Ok, so you might start to notice a little trend here with these posts. In July, I started work on a big project to create easy-to-use firmwares for old embedded devices called Reware (thanks to Turtle Kalus for the name). So I’ve been hacking my own Palm TX, and of course, discovering annoying, technical details in the process.
So now for my latest issue: So now I’ve been booting my Palm TX using HackNDev’s GNU/Linux images off of an SD card. It works really well, thanks to things like Cocoboot, the little Palm app that starts booting the Linux kernel. But now I’ve noticed that whenever I reboot back into PalmOS from GNU/Linux, my wifi behaves badly. Basically, when I try to connect to a wifi network, it doesn’t use the network I select. Instead, it uses the name that is on top of the list of the previous networks that aren’t currently enabled. It’s maddening, no matter which active network I try, it always selects the topmost inactive network.
Luckily, I found a simple solution! Eureka! I merely turn on the wifi, it doesn’t need to be connected, just on. Then I hit the reset button on the back of my Palm TX. Voila! The wifi works properly again.
Just for fun, here’s my Palm TX booting HackNDev’s image:
October 14, 2008 at 1:09 am
So there are more little annoying technical details at play here. It seems that booting into GNU/Linux also resets the time back to 1942. Funny year. I guess the Palm is programmed to think that since it is 1942, there can’t possible be any wifi, so it doesn’t seem to work. Resetting the date manually made the wifi work again, hurrah!