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Handhelds Hardware

8MB upgrade hack for Palm V 83

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-all-fun-and-games dept.
An Onimous Cow Herd writes "Beef up your superslim Palm V with an 8 MB upgrade card (and violate your warranty too...). " My PalmPro is looking more dated each day.
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8MB upgrade hack for Palm V More

8MB upgrade hack for Palm V

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  • that the inside of the Palm V looks like Al's handlink for Quantum Leap? Especially with the area on the upper left looking like an indentation in the silicon...
  • I was beginning to think I was the last one in the free world that still had a 5000! ZD-Net called them antiques the other day...
  • Posted by DonR:

    Really? I love my PalmV. I don't drive a SUV. I'm a unix sysadmin. I don't think I've ever played golf (besides miniature golf). Yeah, it was expensive, but now I can fit in the front pocket of my jeans. The slim size actually allows me to make much more use of it than I did my PalmPersonal. I haven't decided yet if I'll try upgrading it to 8mb ram, as the battery issues haven't been quite worked out yet.
    ---
    Donald Roeber
  • Back in aughty-aught, when through hole parts were more commonly used, the "zero-ohm" resistor came about as an inexpensive way to install jumpers with automatic insertion equipment. They had a single black band on them. I was told the story of some old salters pulling a young tech's leg, telling him this zero ohm resistor had a 5% tolerance, haw haw.

    Bassai Dai!
  • Check out this editorial [pdabuzz.com] I wrote about the PalmV and what's wrong with it.

    Funny thing is, the domain hitting this editorial the most ... is 3com.com. *grin*
  • Give the guy a break! Immediately after mentioning the resistors, he notes "I'm no technician excuse my translation!" I thought that he got the idea across, and the images showed the process, too.


    --Phil (Not that I'll be trying this--I don't have a Palm pilot.)

  • Especially since it's obvious that the PalmV could have easily had 8M rather than 2.

    Personally, I don't see a need for a thinner Palm at the cost of upgradability. What 3Com really needs to do is add the battery features to the 3x and drop the V. Or at least bump the V up to 8M.


  • I can't _ever_ imagine using up 48MB.

    Hide this quote somewhere on a long term system, and schedule it to pop up in 3 years time. :-)

    dylan_-


    --

  • The Palm 5000, Pro, and III run for about two months of normal use on two alkaline AAA batteries. The Palm V runs for about a month on its tiny internal Lithium Ion battery and recharges in just minutes, even automagically taking a small charge every time you link it with your PC. See 3com's Specs [palm.com] for details.

    The betteries in the Everex Freestyle Windows CE handheld device are good for only about 8 hours.

  • If you read the article more closely and study the pictures, you will see that in addition to changing the jumpers, an entire chip was replaced as well.
  • Think of the 0 Ohm chip resistor as a jumper. Of
    course even jumpers have a non-zero resistance,
    but this value is small enough to be neglected.
  • All intelligently designed hardware leaves room for improvement. When they come out with a newer version with more RAM, different screen, faster proc, or whatever, it's a lot nicer if they can keep the same already designed and proven motherboard to connect the newer/different components. My motherboard can move faster than my CPU...that is so I can upgrade later and not have to buy a new MB as well. And you better believe it can support more RAM than I have...

    Of course, the room that they leave for improvement can be used by intrepid soles such as this one in Japan.

    Also, as has been mentioned, the Palm V is only superior to the Palm IIIx cosmetically. If you are interested in the raw tech, go with IIIx.

    --Lenny
  • Many are complaining that the new Palm's should have had 8 MB anyway. I'm not sure that I agree. I know plenty of people who don't need anymore than the 1 MB that comes on their Palm Pro. Those apps are *tiny*, so it doesn't take much room to load up.

    I know that there are always things that you could find to fill up the extra RAM, but I'm not sure that it really adds to the usefulness of the product. mp3? Get a Rio instead, or wait for an integration sort of affair. This thing wasn't meant to replace a Discman, anyway.

    The reason the Palms are successful is that they are well designed with a clean, efficient, and highly usable UI in a compact package. The hardware doesn't need to be blazingly fast, since those apps aren't exactly proc-hogs anyway. Most of what sets the Palms apart is the software. Sure you can get a stacked WinCE machine, but what good is that? I don't want to try and run WordCE...the palmtop is not the best platform for that kind of work. MS and others are trying to push palmtops as "really small PC's", but I don't think such a product is terribly useful. 3com has the right idea, as far as I am concerned...

    wondering if he will get flamed,
    --Lenny
  • The memory upgrade is nice, but can you also make one of those memory boards the uCLinux folks put together that are needed to support memory management and a linux kernel?


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • Gag/retch.
    I had a Casio WinCE PDA with the chicklet keyboard about a year ago. It wasn't small enough to be portable, and wasn't useful as a laptop. That, and double-tapping icons and dragging/dropping things with a plastic stylus is not what I call a usable user interface. The keys on the keyboard are so small you can only type with 2-3 fingers at a time. Just horrid.

    By contrast, I've had my Palm IIIx for 4 days. It took me about 5 minutes to learn the arcane letter strokes, and now I can scribble on that thing as fast as I can write.

    And it runs Linux! (Well, maybe. Soon. I hope.)


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • 386, 486, Celeron.


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • Here is a great soldering HOWTO [wimborne.co.uk] that shows the way to make fine connections. Good reading.
  • the more memory you have, the faster your batteries get sucked dry.

    Starting to feel like my fave PDA might be a dying breed

    Don't believe the hype. Look at the market share numbers, 3Com still gets tons of new adopters.
  • 1.5 months ago? The Palm V was only announced like 3 weeks ago.
  • its for geeks who want a smaller sized Pilot with a rechargeable battery. Those two things are more useful to me than 4MB of RAM.

    2MB of RAM is enough to hold my VT100 emulator, Cisco router configurator, web browser and plenty o' games, not to mention Tricorder! ;)
  • There's a little Everex WIN CE machine out there that is of reasonable size, has 4MB RAM, and costs $300. I can get a 48MB CompactFlash card and plug it into that for $150 to $200. Now, that's a lot of memory.

    As far as I can tell, Palm can't come close to this in either capacity or price.

    Not that I'm about to scrap my Palm Pro and do this. If we could ever get an open OS on one of those machines, though, I'd go for it.

    Bruce

  • Lots of people responded that CE isn't a good OS compared to PalmOS (no surprise) and that the batteries ran down, etc.

    Put an open, hackable operating system on the box instead of CE and I'd buy it in a minute and deal with the battery problems.

    Now, if I could just get the hardware documentation...

    What would I put in 48MB? Maps, for one thing. A nice detailed S.F. bay and surrounding communities map with searching would be cool. The rest could be applications and maybe "web channels" for reading news offline.

    You give me the space, I'll find a use for it.

    Bruce

  • Yes, I know that. Unfortunately, the last time I checked it required a serial console to run and did not stand alone. Maybe someday, and more RAM should help.

    But 48M? That could be interesting.

    Someone says that a PCMCIA adapter is in the works. That's OK, but I'd really like to have all of that RAM in my pocket in a compact package, as with the Everex.

    Well, give us a few years and we'll have our cake and eat it too.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Half a meg for the company phone/address database, half a meg for a novel or two, a meg or two for email, half a meg for a couple of databases and spreadsheets, a quarter meg for Datebk3 (Ok, that last one is an application not data).
  • I think you are missing something, Bruce. Go out and buy that Everex, and use it for a while. Afterwards, tell us which you like more.

    PDAs are something you can't judge by hardware alone because it doesn't matter that much. I haven't used up the 2 MB in my upgraded PPro. I can't _ever_ imagine using up 48MB. More important to me are battery life and overall usability.

    I haven't used a CE machine myself, but I know people who do. They don't use it nearly as much as I do, because it's too slow, isn't as usable, or sucks up batteries. These are important characteristics for something you're going to carry around with you all the time!

    I know one person who has a CE machine with keyboard, and still carries a pen and paper everywhere. He updates the CE with new appts and stuff during downtime at his desk.

    (On a different note, I think the main reason 3com is taking it slow upping the memory on these things is working the OS to the point you don't need a defrag program if you have 8MB.)
  • No flames here. A friend of mine was comparing CE devices with Palm devices, and was wowed by the 8 megs or so on the CE devices... but I explained that a Palm Pro can do a lot more (in my opinion) with 1 meg than a CE thingy can do with 8.

    People don't NEED "really small PCs" in their pockets, at least not with the human interfaces available today. (If I could have all the functionality of my desktop in my pocket, that would be cool, but having pentium power with a low-res LCD and a tap-to-type keyboard would be worthless)

    That's what the Palm folks got right - it's designed to complement your PC, they don't pretend that it could replace it.
  • The different operating systems are like night and day with respect to memory use. Windows (CE or not) is a pig for memory. The Pilot's OS isn't.

    True, they are aimed at different market segments for different uses...

    Anyone should feel free to disagree with me after taking a while to peruse developer documentation for both platforms.
  • Someone is selling one on EBay... $135 I think. It's a plug in replacement if you're willing to perform open-case surgery your III. :)
  • If you don't feel comfortable doing it, DON'T. It's a complex procedure involving soldering leads within a sub-milimeter tollerance. All that while not overheating the board so you don't damage the BGA mounted dragonball. Not for the faint-of-heart. If you haven't done close pitch soldering before, don't even think about doing it without at least getting some practice in on a board you don't care about.

    There are some guys getting an opperation underway to sell this as a service. I believe they wanted $150 to upgrade a Palm V. Opening the case without damage is tough, and the soldering isn't easy either, even for the experienced. I'd say it's a fair price. They say they will also sell upgraded units. Keep in mind, doing something like this will void your waranty. If you break it, or have someone else break it for you, don't call 3Com.

    As for if you need it, I'd say no. I'm not using the 1MB my pro came with.. Of course that didn't stop me from upgrading it to 2MB anyway, but that's not the point. ;)

    Travis
  • Where do you most often access slashdot from?

    ( ) Work.
    ( ) Home.
    ( ) Rob is lame. Out of Katz's ass.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • I wonder how much this "upgrade" would have cost if it were included in the original design of the thing in the first place. That was one of the biggest disappointments to me about the new palms (IIIx and V) is that the price of the V was so much higher, but the IIIx was mostly the superior machine.

    Starting to feel like my fave PDA might be a dying breed as other brands gain majorly on the technology because of decisions like this. :(

    Next, I want someone to tell me how I cna swap out the screen on my plain vanilla Palm III for the new IIIx screen. :) I'm drooling over that lovely display!
  • Ready and willing-- already had to do it once, when it hit the pavement and the screen's ribbon cable came loose. :) Was more inclined to hack around inside than spend $100 for shipping & repair.

    Ya don't happen to have a URL on that do ya?

  • There's a guy who will either sell you a pre-made Palm V-8 for $600 or will upgrade yours for $150. Here are some pictures [efig.com].
  • A guy named John Figeroa plans to sell Palm V-8s for $600 or do upgrades for $150. His web site [efig.com] includes a bunch of great pictures. I'm tempted.

  • Oh come on....like you've never met an electrical engineer who doesn't approximate. I usually approixmate the 60Hz line noise to 0Hz in high frequncy applications.

  • I got the Palm V -- wanted the rechargable batteries and smaller size -- and am quite liking it. I put FlashPRO on it, so I can move all my common apps to ROM. Instant extra 800kb memory. The only way I'm going to run out in the foreseeable future is if I start deciding to put all my eText's on at once, which I don't really need to do. It's working quite nicely.

    More memory would be *nice*, but I can make do quite well with what it comes with.
  • Until I get bandwidth, I'm stuck doing my surfing from work. But that doesn't mean I have to run Windoze at home.
  • /me looks at his sony playstation motherboard and grins (oh, warranty...yea...that thing is shattered when I started soldering a chip to the board) *grin*

    at least if my palm had 8 mb of ram at could compete with my HP-48GX =]

  • when i put the mod chip in my playstation i was appalled at how small the damned pads were compared to the pictures in the instructions (which were obviously like 300x magnification) *grin*

    i bought a micro soldering iron (very small wattage) and some very small solder (30 awg?)
    with flux core.

    alot of patience, daniel-son

  • No, they are also replacing the memory chip. Compare the pictures -- one has a robot-soldered chip, and one has a hand-soldered one (doesn't look pretty, but I'm amazed the guy was able to do it at all since it's so small).
  • Yes, it's very nice that the Palm V is actually upgradeable... It makes me feel a little less bad about the fact that I'm still waiting for mine to ship...

    But the question that comes to my mind is, how much does that extra memory chip cost? Also, I don't think I'd trust myself to crack open my new Palm V myself, and try to solder things to the board... Am I going to be able to find someone who will do it for me, and how much more will that cost?

    Is it worth the extra cost to get the extra memory? Or will I be just fine with 2MB?

    (And yes, I think that the Palm V is worth it, for the extra carrying convenience and the rechargeable battery... I'm buying it, aren't I?)

    -Snibor Eoj
  • The three truly "geek" things:
    1. Any computer running a free *nix (Linux is the most prominent example) or any other suitably "alternative" OS (Amiga, Be, even OS/2)
    2. A Hewlett Packard calculator (old geeks have 41's, newer geeks have 48SX's, and really recent geeks have 48GX's)
    3. A PalmOS based organizer. (The most recent addition to the trilogy, before, it was just a pair.)
  • Dude, I have a detailed map of SF in my 2MB Palm III (no x here).

    Grab 'em from http://www.handmap.org/. (I think.)

    It's only $6.

    Yeah, it'd be nice to run a Linux webserver (or even a little # cruncher to process Navier-Stokes eq.) on one of those strongARM WinCE PDA's.

    I already love using my palm as a portable vt100. :^|

  • Anyone else notice the "three Zero ohm-chip-resistors" mentioned in the story? I'd have a great time in meetings with this thing. Put some huge magnets in my briefcase and float my Palm on top. Maybe we could get a bunch of these and make a maglev train composed of Palm V's. I wonder if the next model up has a cold fusion power supply....
  • Opps I posted it as a sorty of its own when i wanted to reply to this discussion.

    here's a link describing an 8Mb upgrade for the Palm III

    http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/Palm8M/index.h tml
  • The Palm V is not aimed at /.ers. It is almost completely a cosmetic thing, with a higher version number, to sell at an inflated price to the same people who drive the biggest SUVs while talking on the smallest cell-phones. These people don't care if it sucks technically. They probably wouldn't even notice if it had 8mb of RAM. They probably won't ever install an app that doesn't come pre-loaded or on the CD. They just want it to show off on the golf course. That it costs too much is actually a selling point for its target audience. The rest of us who can read and care about specs are being served by the Palm IIIx.

  • Linux, an Open Source OS, has
    been ported to the Palm.

  • I bump up against the 1 meg line on a regular basis with docs and PIM data alone. Never mind the various > 300K z-code games for Frotz, the PalmMap databases (a few of which could strain a 2 or 4 meg device), the odd image here or there for reference or personalization...

    Seriously, I could make extensive use of at least 4 meg, and with some carelessness, 8. People who use their Pilots use them *hard*.
  • Anyone here feel the pain of looking at their Palm Pro and seeing how OLD it is?

    "My Palm Pilot is named Arthur. Maybe that's why it locks up."
  • OK,
    This thing is cool. 8mb is even more excellent.

    Why in heavens name didn't they do this in the first place? Palm OS is pretty decent, but their hardware is not advancing very quickly.

    When are they going to produce one that has as much muscle as the ITSY? That seems to be the next really decent hardware platform. They need to lose the dragonball chip and throw in a coldfire, or strongarm chip that has some actual guts behind it.

    I like the Palm PDAs and want to see them beat out the whine-doze CE PDAs, if for no other reason than useability and interoperability, but they are not doing themselves a favor sticking with such underpowered hardware.

    K
  • There is a nice little device in development called the parachute that will attach to the palm and provide a type II slot. Bob
  • No, what they are saying is that you resolder a few traces *and* replace the memory chip with a larger capacity one. *Not* an easy thing to do when you have heat sensitive chips right next to it.
  • Wasn't this already posted about 1.5 months ago??
    Oh well..

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