Help with Palm V

March 24, 2008 5:48 AM

I've recently bought a old Palm V with OS 3.1. I like its elegance, simplicity and feel. I'm not interested in the email function, but I see there are upgrades available.

The most recent is v. 4.14. But posts talk about incompatibilities in fields, pointer alignment as well as COM port connections related to serial vs. USB connections after upgrading. I also wanted to upgrade the memory from 2MB to 8MB and found a company called EFIG.com that used to do them, but doesn't seem to anymore.

My questions are, (1) Is there a PALM software upgrade (below 4.14) that'll increase functionality without turning it into a paperweight, and (2) Is there anybody that can break the glue that seals the thing shut and replace the battery as well as EFIG.com seemed to?

posted by CollectiveMind to technology (4 comments total)

hi,

see if any of these can't be of help to you -

this

thus

these
posted by watercarrier at 5:58 AM on March 24, 2008

I'm not sure where you're reading the posts you mention, but there is an active forum over at Brighthand .

I searched and there are lots of references to EFGI, but I didn't read them in detail so I'm not sure if they discuss a replacement service. If not, prehaps you can post your own query - I'm sure someone else has the same question, considering how durable the older Palm devices are.
posted by Mutant at 7:26 AM on March 24, 2008

This says that no PalmOS Upgrade beyond 3.1 is available for the Palm V. Palm Vx could go up to 3.53.

I'd be inclined to start over with an m505 or m515. They can run PalmOS 4.1, and you can take them apart with tiny torx screwdrivers and replace the battery yourself without too much difficulty. (It's not intended as a consumer repair, and you could screw up the glass or the LCD screen if you were clumsy, but I've done it and it wasn't that hard.)

Sorry to not have better news to report about the V's upgradability.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 11:54 AM on March 24, 2008

You could always print out this page and this page and take them into a local electronics shop to ask how much they'd charge to do it.

Even if there IS a 4.0 upgrade for the V, I'd skip it if I were you: The upgrades between 3.5-something and 4.0 for the dragonball-based machines added a lot of support for hardware your machine doesn't have, and bugs for the hardware it does.

Personally, I'd do the battery upgrade yourself. If you follow the directions, the chance of damaging the unit is really small (And if you do damage it, it's not like you're out a lot) - and you've got a better chance of getting a battery that isn't already dead - a real concern - Personally, I wound up repurposing a Nokia BL-6 battery for my Treo 270 so I could get a fresh cell, the last Treo-270-specific replacement I bought barely lasted six months.

Not only would I not do the 8mb upgrade, I'd really suggest you not have it done yourself: my daily carry is OS 3.5.2 with 32 programs (including 4 games, 7 utilities, 6 regular apps, a WAP browser an etext reader with three full-length books, along with 296 datebook entries and 2,800 phonebook entries) - excessive by anybody's standards, and I'm only using 6mb of the 16mb it comes with. If you still need 8mb(or more), I'd skip the V and go with a m505/515 as Zed said. IIRC, they've got MMC support.
posted by Orb2069 at 6:43 PM on March 24, 2008