Shit I've bought from eBay #1 - Palm Tungsten T5 PDA

[Novaer]

Do you know a company called Palm Inc?
Ever heard of a PDA? 

If you were born after the 1990s or don’t have an interest in old technology then chances are you probably haven’t. I made a status about this one handy little device late on July 6th 2018. It is a Tungsten T5 PDA made by Palm Inc, on October 2004 (14 years ago last month!) But now I’ve opened it up and had a look on the inside and replaced the battery in it, which I will show the pictures to you in this topic.

Item: PalmOne Palm Tungsten T5 PDA Organiser
Price I paid: £9.99
Shipping: £4.40 (Royal Mail Second Class, Signed For)
Total Cost: £14.39
Came With: Proporta Case, Stylus, USB Hotsync Cable

I am going to re-post much of my status here, although I will be going into much greater detail:

I was watching a video a few days before I ordered this, by EEV Blogs, and I reminisced about the day when I had a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). You see back in 2005, I got the Palm Tungsten|E PDA which I spent around £80 on brand new, with a 32MB SDCard. It wasn’t really amazing even at the time but I could use it for the reason I bought it for. I was 15 years old, a mess at school - always getting into trouble and wasn’t the easiest person to get along with…

I used the Tungsten|E heavily right through 2005, 2006 and up until it was stolen from me in 2007, to keep my notes on it, keeping my life - and personal life well organised as well as my somewhat business life; I was getting things in and selling them on eBay for a lot of profit - even though I was under 18 and should have never have had an eBay or PayPal account, which was incredibly risky and I would never condone such behaviour nowadays… I was a bit of a naughty little shit and they didn’t seem to care or check that I was over 18. Although having to explain to your parents where the money was coming from and that you aren’t a drug dealer was and probably still is to most people, not a fun experience… Not that they were happy with my legitimate and legal response either.

Off-Topicness Aside… I decided to have a look around on eBay for a Palm Tungsten PDA and that’s when I found this one for £9.99, buy it now - £4.40 postage and packaging (Shipping); it said that it was in good condition, had it’s cables, no original box, no SD card and still worked, so I decided to buy it. I was genuinely surprised when it turned up on the 6th, not because it arrived - I was expecting it, but because arrived early (First Class) and was as advertised - fully working. 

£14.39 for one of these devices is amazing; considering the fact that a lot of them on eBay were £129.99 to £299.99. It’s a piece of history that if well taken care of will last for a good while longer yet.  

So what are the specs of the Tungsten|T5? 

Released on October 2004; it has the following specifications: 

• 145g (5.1oz) 
• Bluetooth 1.1
• Infrared data communication
• A single core Intel XScale PXA270 Processor; clocked at 416MHz (0.41Ghz)
• 3.7” TFT touch screen
  • 320x480 resolution
  • 16-bit colour
• 256MB of non-volatile flash memory of which:-
  • 161.2MB is configured for use as a flash drive
  • 63.8MB is reserved for applications
  • 31MB is strictly for the OS. 
• It has an SD Card slot that will only accept the maximum of 2GB, FAT16 formatted SDCards. 
  • It will not accept NTFS, ExFAT or even FAT32. 
• It has an inbuilt mono-speaker on the back of the device
• Samsung SDI Li-Po 850mAh Battery (PGF523759A 2G71606).

Palm Inc was acquired by HP in 2010 which retired the Palm brand (and later sold, I think to TCL/Alcatel). So today The Palm website, and indeed much of the applications and updates don't exist anymore, and of course third-parties who have written palm applications don't write them anymore, because there is very little point in doing so. Some have given them away for free which is nice. But I found myself having to rely on a website that went up earlier this year called PalmArchive (I won't link, because of the ToS - The site contains "Cracked" or "Warez" software, which could be a legal issue) which had - thankfully the update I needed to update the firmware to this Tungsten|T5. Palm has recently come back but very recently a company brought the trademark for Palm; and have since returned - although I’m told that it’s not the same people or so I’m told.

As I have stated before I am going to replace this 850mAh battery which still actually works although it only holds a charge for about 2 hours; I am going to replace with a Cameron Sino IA1XA27F1 - 1350mAh battery which is on its way out to be at the moment. This will be the only modification I will make to the device. I haven’t gotten the battery at the time of writing this part, but when I do get it scroll down to ‘Battery Replacement’ and I’ll walk through the how’s, and of course, the results.

The mono speaker affixed to the back of the case isn’t really worth writing home about, the quality is around par with what I’d expect from a mobile from that period, as in abysmal. Music sounds tinny and inferior compared to even my Samsung Galaxy S8+. The PDA does have a 3.5mm (Standard) Headphone Jack - thankfully, which outputs full stereo audio, with reasonable quality. It has enough power to drive my Hifiman HE400s with reasonable volume at full. Although the sound quality with the same MP3 is noticeably worse than the output of my Matrix-i Pro and Samsung Galaxy S8+ (But that’s not really a fair test). Despite this, I personally think it’s acceptable. The music program I am using to test this is “Real Player v1.6.0” for the Palm; It can’t do FLAC files but it can do MP3 files, but considering the maximum storage you can have for an SDCard in this device is 2GB, I’m not going to complain too much about that.

On the topic of sound I was able to load Liberty GB (Gameboy Emulator from Gambit Studios, not to be confused with companies of a similar name) with the following roms:

• Pokémon Red
• Pokémon Yellow
• Final Fantasy Legend 2

However the sound of all three of these games aren’t quite right and honestly - it sounds rather butchered and unlike anything it's supposed to sound like.

Originally I thought that maybe the conversions process might have fucked the sound up a little… You see, you cannot just copy a Gameboy ROM onto the device and start playing. You have to convert it (using a program) from a GB file to a PDB file. Although the process really doesn’t do much at all, I’ve opened both of these up in a text editor and reviewed the difference, and literally the only thing that is different is some information was added and some was changed in the first few lines. The rest of the GB ROM is untouched.

Just in case you're interested the Hex Code that it literally seemed to insert in front of the GBROM was:

47 6D 62 74 5F 50 6F 6B 65 6D 6F 6E 20 52 65 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 
80 01 00 01 AD C0 BE A0 AD C0 BE A0 AD C0 BE A0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 67 52 4F 4D 
47 6D 62 74 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 5F 64 61 74 00 00 00 00 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 01 00 00 
42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 02 00 00 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 03 00 00 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 04 00 01 02 D0 
5F 64 61 74 00 05 00 01 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 06 00 01 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 07 00 01 C2 D0 5F 64 
61 74 00 08 00 02 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 09 00 02 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 0A 00 02 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 
00 0B 00 02 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 0C 00 03 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 0D 00 03 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 0E 
00 03 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 0F 00 03 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 10 00 04 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 11 00 04 
42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 12 00 04 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 13 00 04 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 14 00 05 02 D0 
5F 64 61 74 00 15 00 05 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 16 00 05 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 17 00 05 C2 D0 5F 64 
61 74 00 18 00 06 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 19 00 06 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 1A 00 06 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 
00 1B 00 06 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 1C 00 07 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 1D 00 07 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 1E 
00 07 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 1F 00 07 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 20 00 08 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 21 00 08 
42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 22 00 08 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 23 00 08 C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 24 00 09 02 D0 
5F 64 61 74 00 25 00 09 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 26 00 09 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 27 00 09 C2 D0 5F 64 
61 74 00 28 00 0A 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 29 00 0A 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 2A 00 0A 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 
00 2B 00 0A C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 2C 00 0B 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 2D 00 0B 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 2E 
00 0B 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 2F 00 0B C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 30 00 0C 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 31 00 0C 
42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 32 00 0C 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 33 00 0C C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 34 00 0D 02 D0 
5F 64 61 74 00 35 00 0D 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 36 00 0D 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 37 00 0D C2 D0 5F 64 
61 74 00 38 00 0E 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 39 00 0E 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 3A 00 0E 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 
00 3B 00 0E C2 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 3C 00 0F 02 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 3D 00 0F 42 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 3E 
00 0F 82 D0 5F 64 61 74 00 3F 00 0F C2 D0 00 00

So I pretty much ruled that out. Ah well it still works and if you don’t mind the sound being off or you play it on mute it is still - as far as I am aware - playable. My next theory was that perhaps the Gameboy Sound are being emulated through the Palm’s MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) drivers and perhaps something is off with either the drivers themselves or with the actual emulator (Most likely the Emulator). Maybe it’s not interpreting the information from the Gameboy ROMs properly or if it is it’s not doing it properly for the device I’m running. It doesn’t sound right coming out of the internal speaker or with a pair of headphones connected to the external headphone jack. So what I can deduce from this and based on what I know; for some of the older devices (that had a 68k processor) which would have had severe limitations, the developer of the program would have had to be incredibly resourceful just to get any sound whatsoever to even work. So to make it compatible this is likely the cause. After writing this I found on the downloads page of the site that this is pretty much the reason.

Oh it also doesn’t save games when saved in game. You have to use the context menu and save the state of the game which will save the game for you. To reload, you just come out of the game and load up the saved state. Otherwise it works perfectly in my testing. 

The writing transfer rate to the internal storage is a solid 350KB per second; whereas to the SD Card it’s 350KB per second that peaks to 500KB per second very, very briefly every few seconds, that works out to be between 2.8Mbits and 4Mbits per second. So that put it’s well within the realms of USB 1.0 (1.5Mbits per second - 12Mbits per second, which is 187.5KB per second to 500KB per second). The transfer test was an otherwise useless FLAC file (Ignea - Alga.flac) that is 47.3MB (49,659,852 bytes) and as you can see from the screenshot below to the internal storage it was pretty much constant all the way through:

The reading speed from the internal is around the same but will frequently spike to 1.99MB (15.92 Megabits) per second in Windows Explorer. It is exactly the same for the SD Card also:

I suspect that’s because of write caching in Windows to the SSD though, and not due to the PDA itself which is pretty much 350-355KBps throughout. You can indeed use this device by the way as a… overly glorified USB Flash Drive, thanks to Drive Mode, which allows me to access the SD Card storage and the internal storage easily.

Whilst you can use the drive mode; for transferring things from the computer to the PDA you actually need to use HotSync to do anything useful with it, like installing apps straight to the PDA. By some amazement I was able to get my hands on the last version of HotSync; and not only that but I was able to get it to work with Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) without arsing around with Compatibility Mode. 

The comment I have to make about the touch screen is that it’s unlike any touch screen you’re probably aware of today. I believe it’s pressure sensitive rather than the current day technology that detects (and correct me if I am wrong) the resistance of something pressing on the screen. Which means you can’t easily type things out using your fingers you have to use a Stylus… Or your fingernails, and the target (The keys on the screen) are exceptionally tiny, even on a 320x480 screen. 

You can of course use the handwriting recognition thing; but it doesn’t so much as recognise your handwriting as it seems like a glorified gesture control system where you have to write in a way that it will recognise; which is why I have those cheat sheets in the case.

(Click Image to see a bigger version of it)

This to me may have been acceptable in 2004 - to some, but even to me this was no good; due to my Dyspraxia; I cannot stand for writing on paper for all that long, typing I have no problem with, but gripping a pen/pencil and writing on a paper or a screen like this for long periods of time is absolutely something I cannot do, certainly not neatly and certainly not in anything that the device will recognise every other word. As such even today it is quicker for me to write on paper than this device, because the device simply doesn’t recognise my gestures. 

Pressing on buttons representing a keyboard can be quite problematic for me too; but it is easier than writing on the handwriting pad because at least I can put down the characters I meant to put down rather than characters that I didn’t mean to put down and having to delete them to retry that letter over and over again until it got it right. I feel that this is one of the major weakpoints of this device for me - some people may not have ever had a problem with it but I had a massive problem with it. But it comes down to the same problem using a stylus that is even thinner than most pencils to write or tap on a screen. Smartphones today are a saving grace in this regard but even with smartphone devices; I find it quicker to just type things out on an actual computer keyboard than the smartphone keyboard - Autocorrect shit aside. 

The Tungsten|T5 is not a smartphone - it doesn’t have that functionality; sure you can dial things on it - like a dial up modem, or send SMS messages from it if it’s connected to a compatible mobile phone via bluetooth of which it’s only compatible with the following brands and mobiles:

• Ericsson
  • T39m
  • T68
• Motorola
  • TP280i
• Nokia
  • 3650
  • 6210
  • 6310
  • 6310i
  • 7650
  • 8910
  • 8910i
• Philips
  • Fisio820
  • Fisio825
• Siemens
  • S55
  • S56
• Sony-E
  • T610
  • T616
  • T68i

It doesn’t have WiFi built into it; but you can sacrifice your SD Storage for a PalmOne Wifi Card (Palm P10952U) that can go into the SD Card slot, or so I’ve heard. Which would be a 802.11b standard, that may - MAY - accept WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), certainly not WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) or WPA2 as a Wifi Encryption standard, and I’m not absolutely certain if my router (Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000) can even do B-Class wifi because of how slow, old and antiquated it is. But considering WEP may as well be no-encryption at all, I’m not going to bother on that score. Chances are for something that old, due to the SSL requirements I wouldn’t be able to access EcchiDreams from it either (Which needs a modern browser). 

Despite the fact that this PDA is coming up to 14 years old now, it's in pretty good condition, and has a screen protector on it, which I assume is why the screen is in fantastic condition. The battery doesn't last all that long but considering it's a Lithium Polymer Battery that's lasted 14 years! That's pretty impressive. But it's also why I opened up this bad boy and put in a new battery which I got from Cameron Sino.

(Click on the images to view a bigger version)

Opening up the PDA wasn’t a problem; this video from 2010 by NewPower99DotCom shows how it is done, I didn’t need it - but then I know what I am doing - this just saves me from having to explain how I opened it up. (This doesn’t constitute as an advert for New Power 99)

Inside we see the back of the PCB:-

And of course the inside of the back of the case:-

Now the battery was kind of glued down with what looked like adhesive tape, so I had to take a plastic card (That’s designed for putting screen protectors down to get the air bubbles out) and gently slide it under to cut the bond between the battery and the back of the inside of the case. If you’re not careful with this you can indeed risk puncturing the battery and I am sure I don’t need to say what happens when you do that…

Needless to say I doubt @Neptune would have wanted a chemical fire as an additional feature in the kitchen which is where I was soldering on (On a counter that we don’t prepare food on, of course). I was then able to take the battery off of the case, this is where you can see the adhesive and the 8ᘯ speaker. 

Then it was a matter of unsoldering the red and black wires:

In hindsight - although nothing bad happened; the battery should have been unsoldered from the board first before I attempted to remove it. Whilst nothing happened, if something would have happened I would have greatly reduced the damage done by removing it first. 

Once I had the battery removed I set it aside 

(We might see this thing again, it still somewhat works so I might use it in a project later, something I am actually working on!)

And stuck the new battery into the case, like so:

I tested the alignment of it, and it was off; catching on the ribbon cable - Lego Style - connector for the buttons at the bottom of the PCB. If I had forced it, it either would have broken the connector - or punctured the battery. So I lowered the battery again and tested it. Making that adjustment worked, because it was able to go back on perfectly. I then took the electrical tape off of the ends of the wire (As you can see in the above picture) and soldered them to the PCB. 

Almost immediately as soon as the black wire touched the solder the PDA turned on, I noticed because the screen lit up and it showed up under the PCB. I sealed the unit back up after the soldering was complete and made sure the wires weren’t going to catch on the case. 

Once it was back together again I put the four T5 screws back into the unit and set the date/time, and that’s it. It was actually super easy. Over 24 hours after the ‘Operation’ the battery hasn’t even lost 1% charge; which is amazing. So the PDA is back in the prime of it’s life and good as new again. 

One of my favourite games of all time on the PDA is Popcap’s Bejeweled 2 which was either programmed or published by Astraware (Who has given the registrations keys to everyone - I'm not sure that this is a ToS violation as this is the makers of the games who's giving it away), and Space Trader by Pieter Spronck (http://www.spronck.net/spacetrader/STFrames.html) which you can get on the iPhone and Android devices now.

This PDA might be old, and obsolete technology that might not do much... But fuck it! I like it. And before anyone asks; no it can’t play Crysis or Minecraft. xD

Next on: "Shit I've bought from eBay" - Pokémon Cards

[Whoreo]

Wow that's fascinating...I read it before I logged in

I think I remember a friend of mine had a device like this except it was a Windows mobile one........HP I think.

[Novaer]

Probably a HP iPAQ they were quite popular at the time, with a Windows XP like interface; but it was actually Windows Mobile 2003, Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6.1 (Which I call XP Green). I had a HTC TyTN (Although I think over here it was called the Hermes) with a slide out Keyboard once with Windows Mobile on it, but it wasn't honestly that good, it was quite slow and frequently crashed. But it did support MSN Messenger which allowed me to talk to people. 

[Casey]

I had a Tungsten T5 back in the day. It's a solid device, dear. Thanks for posting this... I might have to either try and find my old one or buy a new one just for the nostalgia. but you absolutely should get the wireless SD card device from Palm One if you can find someone selling it for cheap enough dear. not for the functionality of course but because its quickly running in short supply and to have said device would be having a very rare piece of history.

looking forward to read more from you.

[Novaer]

On 07/11/2018 at 01:48, Casey said:

I had a Tungsten T5 back in the day. It's a solid device, dear. Thanks for posting this... I might have to either try and find my old one or buy a new one just for the nostalgia. but you absolutely should get the wireless SD card device from Palm One if you can find someone selling it for cheap enough dear. not for the functionality of course but because its quickly running in short supply and to have said device would be having a very rare piece of history.

looking forward to read more from you.

Alright. I caved, @Casey

Here is one that I picked up $18.95 + $16.89 Shipping (For a total of $35.84 USD) From an American Seller on eBay. 

Regrettably; it doesn't seem to work at all:

So it was kind of a waste of money. I think I could have used it on my Router as well, on a Guest Network with no Encryption (Because my Router has disabled WEP). But I can't even get the card to fundamentally work in the first place. By the way, I haven't recharged the battery since I charged it up from installing the new battery. Before I plugged it in today to do a HotSync; the batter was still at ~95% and it's been on standby since then. So I'll say that the battery been working a treat.