Registered: Nov 1999
Location: King William, Virginia USA
Posts: 70

VDX and "Road Apple" (Mac Performa 6320CD)

Hi,

I've decided to upgrade our Mac Performa 6320CD at home and want to try synching my son's VDX with it. According to lowendmac.com the modem port on this machine has some limitations and I don't know if they will affect synching. From http://www.lowendmac.com/tech/x200.shtml:

"This series has several serious hardware flaws. All machines are shipped with a plug in the modem port because the modem port is disabled when a modem card is installed in the comm slot. If the internal modem card is removed, the modem port is usable, but because all machines shipped with the internal modem, Apple scrimped on the port controller. There is no hardware handshaking in the ports, therefore an external modem faster than 9600 baud is useless."

I'm going to pull the modem on this machine once I get done with the other modifications (new 20 GB HD, 64 MB RAM, PDS Ethernet card that will connect to an Airport Base Station). Does anyone know if the absence of "hardware handshaking" will cause me any problems using the modem port for synching? I'd like to avoid buying the serial cradle and wasting time on it if this has no chance of working.

Thanks!

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 216

It will work

I don't think you will have a problem syncing a Deluxe to the Mac Performa 6320. This is because the Visor does not even have hardware handshaking lines in its HotSync port.

Just set Palm Desktop to use the modem port with a baud rate of "as fast as possible". Should work fine.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: King William, Virginia USA
Posts: 70

Thanks!

It worked as you said... it definitely takes longer than with my iBook via USB. It works fine on the partition with a clean install of OS 8.1 but I'm having some problems with my working partition with all sorts of other junk on it. It syncs the first time fine but subsequent tries give a communication error - probably just an extension conflict that I have to work through. I may just move stuff over to the clean partition since the old one started out as OS 7.5.3 on the old HD and has been upgraded several times.

By the way, the AirPort Base Station is really cool - sharing files and the Internet connection between the iBook and Performa via AirPort and Ethernet opens up several possibilities and helps keep the Performa useful.