Palm Pilot III
Back to the Future with Hotsync
March 17, 2024
The late 1990s and early 2000s were a glorious time in electronics. The dotcom bubble was forming, the Internet was finding its way into the lives of people around the world, and with all this techno hustle and bustle we needed a way to stay organized. The good people at Palm had just the solution we all needed. A portable device which would sync to a computer and contain all the information you needed while away from your desk. The PDA class of device wasn't new, others like the Psion and Apple Newton had come to market before, but there was just something special about the Palm Pilot, its monochrome screen, Graffiti character recognition interface and extensive apps that made it a winner.
Today we continue to have portable devices that can do all of what the Palm Pilot could do (well, maybe not everything, it did have a built in IR transceiver after all) but if you've ever wondered if you could go 'Back to the Future' and sync a Palm Pilot with a modern operating system you're in luck because that's exactly what I set to find out.
Before starting any project I like to assemble all the parts that are needed so I needed the following:
Ok, so no Hotsync cradle. It's a little funny how the cradles seem to be more difficult to come by than the Palm Pilot itself. I could source one online but I didn't want to wait for an order to arrive, I needed to know NOW if I could sync my oh so important social calendar with the retro beauty in my hand. So what could I do? BODGE it of course!
Some searching online revealed a pinout diagram for the hotsync cable and the Palm III. This gave me the information that I needed to homebrew a quick and very dirty solution. Fairly straight forward, just regular serial signals and a button that can be used to trigger the Hotsync function.
In addition to the hacky-soldering-quick-fix-bodge-job hotsync cable, I also needed (and had) a serial to USB adapter as the computer I had available didn't have any serial ports. With the drivers for the serial to USB installed on the PC I was able to follow a very good software setup walkthrough posted on PalmDB here. The walkthrough covers the serial port configuration as well as the software setup. With everything in place, I checked the wiring for my son-of-Satan Hotsync cable and pressed the in-line tact switch.
Huzzah! It worked on the first try. After the initial software setup I was able to follow with loading on some games and apps and I could travel back in time and relive some retro goodness. Dope Wars here I come.