u/EsoTechTrix

Just picked this up. The drawer would (of course) not open. Hoped for at least one coin, but the contents still did not disappoint. Apparently a sale with a totally valid payment of LEGO as currently did not go through as planned. (A jam, but not *thee* jam) It seems the main issue was an attempt to store a very valuable bead necklace in the cash drawer going south. My guess is the turtle puff sticker was collateral damage in that incident.

The machine is back to working order. Now I just need to craft some replica coins. 😁

This was a fun pick up. No flap but it has the matching stylus. He had a Palm III there which (oddly) he wanted more for. (That had an ICE Visor stylus as well.)

I only picked up the one as it was fun. He did not know if either one worked. I need to remember to start carrying AAA, AA, and 9V cells when flea marketing. 🤣

Just got this DeWalt planer back on its feet. It had spent some quality time on a garage floor and the rust on the guides had completely fused the head from moving up and down.

I used vinegar and a generic scotch brite pad to hit the rods for a first pass (after some quality persuasion to knock them loose that is.) I followed that up with some steel wool and then hit them with a fresh coat of WD-40. (See this before and after in the pic)

It's nuts that these are such a tight tolerance that a coat of rust will completely fuse the cutting head. The rest of it seems to still work fine after the clean up.

Found this Intellevision [2609A] in rather pristine condition at a flea market. The odd bit is that the disks on the controllers are drilled and tapped for joysticks. The sticks seem to be MIA, but the canvas cover had holes cut for them.

I've not seen this, or found mention of it. I have not pulled one apart yet, but the discs are metal down through the threading.

This has what appears to be a lamp cord on it as well (with a separate power switch). Has anyone seen what I'm looking at? Is this a recent or vintage mod. It's very nicely done either way. I'm rather curious what the sticks looked like.

This main board is like 2 dimensional. Going to be rather fun to try and get this spicy pillow off this unit when the board is offering like zero resistance. They seemed to want to make sure it was not going anywhere.

Not exactly too excited to stick, well, anything in there to help it out.

Working down the list. These are coming out rather nice now so I've added them to the store here.

I know there is a request out for the W and the C. Seems they have a different 'quill' on them. I may have to try and find a 'for parts' set somewhere before I can get to those.

There is another more common pack that had the Zire 72 'quill' in it. I actually have a Zire 72, but the question is if that one is even in demand.

I'll keep adding to the line as I manage to get ahold of other units. Gets a bit spendy buying broken (or 'as is') devices just to get the specs for their styli. 🤣

EDIT: It looks like the T|X and the T5 have longer 'quills' on them as well. I will have to pick up more devices if I want to get those in the mix. Oddly I have a bunch of Zires. I guess it just goes to show it does not matter how many Palms you have, you still need more, right?

Just ran across this, I never knew this even existed, but I also was not a Clie guy.

Do you have any odd Palm related add ons like this? What else is lurking out there?

Took a bit of tweaking, but the Palm III series replacement doors are up in our store here. These were tested to fit with all the units I had (which are shockingly *not* all identical. Go figure.) These are made out of the same plastic as the originals.

Clearly the IIIc does not have removable batteries, so it did not make the group photo. If you can think of any units I missed, let me know and I'll add them into the list. (If they are compatible, of course).

Needs a few tweaks, but this thing is almost ready to ship. Testing with the Palm III, IIIx, and the Symbol SPT-1500. I'm not going to match the grey(s) so I may just do basic black.

Just found this in a bin of random stuff I got from a flea market. Blast from the past.

Ran across this at the flea market. A sample booklet of this new fangled thing (apparently not yet) called sandpaper.

IMHO this was the halcyon days of Palm. These units dominated the market. The sexy slim design of the Palm V with the metal case, but updated screen and SD card slot made these things untouchable at the time.

Yes, they went up in features with later models, but this was the peak of 'sexy' for design. Later units would be too chonky or sport plastic cases. They never seemed to match the 'class' of these.

Apple took a page out of the Palm book with the first iPhone. The market at that point had started slipping with BlackBerry clawing Palm's top dog status by catering to the largest interest in the 'SmartPhone' market at that point.. business.

Indeed, if you go back and look, the *rumor* sites had taken the Palm LifeDrive and Photoshopped a virtual click wheel onto it. (IMHO, it did look pretty sick) Apple stunned with the iPod Touch that made even the imagination of the interwebs look short sighted.

Just as Apple was doing this, Palm, apropos nothing, declared the PDA market "dead"... just in time to hand the entire market to Apple, the App Store, and the iPod Touch.

No, the M Series was peak Palm. They seemed to just be coasting after that.

Found the source for my old diagnostic app "Pocket Knife". The app was sort of a tech demo POC to beat on and test things with code but also acted as a diagnostic tool that let you poke around in *everything*. You could crack open any PRC or PDB or look at any preference set. It even had a HEX/View dump of the final record (which seems to be unhappy, at least on this Symbol unit, which is not shocking as most of it was written around the M5XX era.)

Kind of a fun blast from the past. Most all of the widgets in here are my own. The tabs, the table, the scroll bars, etc. This is the table that let you 'push' the inside of the header left to shrink the previous column and push right to increase the size of the column you were on. (It even wraps if there is a space in the header and truncated if there is not. SUPER fancy.)

So much fun. I may have to get a copy of Code Warrior running on a VM or the like.

Shameless plug. I just posted this set of replacement styli for the early Clie devices (should cover the S, SL, SJ, N, NR, and T series if the interwebs are to be believed) Sony lists the original part number as PEGA-ST60. I tested this with the PEG-S360 shown.

If you got sticker shock before trying to replace yours with an original pack, this should help that a bit.

Not trying to spam the group here, but I figured this is one of the groups would care this is now an option.

You can find them in our store here.

After getting a hold of a (sort of) non-functional unit, I ran across another one of these things super cheap. I figured at the very least if it did not work perhaps between the two I could get one going. Turns out it works just fine.

Getting a bit of PTSD seeing Scout Sync in the ROM, but I'll get over it. (I made that software do things I was once told were not possible) The cradle was something I already had a few of so no cables was not an issue.

This damn thing is going to have me trying to look through 20 years of haze and write some software for it. In *theory* I may actually have the code I wrote for the damn thing to some inventory hiding somewhere. It has yet to turn up, but I have a theory I have not yet had time to chase down.

Most folks don't talk about the Peculiar Purple Pie Man's later career pivot to a Chippendale's dancer.

Oddly she got real defensive and asked "How old?". I said I asked her but she didn't seem to know... but from the 1950's at least... which got an even more odd look. I guess some women just are not into old tools.

Was mixed into a bunch of 2600 cartridges. I have not had a chance to see if it loads, but not often you find C64 stuff in the wild these days.

What's your strategy for sourcing old cables? I can't tell if I am happier when the jack is an 'Embrace and Extend" situation, or upset that it can lead to a "Sophie's Choice" type situation where you have to figure out if you need the cable, more than the tech.

There is the classic example that some older S-Video cables can work as ADB cables for Macs in a pinch (TEST the grounds are separated first kids) but I've also seen the same port all over. (The one above was an iPod dock, which I guess added 3 pins for audio.... meaning it has 3 grounds??) Some are harmless extensions, some are just blatant misuse because the jack was available and cheap.

This is marginally better than the items that have custom monstrosities. I've had to pay more for cables or adapters at times than the item itself. Any hacks out there for sourcing snowflake cables or adapters without breaking the bank folks have found?

What's the craziest adapter or cable you've had to bodge or try and source?