Mastodawn

#RetroComputing #PalmOS #Palm

This was surprisingly tricky to set up on a modern computer:

• Windows needs to be 32-bit because the Eudora conduit is packaged inside a 16-bit installer. Windows 10 needs some extra support files to run 16-bit apps, so I installed Windows 7 in a VM.
• Internet Explorer doesn't work anymore, so had to copy the Firefox installer into my VM's hard drive in order to download Palm Desktop, drivers, updates, etc.
• Outlook needs to be new enough to run CalDAV Synchronizer: https://caldavsynchronizer.org to import my NextCloud contacts / calendar
• Outlook also needs to be old enough to sync with HotSync and the Eudora conduit. Office 2007 is the minimum version that meets both requirements.
• HotSync and Outlook both need to be running in Windows XP compatibility mode in order for them to talk to each other and transfer data
• HotSync.exe needs to run as administrator, as it tries to write all the backups/sync data into Program Files instead of the user directory.
• Outlook.exe also has to run as administrator, otherwise HotSync wont communicate with it while running as administrator
• My USB-serial adapter needs drivers on older versions of Windows. They were nice enough to include them on a CD, but none of my computers have an optical drive anymore. Downloaded them from the manufacturer's website with Firefox.
• CalDAV Synchronizer requires a recent version of .NET to run, so I had to get Windows Update working with Legacy Update by @kirb: https://legacyupdate.net/

The HotSync conduit update for Outlook 2007 is very difficult to find, luckily there's an archived copy here: https://www.palmdr.com/important-links. There are unofficial patches for 2010 and 2013 here: http://pizzaboy192.com/download/ but I'm using 2007 with the official update from Palm.

Caldavsynchronizer – Sync Outlook Everywhere

lori Jul 2, 2023

@sam @kirb I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose a full work day of productivity to trying this later this week don't tell my boss

Aaron Davis Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda That's pretty cool.

Wiredfire

Jun 18, 2023

@Aaron_Davis @sam @thomholwerda very very cool!

djohngo Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda 😍

@sam That's sick as hell.

@sam Can an idiot set this up?

< idiot in question

@[email protected] The gateway is super easy to install, you just type "cargo install mop3" in the terminal (assuming you have Rust etc. already). Then you just run it in the terminal, and give it an authentication token as a command line argument (the instructions are all on the github README).

If your PDA has wifi then you should just be able to enter the IP address of your computer as the POP3 and SMTP servers in VersaMail or whatever email client you have on your PDA.

Mine doesn't have internet access, so getting it all to work through HotSync was a bit more tricky, especially since Palm OS 3.5 doesn't have a built-in email client.

Forgot to mention: There's a bug in the current release of the gateway that prevents the `--ascii` option from working, so use `--html --inline` even if your mail client doesn't support HTML mail. The Eudora conduit seems to strip the HTML fine, though some unicode characters get a bit garbled on the Palm. Hopefully the `--ascii` flag will be fixed soon, there's a github issue about it here: https://github.com/nkizz/mop3/issues/4

thread 'main' panicked at 'Server sent malformed JSON ...' · Issue #4 · nkizz/mop3

mop3 seems to panick: RUST_BACKTRACE=full mop3-macos-arm64 --account "[email protected]" \ --token "..." \ --pop3port 10110 \ --ascii --nosmtp result in the following when pop3 client tries to co...

GitHub

@sam Yeah I checked, I should be able to do that! Awesome!

Cenbe Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda Necromancy!

Theriac Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda

Eudora - now that's a name I haven't heard in a very long time

John Federico ⌘Jun 18, 2023

Theriac Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda

Eudora - now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time

@sam @thomholwerda Seriously cool.

a fading echo Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda I liked my series of Palms a lot.

George Station Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda

Just here to add to the folks basking in #nostalgia at the mention of Eudora.

Hubert Figuière Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda Eudora, That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Light The Unicorn!Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda This is the super fun stuff I just love to see. So very cool!

chronically exhausted father Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda that's pretty cool.

I miss my palm pilot.

Toish Jun 18, 2023

@sam @thomholwerda have you made the obligatory “eat up Martha” toot yet?

https://pixel.tchncs.de/thomholwerda

@sam Now that the amazing @foone has boosted this - I recently started a Pixelfed account dedicated to hardware like this. It's still quite new, but the intention is to post photos of my Palm/PocketPC/etc. device collection a few times a week, with a short info blurb. No other content will be posted.

You can follow Pixelfed accounts straight from Mastodon!

thomholwerda on Pixelfed

<a href="https://www.osnews.com" rel="external nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.osnews.com</a> managing editor. Dutchman living in Sweden. You can support OSNews and my work through our Patreon: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/osnews" rel="external nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.patreon.com/osnews</a> Trans rights are human rights. He/him.

Pixelfed

@thomholwerda @foone I wish I had kept my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, it was a Linux PDA with a slide out keyboard and a QT-based interface called Qtopia. One of the most interesting PDAs I owned!

I also had a HP Jornada that ran PocketPC 2000, and a Tandy Zoomer (Casio Z-7000) which was an 8086-based handheld that ran GEOS on top of a MS-DOS clone!

@sam @foone I have a Zaurus SL-5500. I was actually intending to use it for the POP3 Mastodon trick. 😅

@thomholwerda @foone I still remember when I went to the shop to buy it, the salesman kept warning me that it runs Linux and trying to get me to buy a PalmOS device instead 😝