Syncing Your PDA w/ Obscure O/Ses?

Nomad7674 asks: "I am part of a team helping to build a site for discussing SmartPhones (i.e. combo cell phone and data function devices). We are trying to become a one-stop shop for SmartPhone-related information and have run up against one brick wall that the Slashdot community may be able to help with. We want to document every operating system that can be sync'd with a Palm or PocketPC or Symbian device. We already have information on the biggies (Apple and Windows), on the moderates (Linux and the Unixes) and a few of the more obscure including Amiga and BeOS. But we seem to have exhausted the searches of Google, Alta Vista, etc. and the knowledge of the general community elsewhere. What experiences have other Slashdot readers had with syncing their Palm, PocketPC, or other PDA device with obscure OSes?"

Which

[Gryftir]

Nomad,

If you could give some examples of OSes you want information on, you will be more likely to catch the eye of the community that supports them.

Gryftir

Re:Get a clue.

[david duncan scott]

So the guy says

We already have information on the biggies (Apple and Windows), on the moderates (Linux and the Unixes)

and you read that as "Weirdo"?

Here's a clue for you: as a desktop OS (and I think we can safely assume that people are not syncing their PDA's on the database machines in the server room), Linux is, so far, moderately successful at best, in the sense of popularity. In fact, I'd say that "moderate" is a generous rating. There are probably tens of thousands of regular Linux desktop users,

Don't forget...

[Tom7]

I've synced my Palm III with PalmOS.

Define "Sync"

[dead_penguin]

The biggest limiting factor you're going to run into has nothing to do with core driver availability for your desktop OS, but what exactly you're trying to accomplish.

If all you want is the ability to transfer binary data between the PDA and the desktop, then any platform with a serial port should work.

If you want a bit more, you'll need a platform that the pilot-link libs + utilities can be ported to. That should give you the ability to "sync" data to and from specific programs on the Palm either by cap

How about OS/2?

[Tower]

Not all that obscure... really...

There is a nice page with some apps at http://www.perelin.de/stellarcom/palmstuff/ [perelin.de].

Heretic!

[pmz]

But we seem to have exhausted the searches of Google, Alta Vista, etc.

Then what you are looking for doesn't exist. Now kneel down and plead for your soul in front of the almighty Google! Google knows all! Google is the provider!

freshmeat

[BenTheDewpendent]

checkout freshmeat [freshmeat.net] I am faily certain I have seen projects meant to sync a palm with BeOS and AmigaOS... I may be mistaken though. You also may want to try palmgear [palmgear.com] as they have a huge repository of palm software.

Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[elsPrime]

I've tried a whole bunch of things, and I still can not get my Handspring to synch with any program currently on Linux. I've seen a few web links that imply the author had accomplished this task, but I am unable to reapeat it.

Re:Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[hacker]

You're probably doing something wrong. Post your request on the lists dedicated to your syncing apps, and we can help (gnome-pilot? jpilot? pilot-link? kpilot? PilotManager?)

There are many thousands of users happily syncronizing their PalmOS-based PDAs on Linux and BSD, using serial, IR, and USB connection methods.

Re:RH Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[elsPrime]

hmmmmmm --- I've gone through EVERY variation of the KDE pilot applet, plus every variation of the Gnome 2.2 applet.... my Visor goes through a USB 1.0 cradle, and I can not get Linux to "see" it. I'll keep on tryin'. Thanx

Re:RH Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[hacker]

Have you tried meeting up with us on irc for some "real-time" help? Check the pilot-link.org [pilot-link.org] homepage for details (it's very obvious).

Have you read README.usb [pilot-link.org] yet? It should get you started. I also have a bunch of HOWTO [pilot-link.org] documents I've written that may also help you get things working.

Are you running 0.11.7 [pilot-link.org] of pilot-link (which is required for USB to work with any of the other apps, KPilot, J-Pilot, gnome-pilot, etc.) I'll be releasing 0.11.8 shortly.

Is your kernel recent enough to support it? Use 2.4.20

Re:Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[edwazere]

Probably has somthing to do with you posting from quite a few years in the future...
Last time I checked Linux was at version 2.4 for the stable tree and 2.5 for the unstable.

If however you mean Redhat 9 or Mandrake 9 or somthing similar then that's a different matter.

Re:Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[elsPrime]

oops....yeah, Red Hat 9.0. Just had a wisdom tooth removed -- musta removed some of my wisdom too.

Re:Linux 9.0 and Visor Handspring

[bacchus612]

You probably need to recompile your kernel. Brief instructions:

cd /usr/src/linux && make mrproper && make menuconfig

This will start the kernel configuration program. You should probably read up a bit on the various options, as there are many, try Kernel-Howto [ibiblio.org] for more info... make sure you include: USB Support USB-Serial USB-Visor just go through every menu option and look for things that sound like they apply to you, and when in doubt compile as a module. Save the configuration and e

jSyncManager for PalmOS devices

[a1291762]

There's a project called jSyncManager that will sync PalmOS devices with a Java-enabled platform. It was originally written to support HotSync on OS/2. It's Open Source too.

http://www.jsyncmanager.org/

It's not the OS you need to sync to ...

[Clansman]

... it's the apps like your mail/calendar that make it less than satisfactory unless you just mean 'backup to' when you say sync ...