Jpilot and Treo: backup broke my PDA

[Florin Andrei]

Treo 650, Ubuntu 7.10, Jpilot-0.99.9.19 compiled from source

Jpilot did not work "out of the box". I tried "usb:" for the Serial Port
and it did not work.

Then I created this file:

$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/10-visor.rules
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{serial}=="PalmSN12345678", KERNEL=="ttyUSB[13579]*",
SYMLINK="pilot", GROUP="dialout"

Then I manually loaded the visor module:

sudo modprobe visor

Used "/dev/pilot" for Serial Port. After many unsuccessful attempts, it
finally synchronized. But...

After finishing sync, the PDA rebooted. And now it keeps rebooting in a
loop.

Soft reset (pull the battery out, then back in, or push the reset hole)
did not help.

Warm reset (soft reset while holding the Up button) appears to fix it,
but the PDA starts resetting in a loop when accessing any application.

Hard reset (soft reset while holding the red phone button) fixed it, but
of course erased all my data.

Luckily, the data seems to be saved in Jpilot.

I think I am going to export the Calendar, Memo, Todo, Contacts to the
CSV format, then re-import them to the PDA on Windows, using the Palm
Desktop software.
I will probably refrain from using Linux to back up the PDA, at least
for a while. It's just way too much trouble. Booting Windows once every
week or so is not too bad.

The Linux software needs to improve a lot before it's actually usable.
Seems like a regression to me - I remember using Jpilot with my old Palm
m100, and then with the Visor Platinum, just fine. But nowadays it's a
mess. It fails to even initiate the backup/sync, and when it does
succeed, it breaks the PDA. That's not fun at all.

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/