Random MomBlog

I like to test things before I go on a trip. I was hoping to go on a trip without my laptop (this may be the first in years for a week-long trip), and I wanted to be sure I could charge my Treo from my iPod’s wall charger (a small adapter from wall current to USB). Cell phones come in handy on the road, at least while the battery lasts.

My Treo 700p failed the test! It would not charge from anything but my actual laptop. The closest I could come to faking it out was to plug a powered USB hub into my laptop, plug Treo cable into hub, plug Treo into cable, let Treo start charging, and then sneakily unplug the hub from my laptop. That’s a lot of hassle just to get it to charge!!!

I’ll just bring the spare battery instead, but it’s annoying not to be able to charge how I wish, so I had to ask Google why. From Treo charging in cradle from Palm Support Forums:

Besides using the charger to charge the phone, the PC will need to be on to use the trickle charge method. Some motherboards can allow continuous current even if PC is shut down but clearly your PC does not have such motherboard. The reason why your powered usb hub is not charging the phone is that the hub itself regulates power by “On Demand” and that demand is active data xfers from A to B or vice versa. So if no data is moving, then there will be insufficient power from that usb port to initiate a trickle charge.

Phooey. At least the mystery is explained; too bad my Treo wall and car chargers died (I think it wears out the connectors somehow since new cables work, but that’s another story).

Error Message: Application Launch Failure
The application "Transport Monitor" could not be launched because of a shared library error: "
<__ct__16ctransportrelmacfp18opaquetransportrefuc>”
(OK)

In addition to that error window, I had these errors in Console.app: [0x0-0x46046].com.palm.HotSync.TransportMonitor[732] /Applications/Palm/Transport Monitor/Contents/MacOSClassic/Transport Monitor[732] Launch failed with error code -2807 (cfragUnresolvedErr) for application /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp
com.apple.launchd[223] ([0x0-0x46046].com.palm.HotSync.TransportMonitor[732]) Exited with exit code: 9

Solution: from MacFixIt,

Error: Transport Monitor could not be launched; fix

Some users have reported receiving the message “Transport Monitor” could not be launched because of a shared library error” when starting up Mac OS X or performing other operations.

This error message indicates a problem with one of the components included with the Palm Desktop software, and you may need to re-install the software.

First, uninstall Palm Desktop via these instructions.

Next, re-install Palm Desktop, which is available as a standalone download.

If you have recently performed an Archive and Install and are experiencing this problem afterward, the HotSync libraries (part of the Palm Desktop package) may be located in at /Previous Systems/Previous System(1)/Library/CFMSupport/HotSync Libraries.

You can move these files to the /Library/CFMSupport/ directory in order to obviate a re-install.

I’m pretty sure this is a conduit conflict from having both Palm Desktop and Missing Sync installed, so you could just remove all non-Apple conduits and re-install the one you want to use.

So I’m headed to un-install, then side-step to Missing Sync (they sent me an upgrade coupon, so I’ll bite). (I don’t like that they have a spotty reputation for customer service, I think Missing Sync is a bit over-priced, and I think it has bad software design from that one time right after I bought Missing Sync it wasn’t giving me the underlying error message that I saw when I reverted back to Palm Desktop. I recognized the error right away, fixed it, and went back to Missing Sync with mistrust. Error messages, even cryptic numbers, beat no error message with no sync.)

Since I upgraded Missing Sync, I’m happy with sync again. So I didn’t test this tip out, but removing conduits from the “active” location and re-installing really should have fixed it too.

I installed a Labor Timer just to get ready for the big day when we meet Karston’s baby brother! Hopefully it’ll be a while before we use this, but I don’t want to have to rush to install this either. Looks easy to use … we’ll see if it’s useful! (I didn’t have any contractions to time last time.)

Palm, Pregnancy, Software

Now if this isn’t just the fastest way to join Gmail: SMS Signup for a Gmail Account. I’m teetering on that edge … do I want to see email on my Treo or not? If it’s good, I’ll never be unplugged ever again, and I’m not sure that’s good. (Then again, my cute kid can always convince me to play with him, so I do have that reality check. And I sure do enjoy relaxing with my fantastic hubby, so maybe I would remember the world outside of my Treo.)

(I don’t need to point out that you can Gmail for the Treo, do I? I’d still install Google Maps first, though.)

Tips, Treo

Ah, finally! One of the ways I use my Treo is to search Froogle while I’m in the store. It curbs regrettable impulse buys when I can check prices and reviews on the stop. However, Froogle isn’t the easiest site to read on a Treo. So when I saw Froogle for Mobile, I had to take a look. Sure enough, wml.froogle.com is what I want to use instead! Nice.

Karston played with my Treo after dinner today, and then I couldn’t find it. I went through the whole house carefully, at toddler height. I checked the box where he had unpacked the box, dropped in my office keys, and then put everything back. Finally I went back to the stand-by, Where did you definitely see it last? Daddy had seen it (for sure) later than I was sure I had seen it, so I started there. He saw Karston grab it from the coffee table. So I walked all around the living room on my knees, and looked under the couch. No phone. We called my phone, but Karston’s learned to turn off the phone function, and yes, my phone was off the air. So finally I lifted couch cushions, and found it under the second one I checked. Whew! I didn’t even know Karston hid things there!

The new trick I learned by accident on my Treo is that you can dim the screen for a session by pressing OPTION (the black blob) and MENU. Press that combination again, and the screen goes back to normal brightness. I use this when I want to enter some tasks at night (so I can clear my brain and then fall asleep), when the screen seems so bright at the lowest setting. This extra-dim setting is also good for playing solitaire (Klondike in Patience) during a midnight nursing. (I then use it as my very expensive flashlight so I can get back in bed without tripping on something otherwise unseen.)

So I finally ordered a new phone at work, a Treo 700p to replace my Motorola StarTac ST7860W with the battery of 30 seconds of talk-time. At Telecomm, they were joking that this was such a large step, I wouldn’t know what to do.

On the Palm side, I’ll retire (maybe) my Tungsten T3. With the slider expanded, the T3 has more pixels (320 x 480) than the 700p (320 x 320), although the Treo has a finer dot pitch. A finer dot pitch is bad news for squinting, but with the really bright screen, it just looks smoother to me (and I don’t squint).

The SK6688 keyboard driver IrDA is really bad: when it’s installed (not active, mind you), I can only use left 1/4 of touchscreen in any app!

I can’t run TimeCopy (I’ve been running it for a while, and it comes with The Missing Sync), which makes sense since the Treo syncs time from the cellular network. My Treo went into a reset loop when I sync’d with it installed. That’s added to my blacklist, but not to my badlist unlike the SK6688 driver.

Last night I decided it was time for The Sync, to move my data from the T3 to the 700p. I don’t know if this was the fault of The Missing Sync or of some old software, but when the sync was “done,” so was my Treo! It was on an endless cycle of reboots, and when I got it out of that (by a system reset; soft reset didn’t do it), it didn’t know how to be a phone. Great! That’s its job. The Palm software is just a bonus for me.

However, a hard reset AND erasing all data got it back to phone status, thank goodness. Now to put my data back … It’s probably cleaner this way, putting apps back one at a time, and testing Calendar, Contacts, Phone, and the new app for functionality. But it does take longer.

These are the apps that I installed right away:
Graffiti Anywhere and Graffiti ShortCuts.prc from my T3 (no way to change shortcuts on Treo, I guess I must keep T3 for that)
Blazer Bookmarks.pdb from before the hard reset
NoteTaker aka MacNoteTaker
HandyShopper and HS2*.pdb from T3
Patience (solitaire)
Toast Timer
NFP and Unicycle (each is better at different aspects of fertility awareness)
The Core Pocket Media Player - TCPMP
FileZ (and maybe later IdeaPad that I think has a Mac conduit and desktop app but that might be a different Idea Pad?)
Plucker (hasn’t been updated in a while … wondering if I need to switch offline viewers, but I’m not going back to AvantGo)
Yahdice (yahtzee)
Cribbage (in color on T3, now B/W even with fresh download)
The Missing Sync for Palm OS

I don’t think The Missing Sync is worth as much as its price tag, but it does let me use iCal without having all of my Palm calendars lumped into one iCal calendar as a one-way trip. Too bad I decided that iCal was part of my GTD plan! I decided to justify The Missing Sync’s cost to myself by counting up the Palm software I didn’t need to buy for Mac-Palm GTD. Most of all, I wish The Missing Sync would show me the HotSync error number — and let me know there was a HotSync error! I did a reset on my T3 shortly after I bought The Missing Sync, the IrDA driver is enabled by default after a reset, and all of my (missing) syncs failed without errors until I reverted back to Palm Desktop sync, saw the error number, and recognized what it meant. That’s just not good software programming! I took that course, and it’s better to fail all over the place with error messages than to fail silently, because subtle errors are the hardest to find. (Plus you should check both input and output data for validity, and always try to give good error messages. How hard are those concepts?)

If the reset-loop problems had persisted, I would have used ResetEmu to find the culprit. However, that’s for the “what should I remove” approach, and given that I get a new Palm maybe every three years, I prefer the “add what I still use” approach as a way to get rid of the cruft that otherwise builds up.

After I installed Palm applications, I moved on to productivity applications for networked Palms. Top of the list, secure shell (version 2)! The first one I tried,pssh works with my servers, so that’s good enough. I could imagine using a VNC viewer as well, like these: palmVNC 2.0 GPL, PalmVNC 2.0 (didn’t work on first try; $10 registration requested), PalmVNC 1.40 (free, but might be a bit old since it’s for PalmOS 3.1), μVNC for Palm for $19.95. I don’t need VNC (yet) so I haven’t gone through them.

Palm, Tips, Treo, Troubleshooting

I couldn’t believe that my new Treo 700p didn’t allow me to write Graffiti all over the touch screen (like my Tungsten T3). Thanks to Mr. Google, Graffiti Anywhere came to the rescue! That’s on my short list of must-have Treo applications. I’m much happier now that I can use graffiti again. (All this does is enable the Graffiti that’s in the ROM already. It’s not some nasty hack that could do terrible things to your Treo’s memory.)

The built-in keyboard isn’t as bad as I expected, but I’m better at Graffiti or on full-sized keyboards. Not surprisingly given its history [1] [2], the SK6688 keyboard driver kills my Treo. Even when that IrDA driver (latest 2.30 version) is not active, I can’t use the right 75% of my touchscreen. Quickly deleted and placed on my black list! In theory, my Treo 700p is supported, but I’d like to talk the QA person who said that! I started with a Treo 700p that didn’t have any custom installs, and I had problems. I could see that being the only test case, and the only case that works, but when it’s a case that doesn’t work, the QA group is asleep at the wheel. (Note: this is not a complaint about the Treo 700p, but a diatribe about a bad driver for an external keyboard.)

The whole Treo is smaller than I expected, but it has a certain heft. It does weigh 50% more than my StarTac it replaces as a phone. I don’t think it’s heavier than my Palm on a scale, but because it’s smaller, it’s denser, and I notice that heft. The 320 x 320 screen, physically smaller than the Tungsten T3 screen in 320 x 320 compact mode, obviously has a finer dot pitch. However, the screen is very bright, so I’m not squinting at the screen. In fact, I like the smoother appearance of this screen, even though I expected not to like the smaller screen.

I appreciate the hot sync button on the sync cable. My Tungsten T3 only had a hot sync button on the cradle, so when I brought the smaller hot sync cable on a road trip, I had a laborious process to get Hot Sync-ing. It’s a nice touch.

The Verizon belt clip case for it is obnoxious: I don’t need a case that holds my phone an inch away from my body! Egad, what were they thinking? I’m used to clipping equipment to my belt or to my pocket. I’ve found that clipping those items farther from my body just gives them a chance to build up momentum when they do whack into me, and I’d prefer to keep them snug. Less chance of knocking them off when I dart through a small area (like between racks in the data center when I’m working on my servers). (Again, this is not a complaint about the Treo 700p itself!)

Overall, I like this gadget so far.

Palm, Tips, Treo

Background: I went to Florida (Key West!!!) in January. On the trip down, my T3 turned on until the battery ran out. It did that a few more times during that week in Key West. I was particularly annoyed, not just to be on a trip without my PDA, but also because LiIon batteries can discharge completely only so many times before they die (that’s the common failure mode). Glad I packed a charging cable! But it didn’t happen again for months … until this weekend when I went to Florida again (Amelia Island). On the drive back, I thought about what those two Florida trips had in common that doesn’t happen the rest of the time I use my T3 (at home, at work, or on other trips). My hubby’s T3 doesn’t do this, and we have almost identical software installed. I think my T3 turning itself on (but not off) is also tied to using my cell phone, because it had a few days in Key West of NOT doing this, when my cell phone was off. What’s weird is that my cell phone is too old for Bluetooth, so I don’t know why/how it’s getting my T3 excited.

Problem: My Palm Tungsten T3 stays on until the battery drains all the way, despite the Power preference to turn off automatically after 1 minute idle.

Possible workaround: if you don’t want your PalmOS (v5, not sure if v4 has this) to turn on without your permission, look at the Keylock preferences.

Solution: Once again (this is frustrating!), the solution is to TURN OFF THE IrDA KEYBOARD DRIVER! I normally only have this driver on while I’m using the keyboard, and off otherwise so that I can sync. However, on these Florida trips, I thought I might use the keyboard so I left the driver on. Now that the driver is off, my T3 is acting normally again.

Opinion: OK, so my Smart Keyboard works when I want it to work, and I don’t have to reset to toggle the driver on and off. But it has three flaws: (1) the keyboard’s AAA battery is dead after a week because it doesn’t seem to power off the keyboard, (2) I can’t sync with the keyboard driver active, and (3) the active keyboard driver also causes my T3 to destroy its battery. I think the lesson is obvious: leave that driver off as much as possible! But it’s a little annoying.

Macintosh, Palm, Troubleshooting

Software: Macintosh OS X 10.3.8 (and at least one earlier version), Palm Desktop 4.2.1.
Hardware: any OS X Macintosh including Pismo, Palm Tungsten T3.

Problem: When I tried to hotsync with USB, I got this error message:

Unknown Sync Error
[16385]

I had just installed the IrDA.prc keyboard driver for my SmartKeyboard SK6688. If it’s active, I get that sync error.

Solution: But all I have to do is uncheck “Active Keyboard” in IrDA on my Palm! Very easy to toggle. Using Bluetooth for sync will also avoid this problem, but since I leave it in the charging cradle at work, I (like to) use the convenient HotSync button.

Macintosh, Palm, Software, Troubleshooting