Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Visalia, CA USA
Posts: 2

This string is dedicated to Macintosh users issues with the Visor.

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BDownes
Christian Cinema
http://www.christiancinem
a.co

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Visalia, CA USA
Posts: 2

Be aware that Mac users MUST uninstall ANY previous versions of Palm Desktop before installing the Palm Desktop version 2.1 included on the Handspring CD. You WILL experience syncing problems if you do not take this step. The Visor is ONLY compatible with Handsprings version of the Palm Desktop. And a tech also told me that you may NOT use any other types of desktop software with the Visor. Hope this helps.

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BDownes
Christian Cinema
http://www.christiancinem
a.co

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Marshfield, WI, USA
Posts: 58

Love your website!

mark neumann www.finaltrumpet.com




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Mark Neumann
[email protected]

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 148

How would I use my visor to save email from my mac and write (on visor) and when I sync, it's ready to send again on the mac... Any ideas?

Mike

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: St Charles, MO USA
Posts: 45

Try an email program called MultiMail Conduct. It lets you sync email with the mac. Good Luck

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

Anyone try a USB PCI card to provide USB ports in an older Mac?

Seen em advertised for ~$50.

...Waiting for backordered serial cradle, but if this would provide faster hotsyncs then it might be worth it.

[This message has been edited by huski (edited 11-22-1999).]

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 148

I just downloaded Outlook Express 5.0 and it claims that I can synch up email with my Palm Pilot. Now will this work with my visor as well as long as I get the corresponding software that goes into my visor? If you guys have a chance, check out the OE 5.0 info and it's support for palm OS. I hope this will work. The visor, which I don't have yet, will be my first PDA and I'm really excited to get this thing working for me!

Mike

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 9

I have a belkin usb card. I had to install drivers from apple tech site on the web. If you buy it from macwarehouse or connection it will have the drivers. The drivers require at least OS 8.5.1.I have read that the serial xfer was slow. The hot sync was very quick. I have downloaded games and stuff from palm site and they loaded really fast.

[This message has been edited by tapper (edited 11-23-1999).]

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

tapper,
Thanks for the info...I'll order the Belkin from MacWarehouse. I'm also wondering if there are any PC cards with USB to connect to my older G3 powerbook, but this will be a big step forward.

...wondering if I should try to cancel the order for the serial cradle...nah, if I did that HS would probably send me 3-4 of 'em and cancel my other backodered items!

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 90

I'm still grouchy about not being able to find the games on the CD.

Also grouchy that I paid for the new version of JFile (JFile Pro) and discovered that 99.9% of the databases out there are written in the old version of JFile which can't be read on JFile Pro. The converter program is a Windows program only.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 434

Anything else I should know about Mac + Visor?

I have Win 98/USB and have ordered a Visor.

In the new year I also plan on getting an iBook. Any specific issues? Any potential problems with constantly unplugging the cradle? I also own a 250 Mb USB Zip and will probably will also get a USB scanner. (I'd get a USB hub, but that would probably be first for my PC.)

Eug, acquiring too many gadgets.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

Update from the Mac hotsync'ing front.

My backordered serial cradle arrived at the same time as my Belkin USB PCI card. Here's the situation:

My computer/setup:
Powermac 7500/100 with Sonnet Crescendo 259 MHz PowerPC G3 processor upograde card. 80 Mb RAM 256K L2 cache. Virtual memory is off.
System 8.6
Belkin USB card F5U005-MAC installed in slot B1 - it is recognized by system profiler.

The problem(s)
1. I can't get the computer to recognize USB devices. I've tried the Apple USB mouse from an iMac, and the USB hotsync cradle for the Visor. The cradle works on an iMac, and hotsync through the modem port works the serial cradle.

2. This is with USB extensions package 1.3.5 downloaded from Apple.com. Installing either the extension package provided with the card or version 1.2 causes the computer to crash at startup - Error type 11. This happens even when rebooting with extensions off. I had to reboot from a CD and manually remove the extensions before I could boot at all from the hard drive...this is not for the faint-hearted!

I have tried various combinations leaving out the Crescendo extension or the Palm extensions, but everything I've tried still crashes with USB extensions other than 1.3.5

I suspect that there is an incompatibility problem somewhere in here, but I'm clueless about how to get this to work. I'm sending email to both Belkin and Sonnet...we'll see if there's a useful response from either.

Tapper - if you're still out there - Help!!

In the meantime, I'm glad I didn't cancel my order for the serial cradle.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

Update - the Belkin card is now working fine, and I can do USB sync on my desktop Mac.

Turns out that I had not removed the external cache card when I installed the G3 upgrade. This caused some kind of a conflict with the PCI card. When I removed the cache, the USB ports sprung to life!

One thing that is weird, however, is that I had to reinstall the Palm desktop software in order to get the USB ports to work for hotsync...but now all seems to be well. Now I can use the serial cradle for my laptop!

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Silverspring,MD,USA
Posts: 17

Unfortunately I did not see this string prior to installing the Visor version of Palm Desktop prior to removing the IMac version. This caused a system crash on restart. I then trashed the palm file and reinstalled the visor version and it would not synch. I then reinstalled the Imac version and I can synch only if I disable then renable hotsynch manager and each time I synch, the hot synch manager tries to update my Palm OS which results in a soft reset of the visor. Any suggestions on how to start over with a normal working synch setup??

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

tkmalan,

These are just guesses, since I'm not familiar with the iMac version of Palm desktop, but I think your solution should be the same in either case.

Possibility 1) the Hotsynch Manager has something built in that tries to update your OS on the Visor.

Possibility 2) there is an update OS install file lurking somewhere on your system and Hotsync Manager is trying to use that.

Either way, I would start over by using the installer to uninstall everything. Using uninstall instead of just trashing the Palm folder will get rid of the various extensions that are also installed.

To be sure that you got it all, check the Extensions manager control panel. Turn off and discard anything with the word Hotsync in its name (there shouldn't be anything after the uninstall, but I don't know if there might be an extra copy from the original iMac version lurking around - better safe than sorry).

When you're sure you've gotten rid of all of the old stuff, run the installer again to do a fresh install of the Visor version, following all the jazz about having the Visor in the cradle etc...in my experience, if you don't get this dialog in the middle of the installation, followed by one with your Visor username and a Save and Restart button, then the Mac is not seeing your Pilot and there is no way to reconfigure Hotsync manager afterward to make it recognize the cradle (stupid design, IMHO, but not anything we can fix).

Your info on the visor should go into a fresh set of User data files and backups when you Hotsync.

If you're feeling paranoid, move the User Data file into a different directory before uninstalling.

Hope this helps ... I might wait a day to see if anyone else on VC has a second opinion before doing this...when in doubt, back everything up before moving things around.

[This message has been edited by huski (edited 12-02-1999).]

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 18

Has anyone been sucessful with mac avantgo?
Mike

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

Mike,

Is there a Mac version of AvantGo?!

I've never used AvantGo, but with all of the hype about it, I checked out their web site. As I understand it, you can install AvantGo on the Visor, but it can't connect to servers through the Mac because no one has written the appropriate MAL (Mobile Application Link) desktop application to tell the Mac version of Hotsync how to relay information between the servers (channels) and the clients (Visors and Palms). I actually downloaded some of the source but realized that this would be way beyond my very very limited programming abilities.

I'm somewhat surprised that no one has done it yet, but then I don't know what the difficulties would be...I was not impressed with the documentation that came with the source code.

So...I imagine that the AvantGo sync can be done through a Win emulator, but that sounds like a very ugly solution to me.

Of course, if you install the Palm version of AvantGo on your Visor, you can connect directly to the channels through a modem (or at least that's what they say).

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: new york
Posts: 12

Huski/Mike.

You are right. It is an ugly solution to sync Avantgo via Virtual PC 3.0 (need win98 and Apple USB extension 1.3.5), but it works great. Good luck Mike.

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 23

I emailed Avantgo and they said that they are working on a Mac version and know that there are a lot of people with Macs out there that want to use Avantgo. They said to periodically check their website.