Electronic Organisers...

[Last updated 24th May 2024]

Or should that be "Organizers"(1) or "Personal Organizers"(2), or "PDAs"(3)?

1 - Because I'm British (even though the devices in question may have Americanized labelling).
2 - "Personal organizers" might mistakenly refer to the paper versions, such as the Filofax.
3 - PDAs, or Personal Digital Assistants are more capable devices, such as a Compaq iPaq, or a Psion.

Electronic organisers were in in the 1990s and being a youth of the 90s, and British, the Argos catalogue was my staple for impending birthdays and Christmases. My siblings and I would eagerly await the bi-annual release of a new catalogue so we could start dreaming of and listing all the things we'd like to have, not always from the children's toys sections, but anything from furniture for our future homes, to electronics and gadgetry.

I wanted an electronic organiser; they looked cool, and with memory capacity increasing year on year I wanted a decent one...

The RadioShack 128K:

What I ended up with was a 128K RadioShack model from a Tandy shop; I think it must have seemed like a good deal at £49.99 when that would only buy you a 64K organiser from Argos.

I filled it with the names and addresses of friends and relatives, notes, and weekly schedulings of what I wanted to watch on TV by scouring through the Radio Times (another British stable, a TV guide). This was a practice I adopted after staying with my grandparents who would take the time to highlight what they each wanted to watch in their TV guide; but back at home I had to share our Radio Times with three siblings, and my parents, so instead I would borrow it for half an hour (or however long it took), schedule in all what I wanted into my Organizer, and return the guide back to my mum, until the next one arrived the following week. Eventually I did actually fill my 128K Organizer, because I never deleted events after the fact, and there was no "purge" option (that I can recall).

Really that's all I ever used it for. I filled it, and couldn't bring myself to reset it, by probing the little hole on the back (something annoying kids would do to other gadgets at school...) Eventually the batteries ran out (3 x CR2032 I believe) and by that point the cost of those batteries just didn't seem worth it; the device was already out of date and the novelty had worn off. At some point I dismantled the thing, curious about how it looked inside, and it never went back together, so it went in the bin. One thing I didn't like about this particular organiser was that the hinged cover didn't fold all the way back, like to double back underneath itself like others could, and it seemed like the little plastic lugs that formed the hinge could be easily snapped; I was careful with it though and this surprisingly never happened.

I have fond memories of such things, and times, as you can probably tell; I wish I had just boxed it away for the next 20 years, like I should have done with everything else I ever owned and ultimately chucked or otherwise parted with.

Really the device was a gimmick, just as I think much of tech is. There's a lot of these kinds of organisers available for cheap on ebay.

The Compaq iPAQ:

I recently acquired a Compaq iPAQ H3970 PDA selling for what seemed like a good price. It was deemed to be virtually brand new and complete in its original box that was just a bit worn.

However, as I should perhaps have expected, the battery was not functioning. Seemingly it was too old and had been left for too long with no charge. The seller agreed to partially refund me when I pointed this out and I hoped I might be able to find a replacement battery for it...

Sadly, nowhere seemed to have the right battery. It's a Li-Polymer 3.7V but has a proprietary piece of circuitry attached, likely for power/charging/battery regulation.

My Options:

 - perhaps I can coax some charge into the battery (this is quite risky and should be done with care)
 - find a similar battery pack and transfer the necessary circuitry

I also picked up a keyboard dock that is pretty neat as the keypad retracts [later found to be faulty].

[Some time later...]

I sourced a Li-Polimer 3.7V battery of a size that would fit the space occupied by the original battery (which needed some heat to remove). However, rather than remove the charging circuit from the original battery (sorry I can't find a picture of this), I piggy-backed the new one in its place, and surprisingly this worked. I now had a fully functioning iPAQ.

During the course of some months I intended to use the iPAQ for daily scheduling and other tasks, I was keen to dabble in the OS, but really I simply found myself playing endless rounds of Solitaire to the point the screen was getting marked by the stylus from this act alone (the top left corner where you tap the stack of cards, and 'swipe' marks were now noticeable on the display), so I elected to list the device on ebay.

[April 2024] "Sadly" my iPAQ got sold. I'm sad that I never really used it as I had intended, but I was seeing how prolonged use was going to add to the wear of the screen which was pristine when I received it.

3Com PalmV:

I now have before me [May 2024] a 3Com PalmV (below). While with the Compaq iPAQ I mostly only played solitaire on it, before selling it on, the PalmV I currently use like the RadioShack Organizer; I schedule in some things and maintain a To Do list, both things I find an actual paper organiser and simple little notebook to be far more capable, cheaper, and most notably, far quicker to deal with - I can flick through pages at ease and scribble things in, or cross stuff out in seconds - none of this tap-tap-tapping away on an undersized little keyboard or onscreen with a stylus. Besides a gadget perhaps having a search function, it is generally more convenient to flick through actual pages to find something, the brain recalling a vague scribble and/or the position on a page. But alas, I'm still drawn to the electronic counterparts. Most people now use their mobile/cell phones in place of such gadgetry, while I prefer my not-a-Filofax and dumb-phone.

You'll notice the wires protruding from the side of the PalmV above. Thanks because it came to me not working; the battery was long since flat and I had no dock to even attempt to charge it*. I found a Youtube video showing how one guy had removed the metal back of his PalmV; it required a hairdryer and pry tools. Using my heatgun I attempted the same, but it took quite a bit more effort than was shown in that video due to the adhesive used to glue the back on. I think another solution might be to instead use WD-40 as a solvent. Hopefully I haven't bent the rear cover for when it comes to putting that back on.

Anyway, I didn't have a direct replacement for the battery, but at this stage I just wanted to test the device. It just so happened that I had been given a few old satnavs to test. One of them was working but required maps to be purchased for it which just wasn't worth it so I dismantled it to retrieve its battery. It was a larger battery, but looked like it could be used, being the correct voltage (3.7V). The plug was different, it had three wires, but I was able to slip out the little metal contacts from the plastic plugs and swap things over (hence the stray wires, they're from the old battery).

The setup process first involves calibrating the touch screen with the stylus (something that needs to be re-done every once in a while), and then you get a tutorial on writing using the Palm's "Graffiti". It's a quirky input method which on the Palm has to be inputted into the bottom section of the screen and can vary with other devices that have a similar feature, so if you learn one, you might struggle on another - I'm still getting to grips with it. You can tap the bottom left of the box to call up the onscreen keyboard although somewhat annoyingly you can't use both methods at the same time and have to close the keyboard to input in the box again.

*I will have the issue of the replacement battery running out and having no way of recharging it in the device, although I've been using it for a couple of weeks and it's still above 75%. Peter's Pilot Pages shares the pin-outs for the dock, so I could potentially rig something up to charge the device without having a proper dock.