1st day with HP360lx

First day working on and setting up my Ebay purchased HP360lx, which thankfully came with the necessary accessories. It did need the back-up battery replaced - which fortunately is easy to do (especially when you have packages of 19 of these batteries on hand).

First steps - I synched. First discovery, you have to have good double AA batteries in the unit - or when you remove the unit from the cradle and the electricity - you lose all of what you had just synched. Back to square one.

Next steps - after putting in the two double AA alkaline batteries. Installed the CE Service Pack 1 and then the HPC Network Service pack. Success.

So far so good, I think.

Next - on my laptop I took all the SH3 files I collected, installed a couple on the device through activesync on the cable - the rest I put on a 128mb CF card which I had freshly formatted on the laptop.

Next problem - I have what I want on the card, including MP3 files because I had installed XAUDIO MP player on the unit ...

BUT the unit would not accept the card. A couple of splash screens came up saying that the card was not formatted for the unit. So the palmtop is different from the PocketPC. I can scandisk, defrag, and format my CF card for my PocketPC Jornada on the Windows 98 laptop and even move files on it and move files around ... but it seems NOT with the HP360lx.

I put the CF card back into the laptop - cut and pasted all the files and MP3s into a directory of their own - and then returned the emptied card to the HP360lx. The HP360lx did not recognize the card. So the card goes back in the laptop and I copy the files back on the card. Take it back to the HP360lx and the same splash screens come up and I click okay for it to format the card for the device - and in the process it destroyed all the files on the card.

So from the laptop directory with a copy of the files, I'm going now through the slow process of transferring the files back onto the card through ActiveSync.

The HP360lx is smaller than the Mobilepro. Syching through the cradle is okay. But to reset the device, you have to remove it from the cable and open up the cover to the backup battery to find the reset red button. Also, the cradle covers up the CF card slot.

But given this situation with getting the device to recognize the CF card, it is a good thing I do have the serial cradle.

It has a nice backlight button - but how do you adjust the brightness and contrast???

Contrast is adjusted by holding down the ALT key and pressing the < or > keys. There is no brightness adjustment.

Rick

Edited by Richard Plume 2006-08-17 5:12 PM

Well it would destroy all the files on the card, you told it to format it
You need to format the card as FAT16 with the default cluster sizes on the PC in order for it to be readable properly under CE 2.00. If it is FAT32 or an abnormal cluster size, or contains a FAT error (chkdsk it) CE will present you with the format dialogue.

The cradle covering the slots always was/is a problem for me too, though having started out with a 320LX back in the day, I am hardened to the positioning of the reset button - if you look here, you'll see I even drew it on one of the first articles that went onto ce320: http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/h/0003.asp

As with Rick on the contrast. There are a fair few keys dotted about that keyboard, there are a few listed here: http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/p/0004.asp

The Month-at-a-glance update is worth having: http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/s/0016.asp

sorry, how did you have the unit hard reset? if you have a good backup battery in it, it won't lose data, i know, i have the clone of the 360lx, and didn't have AA's in it (still don't), only a backup battery and the ac adapter and could always carry it to another room, without losing any data!

serial cradle, what's the use of it, you can connect the serial cable without one, and the ac adapter too.

I certainly have that same reset problem with my Velo1. If I'm changing AAs, the Velo has to be plugged in a/c-wise. At least with mine, the backup battery can't hold its own--it needs at least a minimal charge from AAs (though occasionally, I can get away with it). I do not have this dilemma with either my Sharp Mobilon 4100 or my J-720.

Jake

i've never had this problem with any of my units... are you using quality backup batteries?

The power properties on my HP360lx says the backup battery is good. I don't want to try that again - with removing the unit from electricity with no or bad AA batteries. So - who knows!

My Velo1 does, too, and I'm using the same batteries in my Mobilon. But it's an interesting idea, to consider that the batteries themselves may be to blame...

Jake

I've never had that problem either. So long as the backup cells are primed. I often experience problems with the 300 series in cell replacement if the coin cell is not coping properly.

The most reliable cells are unfortunately alkaline AA's, you need very good rechargables in order to get great battery life from it. I've never benchmarked how the white BL of the 360 impacts performandce over the green BL of the 320/340 - if there is indeed any. It could make for an interesting experiment.

i would gladly benchmark but i still cannot put AA's into my MC16 (360LX). just not going to risk it
so all i can do is the 320LX benchmarking someone else will have to do the 360LX.

That would be an unfair test as you would want to use the same cells.

More problems, I went to do a soft reset, and somehow it did a hard reset. Back to square one.

But in the midst of doing one install, there suddenly appeared a problem with the serial connection. Now I can't get the device, in the cradle, to connect up to Activesync. I tried all night, then gave up and went to bed. I kept disconnecting everything and then reconnecting, and even restarting the laptop. The serial port at the back of my laptop would be making noises.

Activesync just worked with synching to my pocket Jornada on USB.

Is your laptop equipped with an IrDA port that you can use in substitution with the Serial Port?

Please ensure that your H/PC is set to 19,200 bps and you have NOT altered the device manager port speeds on the host.

I am right now working on my Hitachi Eplate through the serial port on the laptop and it is working fine. I will check the baud rate on the HP360lx.

2nd day with HP360lx - innumerable problems.

1) the cradle when connected to the serial connection with the laptop is still making a noise when I attempt to synch. What had happened is when I was synching a tremendous load before, the laptop had crashed. But the serial connection has since (precisely yesterday) worked alright with both my Hitachi Eplate and my NEC MobilePro 790 - both of which I backed up yesterday through the serial port connection on the laptop and ActiveSync.

2) Infrared doesn't appear to be working. This is a recently acquired laptop and I never tried the infrared before. It is in an awkward position on the right hand side of the laptop, so when I attempt to synch with the HP360lx the HP360lx had to go backwards. I changed the Communications setting on the HP360lx to infrared. Turned on the infrared on the laptop to be able to receive - turned on activesync on the HP360lx to connect. Would not connect.

3) took the CF card that had been formatted to 16-bit on the HP360lx and put it in the laptop - but the laptop could not read it. Made the mistake of reformatting the card - it is back to 32 bit (and working fine in the laptop). Put it in the 360lx - it would not format there, instead an error message came up.

I need to find out how to format the CF card to 16-bit on the laptop and be able to just move the cab files onto it while on the laptop.