serial to USB converter and old Palm IIIxe

J

jnathanson

Registered
I have an iMac G5 with OS 10.4.1. My wife uses an old Palm IIIxe that connects via serial port. I purchased an IOGear serial-USB adapter and installed all the drivers. When I attempt to HotSync the IIIxe, the LED on the adapter flashes and the PalmDesktop box opens up with the "Establishing Connection" message but does not go further than that. My USB-connected palm T3 works just fine. The PalmOne Mac support boards are full of the same problem but no solutions. Anyone have any thoughts?

Jay Nathanson
 
At first, I was wondering why you didn't grab a USB cradle for it...but after searching I started to remember. I have a Handspring Visor Deluxe with USB cable...they look real similar to the Palm III series. Unfortunately, different connectors on the bottom.

What drivers did you install?

Might be time to replace it with a newer model.
 
I haven't checked any palm forums, but in my limited experience adapters never work correctly. I have a joystick with a 'gameport' plug (on my old win xp box) that is brilliant but unusable since my win xp box doesn't have a gameport. (My previous pc did have one!) I tried different sound cards, various adapters and not one of them worked correctly.
I don't know if the IIIxe has infrared (my palm IIIc did,) I would try infrared next and give up on the serial adapter.
 
OS X + USB to Serial Adapter = Chaos.

OS X was never built to support technology like serial which, let's face it, is crap for everything except hooking up an old PDA.
For this very reason (ie. it's very hard to get OS X to properly work with a serial port) Belkin have no plans to port their PDA adapter to OS X (and that's according to Belkin).

Simply, sell the machine on eBay, it's the best option - i'm sure some Palm lover will snap it up - and buy a newer model. I recently got a Tungsten|E for the princely sum of £50 on eBay so it's well worth a look but I'd really recommend that you forget the idea of serial.
 
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