OT-Repurposing PDAs

[Christopher Browne]

On 8/26/07, matt-oC+CK0giAiYdmIl+iVs3AywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org <matt-oC+CK0giAiYdmIl+iVs3AywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As part of my effort to get rid of old clutter, I've come across a
> couple of dead PDAs.  I hate the idea of them going to waste, but I
> have a working PDA solution right now, so I'd like to repurpose them.
> Unfortunately, I appear to have a case of Maker's Block, so I'd
> appreciate any suggestions for what I could use the following for
> instead of as a PDA:
>
> -Palm M130 (Screen is signifigantly scratched, internal battery is shot)
> -Cassiopeia (Can't remember which model I have, but I think it's the
> older one; also, I think I got rid of the dock)
> -Sharp EL-6890 (256kb Electronic organizer, battery dead)
> -Sharp ZQ-3000 (32 kb Electronic organizer, battery dead)

These sorts of things are very much purpose-built; repurposing them to
new applications is highly unlikely to be worthwhile.

- Getting them to function as what they were designed to be is likely
to cost more than they did (e.g. - replacing batteries that are likely
no longer manufactured for a PDA that is no longer manufactured).

- Turning them into an "embedded platform" is likely also to be quite
unsuitable; if you need something for embedding, you're much better
off buying a board with either an IA-32 or xScale processor new that
actually satisfies the needs.

Generally speaking, computer hardware is now *so* cheap that it is
virtually impossible for fixing it to be of more monetary value than
just buying a new one.  New disk drives are spectacularly cheaper, per
GB, than earlier generations.  Likewise RAM chips.  Likewise Flash
storage.

Time being money, at some level, if it takes more than a couple hours
to "repurpose" one of these PDAs, you're *way* better off buying new
hardware unless some very peculiar circumstances are true, where
somehow, your time is, strangely, NOT of any value to you.

It's something of a shame that this hardware is so obsolete that it's
essentially worthless.  Except when you consider that part of the
reason for that is that newer, spectacularly more powerful stuff is
now cheap.  Life's short enough that I decline to have too much regret
for this...
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
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