Reuse Your Old Palm Pda As An Lcd Display

palm lcd display
if you’ve got an old palm device (palm, visor, clie, workpad), you can use it as an lcd output device for your pc or robotics project.  the open source software palmorb runs on palm os 2.0 or above and makes your old palm pilot emulate a Matrix Orbital LK204-25 LCD.

this is great.  i’ve got an old palm 3 collecting dust that can get some use now.  there are some code samples on the site, or you can use lcd4linux or lcdsmartie to communicate with your new lcd device.  thanks for the link ray.

78 thoughts on “Reuse Your Old Palm Pda As An Lcd Display

  1. If you want to use your atx power supply for your palm and you have a car adapter for your palm, then you can just connect molex 12v to the terminals on the car adapter and get the exact ammount of voltage you need for your palm.

  2. My palm IIIxe just has regular small watch screws, but I can see what you mean on my old Zire 21, they’re the 5-point star type screws. If you look hard enough you can find them. Try using a small phillips head, or even a flathead might work. Don’t be afraid to destroy the case, it’s not like your going to need it.

    As for using molex connectors, what about making a small resistor board to take those 3.3’s down to 3? Radio Shack ftw.

    For those who have got it working, is the display landscape or normal? I mean, if you were to mount the palm in your case, would it be sideways or upright? If sideways, which side up?

  3. i have an old treo300 (sprint’s old pda phone). i’m looking to go a step up on it. i broke the usb connector off the board (whoops!) so i dismantled it and pulled the screen out.

    i want to figure out how to soldier leads on to the connector on it to turn it into a screen *without* having to use the rest of the pda. is this possible? any hints/clues?

  4. I’m running on a palmIIIc using LCD smartie and and the other palmorb version which gives you a 8X20 display and pretends it’s a 4X40. There is also a plugin from someone called limbo which allows you to scroll part of a line instead of the whole thing which is needed so the because LCD smartie will scroll a two lines instead of one. I can’t remember what the site was but i found it while browsing around on the LCD smartie website.

  5. i have a sony clie peg-sj22 and i cant get this to work..but, i’ve been trying to find a way to use my sony clie as another monitor.

    Theres a mod out there but its for pc pilots with windows mobile running on them..
    if anyone can think of any cool hack/mods to get my palm pilot in use as another monitor, it would be highly appriciated

  6. I need data from the LCD Palm Zire, let me reuse the LCD in a draft ECG
    Would need the connector and data communication protocol or some data as minimum to start a crawl.
    Atte
    Ricardo

  7. Try using Pebbles PC for palm OS, this allows you to control an almost unlimited amount of PC apps, and you could set it up with interface software to control lights and stuff like that. it doesnt have a display, really just has buttons, but the graffiti pad can be used as a keyboard. has an option for total control, using screen as touchpad mouse and graffiti pad as keyboard. you’ll have to google it as i cant remeber URL

  8. On my old m100, I pulled open the case and ran some wires from the battery terminals to two of the case screws. This allowed me to access power using an external sleeve or cradle.

    I was thinking for this project I could get a USB serial adaptor and make a little dock, taking the USB 5v and then supplying a regulated 3v to the cradle.

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