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74 The Ultimate Palm Robot

H as this ever happened to you? You buy some cool gadget, take it home,
open the box, and are then confronted by those three dreaded words:
“Batteries not included.” What a bummer.

If you were planning to use a Handspring Visor with your PPRK (Palm Pilot
Robot Kit) or BrainStem robot, you probably feel just that way. Even though
the Visor runs the Palm OS, it is easier to use a Palm III or a Palm V with your
PPRK or BrainStem than to use the Handspring Visor. The Pontech SV203
won’t work with the Visor at all, unless you modify the controller board. And
with the BrainStem, every other style of connector cable comes preassembled,
except for the Visor cable.
If you have a Palm VII, the situation is a little better. Because the Palm VII
uses the same connector as the Palm III, you can use any of the PPRK Palm III kits
or the BrainStem kit with the Palm III connector with your Palm VII. Almost.
When using the Palm VII with the Pontech controller, you may need to do a
software mod to the controller to get the Palm VII and the controller to com-
municate correctly.

In this chapter, we’ll start by looking at how to construct the BrainStem
connector for the Handspring Visor. Next we’ll look at how to modify the
Pontech SV203 to work with a Handspring Visor and how to build a connector
for the SV203 and Visor. Finally, we’ll look at how to use a Palm VII with the
PPRK and Pontech controller.

Using a Handspring Visor with the BrainStem
The BrainStem kit from Acroname is designed to be connected to any one of
many different computing devices. For this reason, the connector is sold sepa-
rately from the kit. Acroname sells connectors for connecting the BrainStem to
a Mac PC, a Windows PC, a Linux PC, a Palm III, a Palm V, and a Handspring
Visor. For most of those devices, the cable comes already built and ready to attach
the BrainStem to the device.

Unfortunately, if you have a Handspring Visor, you’ve probably already
discovered that the cable is not already built and that you’ve got some soldering
to do.

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