Have no clue about PDAs, Pocket PCs etc. but I need to find out how they interface with other equipment using a standard RS232 (“COM Port”) connection, i.e. what hardware interface do the provide.
As well does anyone have experience in running English application on a Chinese based (Trad. Chinese OS) PDA? Can this work?
Any feedback appreciated.
Rascal, they hardly use RS232 any more. They may still offer the opportunity to do so, but usually it’s USB now. Otherwise there is always (well, almost) IrDA and sometimes BT…
I don’t know about English applications on a Chinese OS, but they run just fine on my Japanese PalmOS 4.1 and I would guess the difference should not be too big…
But you can get e.g. PCMICA adapters to Sub-D9 pin connectors, or … ?
The equipment I want to interface to comes with a proprietary data cable that terminates into a Sub-D9 connector and the protocol is RS232, thus I am probably limited in my options, no IrDA or BT available.
It’s hard to say much without more details.
I know for a fact that with Palm OS at least, the localized versions of the OS are just a thin layer of stuff on top of the real OS and don’t interfere with most applications (those that play nice with the Big5 character set at least).
There are PCMCIA cards that dangle out to D9 connectors - I’m not sure what Sub-D9 is but if it’s not the standard little VGA looking ones, you can likely just use an adaptor.
If you are dealing with some sort of iNote or something like that, all bets are off. At a guess they can be made to run English based code, but what applications would there be? Supposedly they are based on Palm’s platform, but I have never been eager to try and test the theory, despite the attractive prices.