add hrdwr wzrd doesnt rec my Palm Pilot personal & doc station

[handytech]

Somebody gave me a large basket of kinda cool... but older computer stuff amongst this ' techno memorabilia ' was a Palm Pilot Personal ( probably the first model ever made by Palm / 3com).

Anyhows...after mastering Graffiti, I thought that it would be fun to hook it up to either my Dell Laptop or my Dell Desktop to get a connection going.

Apparently add hardware wizard doesnt rec my Palm Pilot personal & serial port docking station.

The 'Add hardware wizard' in my Win Me OS doesnt see / recognize my Palm Pilot personal & doc station and I checked COM port 1 and the I/O address and IRQ are set OK.

Is resolving this problem as simple as jockying around my serial PCI card to another slot or do I need to add another port (for ex. COM 3 [ I only have COM 1 and LPT1] and if so how do I do that...or is the problem something else. Please note that everything is pluged in and turned on (Palm-wise) when I attempt this.

[Telyx]

The Add Hardware Wizard is not part of the process with a Palm. You need to download and install Palm Desktop--it's available at Palm's website. Once you have that installed, you need to make sure it's set to sync using "Local Serial"--the default for the downloaded version is "Local USB" (and maybe "Network").

Also, the original Palm device was the Pilot 1000, followed by the Pilot 5000, then the PalmPilot Personal and Professional handhelds. The major difference between the first Pilots and the PalmPilots (besides the name) was the presence of a backlight as well as the advance of the operating system from Palm OS 1.0 to 2.0. I think OS 2.0 added a TCP/IP stack.

The memory cards for any of the four devices were interchangeable, and the "Palm III" 2MB/Flash ROM/IR card would work in all four.

[handytech]

Thanx for the Palm history & additional information. I couldn't get accurate info on that subject from the Internet to save my life (boy...search engines are so dumb sometimes...not to mention anally syntax sensitive)!

As 4 Hotsync...I figured it out already. Iv'e been Hotsyncing between my Palm Pilot Personal for a couple of days now and If it wern't for:

... the lack of a back-lit display, tempermental touch screen (Graffiti's a breeze... it's just that damn touch screen...reminds me of some lame voice rec software that Iv'e tried in the past), plus the inability to transfer/display pic files and that, only older version (and hard to find... to boot) sucky games are all that will play in it due to the older OS...I would continue to keep using this unit, but I'm definately sold on PalmOne devices from here on out[ I particularly like the Palm z22].

Palm Desktop is a lot like Outlook which I already use for organizing my small electrical contracting business.

I wonder if I can export .pst data from Outlook to Palm Desktop and vs.(or is Palm Desktop really Outlook in disguise)?

[Telyx]

The Personal's display does have a backlight--if you turn it on. Press and hold the power button to turn the backlight on or off. (Unless someone put an older memory card from a Pilot 1000 or 5000 in; the backlight is software-controlled and the older cards don't support it!) There is also a Graffiti stroke (from the bottom of the screen to the top) that is usually set as the default stroke for turning the backlight on or off.

I loved playing Reptoids on my Personal. I think there was a Galaxian "clone" called Galax that ran well on it, too. Not much else... that device was from the early days of Palm.

I've never used Outlook, so I can't answer that question. Palm Desktop is NOT Outlook, but if you have Chapura's "Pocket Mirror" software, you can sync between your Palm and Outlook.

I still have my Pilot 1000 in a drawer (the screen is busted), and my wife still has my old Personal with the 2MB upgrade card. 2MB sure seemed like all the RAM I'd ever need in a Palm at the time.