- Pilot 1000
The Palm Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 were early Palm PDAs produced by
Palm, Inc. (then a subsidiary ofU.S. Robotics ). It was introduced in March of1996 .The Pilot uses a Motorola 68328 processor at 16 MHz, and had 128 Kb (Pilot 1000) or 512 Kb (Pilot 5000) built in memory.
The PDA has a plastic case (various colors). Its dimensions are 120x80x18 mm and weight is 160 grams. The Pilot has a 160x160 pixel monochrome
LCD tactile panel, with a "Graffiti input zone" presented in the bottom third of the screen. Underneath the screen sits a green on/off button, four applications buttons (Date Book, Address Book, To Do List, and Memo Pad) and two scroll buttons. At left, contrast control. At right top, stylus slot. On the back of the device there is a Memory Slot door, Reset button, battery compartment (held two AAA batteries) and Serial Port (for use with the PalmPilot Cradle).Memory is kept in a "memory slot" under a plastic cover at the back top of the PDA. A 512 Kb ROM chip stores the
Palm OS 1.0 and resident applications. RAM is available in 128 Kb, 512 Kb or 1 Mb; with aPalmPilot Professional memory card, up to 2 Mb of RAM. Hardware limit is 12 Mb ofRAM and 4 Mb of ROM.After a calibration test presented during the initial power up, the Pilot would boot and be ready for use and synchronization. Connecting and synchronizing the PDA was initially done through a utility called PalmPilot Desktop. For the PC, PalmPilot Desktop was distributed either on 3½ inch disk or on
CD-ROM (according to an original floppy disk set, v1.0 was forWindows 95 and included a tutorial disk and twowin32s disks forWindows 3.1 ; v2.0 was for Windows 95 andWindows NT ). A version of PalmPilot Desktop (renamed toPalm Desktop ) now exists for use with the Mac platform and open source support exists for use onLinux distributions (one of the preferred development platforms for Palm OS), as well.Lawsuits
:"Main Article: Palm OS Legal Issues.Palm, Inc. was sued by the Pilot pen company for using the name "Pilot". Palm was later involved in a legal battle where
Xerox filed suit for its "unistroke" patent.References
* [http://www.palm.com/us/support/handbooks/palmpilothb.pdf 3Com Palm Pilot Hardware Book] (PDF)
* [http://www.palm.com/us/support/handbooks/mac_desk_ENG.pdf 3Com Mac Desktop Handbook] (PDF)ee also
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Palm (PDA) External links
* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1996_Jan_30/ai_17881069 Demo 96 - US Robotics Intros Pilot PDA]
* [http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8493/pilot-1000-retrospective Palm Pilot 1000 Retrospective (from 2006)]
* [http://www.massena.com/darrin/pilot/luiz/item5.htm Memory Modules]
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