Suddenly I have three Jornada lol. What to do now?

I've absolutely loved the idea of going back to a Jornada like device (I had played around with a couple a long long time ago and had been missing it) and been wanting an offline personal life organizer of some sort. So I ended up snagging a Jornada 690 with extended battery in great shape and have been having fun tinkering with it. Was working on designing a simple 3d printable design that could make it a lot easier for ppl to have a serial adapter for the jornada series of hardwares without spending $$$ on just a sync cable (that project is on a minor hold due to issues with the 3d printer, ended up upgrading some parts on it so dialing it in before going back to that project). Anyway, I had also misunderstood just how different SH3 and ARM based Jornada would be regarding software options and whatnot. So I decided to order a jornada 720 off ebay that have the hallmark of failing CCFL backlighting. Perfect excuse to attempt that LED backlighting rebuild for that 720! I also stumbled on a pretty pristine 680 with full accessory set that I managed to *just* win for only $100 lol. It literally could not have been more pristine unless it were still sealed inside the box. Oh yeah! that ebay listing I won, also had all the original packaging for it haha. I'm real excited to have those two new jornada to arrive home so I can really use it a lot. (I wonder if some of y'all were watching that listing and hoping to snag it cheaper? )

Anyway, I guess one of the big thing I'm asking about here is that I'm a little lost slash overwhelmed with exactly what I could do with all this. I like the idea of upgrading the 720 ram card with the 728 ram card (I personally far prefers the look of the 720 over the 728 tbh). I'm hoping to fix up the backlighting with an even better LED backlight setup than that one old thread here on the forum. Intending to use the 720 as my main organizer/journaling system with some light retro gaming. I'm kinda curious to see if there are other 'mods' I could do with these systems? I'm aware of Linux for these systems and honestly, I'm not good at these thing so I'll pass. At least for now. I do not plan to directly sync my jornada with my pc. Last time I tried to get some mobile sync program running on my win 11 pc (even tho the site said it was absolutely possible), it completely crashed my pc and I ended up having to go to a week old restore to even get it to boot into windows. So I'm most likely just going to be using my CF reader on my pc and transfer files that way.

I'm going to have a ton of fun with all this! And hopefully I'll make some decent videos of how to do the backlight swap! Hell, I even have two miniDV camcorder (borderline professional quality actually!) that I'm intending to start using for YouTube for these sort of thing (being deaf, these will likely be captioned and easily pauseable with clear information on screen and all that)

Any fun suggestions, I would absolutely appreciate! Even far out there ideas such as this one random thought I had, find a RC controller hardware that I could slot into the PC card slot and use the 720 to control a fairyweight combat robot that I'm designing

Edited by WillowDeaf 2023-08-30 3:36 AM

Definitely do the 728 upgrade. Might want to replace the battery cells and probably the little rubber feet on the bottom of the batteries if you care.

If you haven't disassembled one before, I'll mention one gotcha- there's a screw inside the CF slot. I would also highly recommend C:Amie's jornada disassembly video.
https://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/200208/disassembling_the_hp_jornada_710_720_and_728

Other ideas for fun things to do with it:
-mobile media station (tcpmp, winampaq)
-retro DOS box
-connect to old BBS's using one of these: rs232 serial wifi modem
-play some classic solitaire, freecell, hearts, etc
-use it to brainstorm ideas using pocket mindmap
-use it to locate your favorite objects in space (mine is M44
-do calculations on an hp48 emulator

...plenty more

Edit: I was misremembering..on the 680 there's a screw under the label, on the 720 I believe it's just the one in the CF compartment that you have to be aware of

Edited by thenzero 2023-08-30 4:45 AM

Ooo! That serial wifi modem looks awesome! Definetely interested in that!

As for the 728 upgrade, my biggest question is how to find these? Do I have to wait for cheapo broken 728 and hope that they have an untouched ram card still in there? I couldn't really find out anything googling other than a few references to this specific upgrade.

the classic games, yeah, I'm already doing that with my 690 haha. I'm liking Monster Tower on it quite a bit tbh

brainstorm ideas, that's exactly one of the reason why I wanted this! Just needed a mobile typing platform that's completely offline (unless I add that serial wifi dongle lol)

how would one locate stellar objects with the jornada?

Oh yeah! I've forgotten about that battery upgrade. I was considering that but will wait and see how well the like new battery from today's ebay win performs first. I'm especially curious about the potential battery saving from switching to LED backlight.

HP48 emulator is a lil funny considering I kinda enjoy collecting some of the not basic calculators haha. Think TI-81, 84, cx, etc...

And yeah! I'm definitely going to be watching videos on how to safely disassemble the 720 Here's a picture of the current status of that 720 backlight. Apparently as the CCFL backlighting fails, it can turn pinker and have a hard time to up the brightness. This is at the maximum brightness.

The sky and Leo's void are both good planetarium programs.

I have a few old TI calculators as well- 82, 89, and 92.

Looking forward to hearing about your backlight mod. My jornadas aren't that dim but the power savings and increased brightness still make that an attractive prospect.

Oh, on the 728 ROM, I just bought one off ebay:

oh thank you for the link! Used the product number to look it up and suddenly there's a ton. Gonna order one asap!

Er, which part number are you using there? Be careful because the "HP F1816-80060" brings up results for both 64MB and 32MB variants...as far as I can see there is only the one listing for the 64MB version on eBay.

Edited by thenzero 2023-08-30 10:35 PM

Ah yeah lol. I realized that right before ordering and fixed it. So I indeed ordered the 64 mb one from your link. Thanks again for the link!

oh good!

Congrats on your Jornadas!

As for RAM upgrade, there's also a 128MB option via one of our esteemed members here.

That's how I upgraded the 720 I had.

He gives you a credit if you send him back your original RAM card after you do the upgrade.

Stefan, '_dev-null' is your man......

If you're interested, PM him to check if he has one available.




Mark

I didn't realize he was doing that. Does the 128 register in WinCE?

Haven't had my Jornada for some time, but as I recall, think so.

Mark

Hmm, my memory may be failing me but I thought it registers as 128MB in certain BSD/*Nix installations if the correct flag is enabled, but I thought CE can only recognize up to 32 or 64.

Don't quote me, I was having trouble finding the exact answer though.

That may be true, torch, best bet is to ask Stefan....

I was initially interested in that 128mb option too haha. But had the same thought as Torch and since I kind of want to stay with the original WinCE, I decided that 64 is more than good enough for me I did some minor testing of performance on the 720 I have now and found it to be more than fast enough for my need just need to fix up the display on the thing and at the same time, slap on that 64mb module that I have now. Waiting for my full 680 set to arrive tomorrow and have some camera setup figured out. So I can create a more updated Jornada teardown video. At least in 1080p lol.