The Handspring Visor: A Brief Digression

The Handspring Visor: A Brief Digression

I recently bought a Handspring Visor Deluxe when I accidentally ran over my long-used and much-loved Palm V. The Visor won me over because, despite its larger size and use of AAA batteries, its Springboard expansion slot would offer me both the Palm VII's wireless abilities plus the ability to plug in a GPS system. These features appealed to my inner geek and I went to the Visor like a moth to a flame, despite oodles of affection and admiration for my departed Palm.

You don't care about any of this. What you do care about is that the Handspring Visor Deluxe comes with a USB sync cradle. Why do you care? Because if you have such a cradle you may find yourself really annoyed. Depending on the version of the Linux kernel you have, you may not be able to use your USB cradle at all. If you have a recent 2.2.x kernel or a 2.4.x kernel, you will be able to use your USB cradle, but you may find some software working in an annoying way.

Basically, most of the Linux sync software is written to work with a traditional old serial port. You can set up a USB port that works like a serial port. "Aha!" you think. "I'm saved!" Well, yes and no. You see, the Visor's cradle is only "on" the USB bus when the button has been pressed and a sync is actually in progress. This means you must press the hotsync button before running your program. This is a minor inconvenience when using tools like pilot-tools and malsync, which are "run once" sync programs, but it is a pain when using a daemon-based sync tool like kpilot .

If you don't mind these inconveniences, I will say that USB is many times faster than the serial interface. I use the USB cradle with my laptop and I just fire up daemon-based services (if I use any) after pressing the sync button. I shut them down again afterwards. I did buy a serial cradle, but I leave that attached to my desktop machine.

Until such time as sync software for Linux is written with USB services in mind, I would recommend spending the $30 or so it takes to get a serial cradle for your Handspring. USB support was quite recently added to Linux, so I expect to see support come along quite quickly now that it is here.

 



Multitool Linux. Practical Uses for Open Source Software
Multitool Linux: Practical Uses for Open Source Software
ISBN: 0201734206
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 257

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