HowTo: Using the Palm PDA in 2023
My first PDA was Palm m105, I used it in 2001. 20 years later I decided to check, how the last generation of Palm OS devices was looking and to check if it’s possible to use Palm OS nowadays.
Palm m105 was a nice device for its time, it had a grayscale screen with a “stunning” 160x160px resolution and a 16 MHz Motorola CPU. Compared to it, Palm TX looks much better — it was released 4 years later, and it has a 312 MHz CPU, 320x480 TFT screen, USB, WiFi, and Bluetooth support. It looks much more promising, and when I saw Palm TX on eBay in a brand-new condition, I decided to test, what will be the experience of using this device today.
This is the hero of our story:
Let’s get started.
Hardware
Palm TX looks small and light, compared to modern devices — the screen size is only 3.9" and the weight is 149g:
The first thing that catches the eye is plenty of buttons. The PDA has 9 buttons in total — four buttons for different apps, four cursor keys, and an “OK” button in the center. Using the preferences, every button can be assigned to any application:
It is a very useful feature, that often does not exist even on modern devices. On Android smartphones reassigning the hardware buttons may require root access, and sometimes it is limited or not possible at all. I actually don’t understand why, it’s nice to have the possibility to launch a favorite app (like book reader or Facebook or something else) with one button click.
In general, the Palm’s TX hardware was not bad for its time. It has an Intel XScale CPU with 312 MHz frequency, a 128 MB flash memory, that can be extended using the SD/MMC card, and a 480x320 TFT screen. Palm TX also has Bluetooth, WiFi, and the IrDA port for connectivity. Another nice improvement, compared to previous Palm models, is multimedia support. Palm TX can play MP3 files from an SD card and it is even possible to watch the video. We’ll check later how it works.
Let’s get started.
Palm OS
In general, the Palm OS UI looks familiar for the Palm users:
Just for comparison, this is how an old Palm OS 3.5 interface was looking:
The interval between the first and second interfaces is about 5 years, and as we can see, most UI components are the same. But one of the improvements in a new OS is a “Graffiti 2” — a software-based input panel that can be removed from a screen (older devices had a hardware input area that was obviously not customizable). In Palm OS 5 several types of input methods can be selected:
In Palm OS there is also a small intro available, which explains how to write with a stylus on the screen:
Palm OS “evolved” from business organizer devices — because of that contacts, appointments and the calendar look pretty good:
Connectivity
Palm TX can be charged or connected to the PC using a proprietary connector:
It was a sort of the standard at that time — every manufacturer did their own connectors for phones or PDAs, and it was really a mess. Happily, nowadays there is only one company left, which is supporting this legacy approach. But at least, customers now have a choice and can vote with their own cash if they do not want to support this.
But definitely more interesting is the wireless connection. 20 years ago the infrared port was a standard and cheap solution for connecting different devices. But surprisingly, now it’s the real rarity, and the cost of the IrDA port is often more than the cost of the Palm TX itself:
Luckily, Palm TX has Wi-Fi support, but here we also have a challenge. Palm TX is a sort of the first generation of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, it can support only the 802.11b connection. And as it turned out, my modern and expensive 150$ router can support only Wi-Fi modes “g” and “n” (for its price it should support all modes, at least in theory):
As a result, Palm TX even cannot “see” my home network at all. The easiest solution for me was to use the Raspberry Pi as a Wi-Fi access point. I already have it, and the Raspberry Pi can work as an access point with any parameters, I want. There are many articles about turning the Raspberry Pi to the access point, I will not repeat them all but will only show changes needed for the /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf file:
interface=wlan0
bridge=br0
hw_mode=b
channel=3
wmm_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
wpa=1
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP
ssid=MYSSID_RPi
wpa_passphrase=MYPASSWORDAs we can see, I changed the hardware mode to “b” and the protocol from WPA2 to WPA1, after that the Palm TX can be successfully connected.
Using the Wi-Fi connection, we can easily install different apps on the device. In the Palm OS time, the App Store concept was not invented yet, programs were distributed as standalone files with PRC extension. It’s enough to open the folder with these files on the PC and to run the local HTTP server using a command line:
cd C:\Users\Dmitrii\Downloads\Palm
python -m http.serverAfter that, we can open the URL in Palm’s browser. The 10.14.24.109 is the IP address of my PC, where the files are located:
Web
As long as we have a Wi-Fi connection working, we can try Internet access. Alas, there is no good news at all. The only website, I was able to open, is google.com:
It is possible to get the Google search results but no links can be opened. Modern web pages are using HTTPS and TLS, which are not supported by the Palm OS browser:
This problem is relevant not only for Palm OS but for every similar device, like old computers with Windows XP or Windows 95. Enthusiasts tried to create solutions, like the freeware WebOne proxy. This proxy is converting requests in real-time which allows old browsers to open the web pages. For some pages it works, for example, I was able to read a Wikipedia article:
Some other pages still cannot be opened just because they are too big to fit in Palm’s memory.
Some pages cannot be opened at all, like medium.com — it shows only the security warning:
The WebOne proxy is an interesting tool but it is definitely not a magic bullet. Another solution is a so-called Web Rendering Proxy. The idea is simple — the proxy is running on a modern PC, where all requested web pages are rendered in memory. Results are sent to a device in the form of simple HTML with all data embedded as a gif or png layer. In theory, it allows us to open any web page on a really old machine:
Maybe it was designed for bigger screens. Practically, it somehow works on a Palm OS, but every action (tap, scroll) takes 1–2 seconds and the screen space is too limited:
Alas, old devices that are 10+ years old, are not compatible with the modern Web, even despite the fact that physically they can be connected. Web standards just went too far ahead. And in my opinion, nowadays the problem is even worse. Palm TX can not be used for the Web but at least, it works well in the “offline” mode. Modern devices much more rely on cloud and web data, and I have a feeling that after 10–20 years these devices will not be able to be used at all. For example, we cannot install apps on the iPhone or iPad without App Store — what will happen with old iPads when App Store will end its support? The maximum that future generations will probably be able to see, is a message “Cannot connect to the server”.
Books
Let’s try something different, like reading books. When I was a student, I was reading books on my Palm m105, and it was working well. So I also expected a positive experience from reading books on Palm TX.
And in general, the Palm TX works pretty well as a book reader:
It is also interesting to see, how the 15 years of progress in displays development look:
The Palm’s screen does not have a “retina-like” quality, and its brightness and contrast are obviously lower compared to a modern AMOLED, but for the year 2005 and for 320x480 resolution, it looks pretty nice.
I was using the eReader application that can read books in PDB format, it can also support an internal dictionary, customizable fonts, and embedded images. The application itself works nicely. But the problem turned out to be straightforward — there are no more books available in this format. I have a large collection of books on my Amazon Kindle account but there is no direct “export” feature in the Amazon app, probably for copyright reasons. There is a hacky way to export books from Amazon in the protected AZW3 format, which can be converted to PRC using the Calibre and DeDRM_tools plugin, but this requires installing a DRM key from the book reader device, which can be tricky. Old archives with books in PDB/FB2/TXT formats were closed many years ago for the same copyright reasons, and now there are just no books available. So, the situation with books is in general, the same as with web pages — technically I can use Palm for reading but alas no books are available.
Multimedia
The first Palm models “evolved” from business organizers. They had a decent battery life but a 16 MHz CPU had not enough processing power, not for playing MP3 audio, nor for MPEG video. Palm TX has a much faster 312 MHz CPU that can play audio, the device has also a headphones 3.5mm jack. The internal 100MB of flash memory is clearly not enough for MP3 or films, but an SD card can be used.
Nowadays we use to rely on online streaming services, but 15 years ago it was normal to convert a bunch of films before a weekend trip or holiday. My Palm TX was able to read an old 1 GB Kingston SD card, which I accidentally found in the old laptop, but failed to read a 2 GB MicroSD card, so finding a compatible card can also be tricky. Anyway, considering the 320x480 screen resolution, the video file size will not be too large after conversion. CPUs of that time were not capable to make video resize in real-time, and desktop programs like “All-in-one Video Converter” were pretty popular. So, watching films or listening to audio tracks on Palm looks possible even now, of course, if they can be found — many archives were closed for copyright reasons.
Conclusion
It was fun to test the Palm TX, and it is a pity to see that such devices are getting obsolete “logically” much faster than “physically”. Palm TX can be connected to the Internet but there are no sites that can be opened, I can read books using the device but there are no books available for download, and so on.
And it’s important to remember that the Palm OS was actually the whole ecosystem that was used by many companies (Palm, Sony, Handera, Garmin, etc) for about 10 years. It was something like the Android ecosystem today (and it is also interesting to think — will Android be on the market within the next 20 years?). Thousands of apps were made for Palm OS, and this article is not pretending in any way for reviewing all of them, readers who are interested, can do it on their own, Palm OS archives still can be found online.
From the hardware perspective, I was impressed by the long battery life. There are mostly no background services working in Palm OS, I can leave the device for several days, and after that, the battery indicator will show the same percentage. In theory, Palm OS can be used even today for low-power devices like book readers. An unofficial copy of the Palm OS SDK is still available on GitHub, and it is even possible to make Palm OS applications today (a nice tutorial can be found here), but considering the lack of new devices on the market, there is no practical need for developers to create new apps. I have no idea about the Palm OS licensing policy, but I have a feeling that a modern Palm OS-based device with a good screen and decent battery life can be successful on the crowdfunding platform. As an example, the Gemini PDA project, which is de-facto a close copy of the popular Psion 5MX, raised more than 2M pounds on Indiegogo in 2017, and the number of Palm OS fans is not smaller.
Thanks for reading. Those who want to know more about the history of Palm devices are welcome to read my review of Palm OS 3.5.
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