• List of compatible PDAs - http://www.pilot-link.org/DeviceMatrix
• With pilot-link and jpilot installed you should be able to start the sync on your handheld and then click on sync in jpilot and sync. If it is not working, it could well be that the proper module is not installed. If you have a very new PDA, the module may not exist yet - or perhaps not in the kernel that you have. You'll need to research to find out if your PDA is supported first. The above links at pilot-link.org are a good place to start. Searching at http://google.com/linux on the model and make of your PDA is also a good idea.

• pilot-link is a suite of tools used to connect your Palm or PalmOS® compatible handheld with Linux. pilot-link works with all PalmOS® handhelds, including those made by Handspring, Sony, and Palm, as well as others.
• jpilot is a desktop organizer application for the palm pilot and other Palm OS devices. It is similar in functionality to the one that 3Com/Palm distributes. jpilot requires pilot-link to do the syncing. Similar programs are kpilot and gnome-pilot.

With a serial connection to the PDA (like with the PalmVx) you need to set permissions to the serial-port so that the user who syncs has permission to read and write to the device-file. You may also try different connection-speeds to get the highest performance.

My PalmVx on the serial cradle worked with the “115200” setting, but not with “H230400” or better (which might also be due to the serial connector on my PC). I doubt the old cradle handles such high-speeds. When I bought it, 19200kbps were considered 'broadband', so I guess the devices fall back to whatever speed they can go.

After a hard-reset to factory-defaults, jpilot complained about the absence of a user-id. It suggested to use “install-user”. The commandline is something like

install-user -p /dev/ttyS0 -u "Santa Clause" -i 12250"

• kernel module for your PDA. My PDA is a Palm Zire 21 which uses the visor module. Depending on the version of the kernel that you have, your PDA may or may not have a module that works for it. I had to do a little tweaking to get the visor module to work for mine. This involved a simple edit of visor.h and visor.c and then recompiling those modules. It was necessary to have the kernel source for this. I recompiled all the modules but did not install them. I got just the new visor.o module /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb/serial and copied that over to /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/. If you don't have a module that works, you'll need to wait until you are familiar with editing and compiling to do this job. It is not a newbie type task. The page I used to learn how to do this edit is here.
  • I just installed Slackware 10.1 with kernel 2.4.29 and got bitten with not having the visor module fixed to use my Zire 31. They have the Zire ID in visor.c, but I have to change the number for it in visor.h to 0x0061 instead of 0x0070 and recompile the module. –Anita Mar 17, 2005
  • Using kernel 2.6.8 now and the visor module works for my Zire 31 without editing or recompiling. — Anita Lewis 2006/04/12 12:49
• Visor Structures - what to put into visor.h and visor.c is on the same site at http://www.pilot-link.org/node/31.
• ProductID/Vendor - you can get these in /proc. Plug in your usb cable and tap on the hotsync button on the palm. Then use:

less /proc/bus/usb/devices

to find the entry for the Palm. It will include the numbers.

Created by Anita