As some of you know, I'm a sucker for PDA's. They would let you be productive on the go, I could write texts, e-mails, read rss feeds, play games and so much more on a small device that you could carry around in your pocket. Seems very mundane now that everyone has a smartphone but in the 90's and early 00's, this was the bee's knees!
I'm always on the hunt for PDA's, especially when they run Palm OS, one of the first line of devices that I learned to develop software for.
I came across a local auction listing advertising a non-tested Palm Zire 72s for only €5, which I even haggled down to €3.
In my collection I already have a Zire 71 that I actually bought myself in the early 00's, which was simply an amazing device for it's time, the only downside was a disappointing VGA 0.3MP camera.
The Zire 72 however, sports a whopping 1.2MP camera, I'm looking forward to trying out the camera over the next days.
As fancy as the Special Edition sounds, it just means it's silver instead of blue. Both the Zire 72 and Zire 72s are identical in all other aspects (even in price, original retail $299).
Here's the highlights of what this PDA was advertised for:
- Take pictures. Capture video. Share life.
- Enjoy your music. (Oh yes this thing plays MP3's and has an SD card slot)
- Word, Excel, PDF and Outlook sync
- Wireless networking over Bluetooth!
- Record voice memos
Wayback machine archived product page of the Palm Zire 72Built-In Wireless: Bluetooth 1.1 Compliance
Processor: Intel PXA270 at 312 MHz with Intel XScale Technology
Memory: 32MB RAM (24 MB actual storage capacity)
Battery: 950mAh rechargeable Lithium Ion
Operating System: Palm OS v5.2.8
Weight: 4.8 oz. / 136 grams
Display: 320×320 Transflective TFT color touchscreen with 16-Bit (65K) Color
Expansion: SD, SDIO and MultiMediaCard support via built-in expansion card slot.
Audio: Stereo audio headset compatible via 3.5mm stereo audio jack
Camera: 1280×960 (maximum resolution), video: 320×240 (maximum resolution)
Wikipedia page of the Palm Zire 72When people say non-tested, it means broken, plain and simple. (But there are always exceptions, I got a Palm Tungsten T3 for €8 because the seller wasn't able to power it on due to lack of a proprietary cable)
This time though, the unit arrived, I plugged it in to let it charge and a few hours later when pressing the power button it would succumb to a boot loop: showing the Palm logo, resetting, showing the logo, resetting and so on.
Seems to be a common problem with these units where the battery just fails after some time, I was actually able to source a brand new battery for it, which costed me around €11, more than triple the price of what I payed for the unit. The new battery even increases the capacity to 1100mAh from the original 950mAh.
Reconnect the ribbon cable for the screen and put it all back together again.
A device released 20 years ago, ready to have been put in the electronics recycle bin, now restored to it's former glory.
If you like this, you might want to read my other PDA related posts:
📱 Return to the PDA (Palm OS, Gemini, Offline) Retro mail callYou can get in touch through Mastodon:
@rxpz@social.linux.pizzaThe Resurrection Ritual: Breathing Life into the 20 year old PDA (Palm Zire 72s) was published on 2024-05-23
