New e800 cradle... and a surprise

[kamikun]

You may remember I recently had my e800 cradle go TANGO UNIFORM when some Diet Coke escaped its container and soaked itself into the cradle's base.
The salts and acids in the drink quickly ate through the contacts and I was left with a useless hunk of plastic.
Tonight, thanks to Yodobashi Camera (a Japanese electronics chain like Best Buy) a brand new e800/400 serial/USB sync cradle arrived at my door. A bit expensive (~$81) but I'm back to syncing happiness.
It looks just like my old cradle from Toshiba US except that "CRADLE" reads "クレードル" on the bottom and it's got that hefty USB/Serial cable.
And there was one other surprise... it's got a working USB port on the back! That was unexpected.
The first time I plugged the new cradle into the laptop I also jacked in a USB mouse into the e800 cradle... and it worked. Mind you, no mouse icon came up but I could click on items on the e800's screen (although it was sort of like random clicking cause there was no way to see where you were pointing) but click, hold, double click and the mouse wheel all responded... or at least produced effects on the PPC.
So... what can I do with this? Can I plug a standard USB keyboard into the port? Any ideas? Help me exploit this lagniappe.
Thanks again to everyone who offered help and ideas during the initial panic.

[bkbroil]

WoooHooo! Congratulations!

[KevinRPhillips]

Yes, I would think that it will work fine. I bought the presentation pack so I could plug in a USB keyboard and it works fine so the USB port on your cradle should work the same.
Kevin

[kamikun]

Kevin, welcome. Thanks for the note. I'll try using a USB keyboard at work tomorrow.
On a side note, are you using wm2003se? I'm not, but I'm interested to know if the presentation pack still works with the update. There have been varying degrees of success with a hack that's been mentioned on BH.
I was considering buying the pack... but I was also considering upgrading to wm2003se at some point. Sorta confused right now. Any thoughts?

[jkendrick]

I've heard that all cradles now have the USB host port active but you're the first to confirm that.
Any USB keyboard will work right out of the box- no drivers. If you get adventurous and try to use a mouse you will need a couple of drivers first and even then it's spotty at best. Now for the good part- many external USB hard drives work with the RATOC drivers.
Rule of thumb is if a drive installs in WinXP with no additional driver needed then it will work on the e800 with the RATOC driver.
Can you say- many gigabytes?

[jkendrick]

Re the presentation pack. The video out doesn't seem to work in SE. It's important to remember the only two programs that worked with the PP was IA Presenter and IA Mirror that Toshiba supplied on the CD. Neither of these programs work in SE so it's probably wait for the SE version. Unfortunately, IA was bought by someone who's name escapes me at the moment and they will not sell s/w to the public in the future. That means future versions are not likely. I only bought the PPack for the USB port myself and it's always worked with keyboards.

[Brad Isaac]

That is fantastic news Kamikun. Plus getting a bonus port can almost make you forget the trauma of losing your last cradle! good for you!

[kamikun]

Originally Posted by jkendrick

Re the presentation pack. The video out doesn't seem to work in SE. It's important to remember the only two programs that worked with the PP was IA Presenter and IA Mirror that Toshiba supplied on the CD. Neither of these programs work in SE so it's probably [best to] wait for the SE version. Unfortunately, IA was bought by someone who's name escapes me at the moment and they will not sell s/w to the public in the future. That means future versions are not likely. I only bought the PPack for the USB port myself and it's always worked with keyboards.

Your honor, I would like to present this as Exhibit C in the case against Toshiba having some sort of coherent marketing or product plan. To go to the trouble of actually producing a piece of hardware and then getting caught flatfooted by not only an OS upgrade (which should have impacted the video out functions to a negligible degree) but also by the abandonment of a third-party software developer is the height of ill-preparedness. IMHO
As a corporation you now have an orphaned hardware accessory for your top-line PDA that was released 7 months ago. Those who have bought it in the past and now can't make use of it should be torqued. And, this is the icing, Toshiba is still selling that device over at their site. I mean what the fiddly frump?
No wonder the US site isn't offering the OS upgrade... it's incompatible with product currently on the shelf. Why isn't Toshiba getting developers to write apps for the presentation pack? Why doesn't Toshiba make the control information for using the pack open source so there might be several PP apps in the mix? Because they put this (admittedly fine) PDA and its limited accessory set on the market with little thought about the direction of the company, the product or the needs of consumers. It's foolishness like this that got Sony beat down and ran Casio from the market.

[jkendrick]

Not a a defense for Toshiba necessarily but I don't believe Toshiba is selling e800s with SE installed so it's not a surprise they would still be selling the presentation pack which works with all devices being sold today.
Right?