Connecting your PalmPilot to the SFU modem pool

The following describes how to connect your PalmPilot IIIxe to the SFU modem pool using the 33.6K PalmModem Connectivity Kit. I bought my Kit at London Drugs for $119 plus tax, but it's probably available elsewhere in the Lower Mainland. If you have other hardware, your milage may vary.

The Modem Kit comes with MultiMail Pro (version 2.26), which is not a bad email client. Another good (free) email client is MsgAgent. Both let you download your mail, read it offline, and then reconnect to send. For a web browser, I use AvantGo. Surfing the web is cool for about 3 minutes, and then the minutes get longer as the 33.6K modem effect sets in... plus you're looking at a 160 x 160 pixel display. The usually comfortable ergonomics of the Palm also suffer when there's another piece of hardware hanging off the end with a cable sticking out of it. All told, for those of us addicted to email, the Palm plus modem is a suitable fix if you can't get anything better while out of town, etc.

The hard part about getting this to work was figuring out the login script to the PPP gateway. Sorry that I don't have any neat screen captures, but I couldn't find a good, free utility to create them. If you know of one, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Follow these steps to configure your Palm:

  1. Tap Prefs
  2. Tap Network
    1. Service: SFU [or whatever you want to call it]
    2. User Name: [Your SFU ACS user ID]
    3. Password: -Prompt-
    4. Connection: Palm Modem US/Canada
    5. Phone: 291-5947 [or whatever number applies to you] Set up your calling card, etc. here as appropriate.
  3. Tap Details
    1. Connection type: PPP
    2. Idle timeout: 2 Minutes
    3. Query DNS: Yes
    4. IP address: Yes (Automatic)
  4. Tap Script
    1. Send CR
    2. Wait For: Login:
    3. Send User ID
    4. Send CR
    5. Wait For: Password:
    6. Send Password
    7. Send CR
    8. Delay: 5
    9. Send: ppp
    10. Send CR
    11. End

Connect your modem to the bottom of the Palm and plug it into a phone jack. You should now be able to connect. Let me know if you can't and I may be able to help.

Last updated June 23/01 Source: http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vi/pics.ht ml

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