VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Springboard Modules (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=10)
-- idea for springboard... std flash cards (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=4997)

Perhaps someone overlooked a great potential!

Make a PDA that will take pcmcia CompactFlash cards as additional memory!

Easy, readily available, and reasonable cost (just saw 32mb for $99, 64mb for $199). Beats 8mb for $80... and much more expandable!

I may be wrong, but from what I understand, the OS and the processor are only set up to address up to 8mb.

Of course, there may be a way around that since the memory would be routed through whatever springboard module would have to be created.

Just a thought.

[This message has been edited by Hawkeye (edited 09-15-1999).]

I read about the 8mb limitation with the Dragonball processor in the Palm devices, but I wonder how they manage to let you stick an 8mb springboard in and access it? Do they just switch between the two? I'll have to look at that developers kit and see whats up with that.

Flash memory is accessed by paging, mapping bits of the flash memory into the Dragonball address space. They are talking about a 64K flash memory handle limit, which limits you to how much flash memory you see at once. You just move this window around to access the whole memory.

However, my feeling from what I've seen so far is that the Visor might be limited to 64MB external memory, which would be a pity. While it's a fair bit, once you get into hefty database stuff, such as street level mapping, 64MB is pretty puny.

Paul Radu

I would never buy the 8mb springboard for $80. Sandisk 8mb compactflash cards can be had for $30-- add $10 to that since the springboard socket is proprietary and the price would still be 50 percent off the current retail price.

The 8mb springboard should should be, at most, retailing for $50.

10bt

I agree that the price of the 8mb Flash module is a little, shall we say, "over-the-top". $40-$50 would indeed be a much more reasonable price for it, however life is short and I'm not going to deprive myself of something I need just to save a few bucks. So I ordered the 8mb module with my Visor Deluxe---but I confess that I'm hoping Handspring lowers the price for it before it ships