.KEYWORD editorial998
.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE Installing the Palm 2MB upgrade card
.DEPT
.SUMMARY We covered the Palm III organizer in considerable depth in March. And we’ve talked about the 2MB Upgrade Card. But we’ve never really discussed, in detail, the techniques for upgrading a PalmPilot organizer to a Palm III device. Until now. Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz bit the bullet and performed upgrade surgery on his own PalmPilot. The process turned out to be more difficult than expected. In this important article, David explains what went wrong and provides a very valuable, step-by-step procedure for reinstalling applications if the upgrade doesn’t work on your first attempt.
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
Welcome to the September issue of PalmPower. We’ve got some really interesting material for you this month, including reviews of two fascinating Graffiti-replacement products: Jot and TealScript. And next month, we’re fixing to look at some additional keyboard replacement tools including something called T9, which is something like a predictive keypad for the PalmPilot organizer.
One of the neat things about running a publication is that you get to play with the cool toys. But these Graffiti-replacement products seem to take a lot of memory and my poor PalmPilot Professional device was beginning to burst at the seams. It was time to bite the bullet. It was time to do the upgrade. I got in my trusty Subaru Forester, galloped down to Computer City, plunked down $129 of my hard earned bucks, and bought the Palm 2MB Upgrade.
We covered the Palm III organizer in considerable depth in March. And we’ve talked about the 2MB upgrade card. But a scan through our back issues showed we never really discussed the "how tos" of upgrading from a PalmPilot device to a pseudo-Palm III device using the Palm 2MB Upgrade. And so it came to pass that this column would discuss just that.
I had a rough time doing my upgrade. This column will tell you all about it. Most important, at the end of the column are two procedures for performing the upgrade, including a detailed, step-by-step procedure for reinstalling applications if everything goes to crap on your first upgrade attempt.
.H1 What’s in the box
For a little tiny memory card and an ABS plastic door, the box was rather heavy. It turns out you get a completely new set of Palm manuals (for the Palm III), a new installation CD (diskettes available on request), a software resources catalog, and, of course, the memory card and new memory door.
The memory door’s just slightly thicker than its predecessor and contains a small, rectangular red "eye" where the IR beam can pass through.
Before I go further, I should also note that it’s been somewhat difficult getting one of these upgrades. Palm’s own site lists the 2MB Upgrade as being backordered (through the end of August, which is still a few weeks away, as I write this), and many of the mail order houses and retail resellers don’t stock it.
.H1 Installing Palm Desktop 3.0
The Palm 2MB upgrade also comes with Palm Desktop 3.0, which adds a few new, nice features like file linking and a built-in Palm Install tool. The first step in upgrading to the 2MB Upgrade card, according to Palm’s documentation, is installing the new Palm Desktop 3.0.
This stage of the process went smoothly, but there was a small error in the installation instructions.
The instructions say "Insert the Palm Desktop organizer software CD into your CD-ROM drive and click the Install button. When the Palm Desktop Installer menu appears, follow the instructions on the screen to install the software."
These instructions seem to expect that the AutoRun feature of Windows 95 is turned on, meaning that when you slide a CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, a program called AUTORUN.EXE will be executed off the newly inserted CD-ROM. However, many systems have the AutoRun capability turned off and therefore the Palm Desktop Installer software won’t run automatically.
If you experience this, you’ll need to look on the CD-ROM for the file SETUP.EXE, located in the directory \\PALMSFW\\DISK1\\ on your CD-ROM. Alternatively, an easier way to launch the Palm Desktop Installer program is to double-click on AUTORUN.EXE at the root level of your CD-ROM, which will get you back into the installer.
.H1 Keeping track of your applications
It’s important to keep track of which applications you’ve installed on your PalmPilot. When you remove your old memory card, the card will lose power and all the applications you’ve installed on your PalmPilot device will simply cease to exist. As a result, after you install the new 2MB Upgrade card, you’re going to need to reinstall all your applications.
The gotcha? You’re going to need to have all the application install files ready to go on your hard disk. More important, you’re going to need to know what applications to install. If you’re like me, you’ve got a long history of adding and removing applications. Now is a good, ideal, even essential time to click your PalmPilot device’s Applications menu and make a list (on paper, in this case) of all the applications you’ve got installed.
You should also go into HackMaster (if you’re using it) and see if there are any hacks installed. If so, make a list of these as well. You’re going to need to reinstall them.
.H1 Backing up your applications
It turns out I have an interesting problem. I’ve installed applications and hacks from a variety of different computers (including some test computers set up specifically for PalmPower testing), so it proved to be almost impossible for me to find the original application files on the PC or the Mac. If I don’t want to lose all my applications (or spend days trying to restore find them all), I’m going to need to backup my applications to the PC from the PalmPilot Professional device, before I install the upgrade card.
I solved the problem by using a program called BackupBuddy, a program by graduate student Alexander Hinds. This program is smart enough to back up all of the applications as well as all of the databases. Will it remember to properly backup my HackMaster hacks? Stay tuned and I’ll let you know.
I am a paranoid sort of guy, so I made a backup copy of my GewirtD folder, prior to running the BackupBuddy backup.
At any rate, I installed BackupBuddy and following its simple instructions, set it to Active mode. Then I placed the PalmPilot device in the HotSync cradle, hit the HotSync button, and waited for it to complete.
It took about ten minutes for the process to complete. Still being somewhat paranoid, I made a second copy of my GewirtD folder (containing all my HotSync data after the BackupBuddy backup), just in case I needed it sometime later.
I was then even more paranoid and individually zipped, using WinZip, the two backups of my person folder. It would prove to be a very smart move.
.H1 Installing the hardware
And then, I opened up the PalmPilot Professional device and proceeded with brain surgery. The process is pretty straightforward. You turn off your organizer, flip it over, and remove the batteries. Breathe.
Then you pop open the memory door (the large door near the top of the device), and remove the memory card inside. Remember to breathe.
Finally, you insert the new memory card (complete with the cool little IR transceiver) into the memory slot, and put the new door with the red plastic "eye" back on the PalmPilot device. And breathe deeply. You’re done.
I have to admit that this is a pretty cool design. For about $130, you can completely update the personality of any Pilot or PalmPilot. A very nice design.
Unfortunately, restoring my data was to prove to be a substantially tougher challenge.
.H1 Attempting to restore my data
Once the new memory card was installed, I performed a HotSync to get my data back. Unfortunately, part of the way into reloading my applications, the Palm III (now it’s a Palm III) device reported a Fatal Exception. This is not generally a good thing. Apparently, the HotSync got sick reinstalling one of the applications.
Rather than zeroing out the Palm III device and reinstalling everything again from the beginning, I decided to just do another HotSync. I clicked the button and waited.
It turns out that most of my add-on applications didn’t make it back down in that second restore attempt. And my absolutely essential, can’t-live-without-it To Do List was totally toasted, as you can see in Figure A. And, to top it all off, all the categories were gonners. Thrilling. I’m beginning to enjoy this upgrade as much as I do when I have to reinstall Windows on a PC.
.FIG A I’ve got lots of free time now that my To Do List is toast.
So, here we go again. This time I’m completely zeroing out the Palm III device (a hard reset is done by pressing the power button while also pressing the reset button on the back of the machine; then press the up scroll button to confirm the reset). Next, I took my first backup of the GewirtD folder (prior to the BackupBuddy backup) and placed it in the PILOT folder.
Buckle up, boys and girls. Time to try a HotSync again.
OK, so we’ve had a bit more success. The built-in applications appear to have restored their data correctly. My To Do List is no longer populated by bizarre small rectangles. And my categories are back the way they should be. That’s a relief.
As for add-on applications, the games made it back. So even if I can’t do any real work, who cares? Seriously, though, the games were installed correctly. My add-on applications were not. None of the programs I called applications made it back into the mix. Only a portion of my add-on utilities made the grade. And none of the test applications showed back up. But the device seems to function properly, so now it’s simply a matter of trying to get those applications that are missing back into the fold.
I hope.
I have a plan. I’m going to go through and hand-catalog the applications and related databases that didn’t make it back down during the previous HotSync. Then, from my second BackupBuddy backup, I’m going to try to use the new Palm install tool to schedule those missing databases and applications for installation.
Here goes
