We have been dealing with complaints from Palm V owners about the operation
of our Clock III product. One of the two issues is a failure of the device
to wake up for alarms (Clock III uses the standard PalmOS calls for this),
and the other is that, once they start the Stopwatch function, they can't
get it to stop (Clock III looks for a hardware keypress to stop the
Stopwatch).
We have found that users who have a problem with Clock III also cannot get
their units to wake up for Datebook alarms. There is apparently something
wrong with certain Palm V units that causes them to fail to send the
sysAppLaunchCmdAlarmTriggered message to an application when an alarm comes
due and to fail to send the keyDownEvent message to the forground
application when a hardware key is pressed.
Since we were unable to duplicate the problem on our Palm V, and 3Com
couldn't duplicate it either, we sent one of our customers a new Palm V and
had him return his malfunctioning one to us without removing anything from
it. Upon arrival, it behaved as described - the Stopwatch function in Clock
III would no shut off, pressing an application hardware key from any of the
other Clock III screens would not stop Clock III and launch the appropriate
built-in application, and the device would not wake up for Datebook alarms.
Now, here's the weird part. We did exactly two things. We did a HotSync
with the Palm V on our PC, and we deleted the customer's security password.
The problems went away. The device now behaves normally.
Any further action on the security password front - re-assigning the
password, etc. - failed to cause the problems to re-appear, which leads us
to believe that the miracle cure is somehow related to the HotSync. The
HotSync log shows nothing special - just the usual "OK Date Book", etc., no
installs of updates and such.
One other customer called 3Com about the Datebook alarm problem, and was
instructed to do a hard reset. He did, and it also cured both the Datebook
and the Clock III problems.
David Fedor of Palm was initially very responsive and helpful, but he has
failed to respond to our emails for the last week and a half. He told us
that there was no difference between the ROMs in any of the production Palm
Vs.
Any further information from other developers would be greatly appreciated.
- James Einolf
Little Wing Software Development
>Dear Palm (Bob, David, Roger, et al.),
>
>I've spent some time prowling through the newsgroups and I've noticed a
>great many postings by people with Vs having "trouble" getting alarms to
>wake their V up. Far fewer posts (any?) from folks with IIIx devices.
>
>There were many posts from folks unable to get DateBook to sound an alarm.
>
>At first, I assumed that folks were just getting used to the devices,
>putting stuff on top of the buttons when the alarm went off, loading flakey
>software. But now I'm seeing posts by folks not using 3rd party clock
>software or Hackmaster complaining too.
>
>The standard reply to these folks:
>
>- reset your Palm.
>- make sure you still have a system_midi_sound.pdb file on your Palm. If
>not, reload it.
>- hard reset your Palm.
>
>Is there some technical issue with the V that would prevent alarms from
>sounding? Or is there some other explanation for the rash of complaints?
>
>Is Palm's Engineering investigating this? If so, is a patch imminent (I
>can already guess that "there is no announcement at this time." ;-))?
>
>Or is this to be dismissed as another Usenet lynching?
>
>Cheers,
>
>--
>Andrew Ball
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
