a genius. He was fixing many issues with palmos devices back in the day. If you ever used skinui, his sdhc drivers, or any of his palmpowerups it is evident that this guy understood palm PDAs at a fundamental level. I’m fan of his work.

[anonymousiam]

I had a TRG-PRO which was a classic Palm Pilot, but with a CF card slot in the back and built-in software to use the additional storage. I suppose it could have used a SD card if you adapted it with one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Compact-Memory-Adapter-High-Speed-Ext...

http://www.pencomputing.com/palm/Reviews/trgpro.html

[orangepurple]

I miss the Palm OS and device aesthetic

[lxgr]

Then go and run Palm OS on your smartphone (yes, also non-jailbroken iOS) right now :)

https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/

[billiam]

This old Palm guy loved the reverse engineering done here.

[jamal-kumar]

I used to use a palm III for "redboxing" payphones back in the day in a country which didn't use multifrequency tones to signal a coin drop. Was pretty much the most fun I had with the thing, it had a BASIC interpreter you could download so writing little programs that could do stuff like that wasn't actually hard at all

[blamazon]

If you liked this, check out the author's projects page. Lots of cool stuff.

[TedDoesntTalk]

This is incredible reverse engineering work. Great job!