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HP Jornada 820

smp

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2011
Messages
1,716
Location
Bedford, NH, USA
Hello all,

I recently had the opportunity to score an HP Jornada 820 on eBay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/162018462368?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

As I await its arrival, I am wondering if I will be able to use the USB port for a memory device, or perhaps even attaching a CDROM device. Here is what one description says:

"The Jornada comes with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port, a feature new to Windows CE in the H/PC Pro edition. Unfortunately, Microsoft only included a mouse driver for this port (for the Microsoft Intellimouse V3.0 USB, or a compatible mouse). You will need to look for additional drivers if you want to use the USB port for other peripherals."

This is consistent with most descriptions that I've found out on the Internet so far. I've also seen references to some sort of USB driver called USBclik or ClikUSB that some folks were able to obtain back in the early 2000s that supposedly opened up the capability of the Jornada 820's USB port to allow using USB memory sticks.

Does anyone here have any knowledge about this? Can anyone point me to where I might still be able to find USB drivers for Windows CE for H/PC Pro?

Thanks very much for listening.

smp
 
My main worries about this device would be the battery - I have two 820's, both are just gathering dust. The problem - once the main battery is dead, it is dead, and there is no way to revive it (many tried and failed). Even if you do replace cells in the battery, you can not use it - the carging circuit inside battery is designed, that once there is power disconnected (battery dead), it will never allow it to work, even with replaced cells.

Looks like the battery in your unit is very much alive, so it may not be a problem, at least for some time...

Say, why do you need this USB support? You can use large size CF cards with this device, and copy all the files you need. For other data, just sync with your computer with data transfer cable or infrared.
 
My main worries about this device would be the battery - I have two 820's, both are just gathering dust. The problem - once the main battery is dead, it is dead, and there is no way to revive it (many tried and failed). Even if you do replace cells in the battery, you can not use it - the carging circuit inside battery is designed, that once there is power disconnected (battery dead), it will never allow it to work, even with replaced cells.

Looks like the battery in your unit is very much alive, so it may not be a problem, at least for some time...

Say, why do you need this USB support? You can use large size CF cards with this device, and copy all the files you need. For other data, just sync with your computer with data transfer cable or infrared.

That reminds me of an old NEC laptop. They had a circuit board in the battery ("intelligent battery") that also included a little fuse which was very delicate. So in theory if any of the cells was dead the fuse would blow and prevent further charging. Obviously they were scared of cells exploding or burning from overcharge. The dumb thing was that this even happened when any (or all) cell was simply deeply discharged. So obviously even after replacing the cells it wouldn't work because of the blown fuse. For the NEC we just gave a s**t and bridged the fuse. That actually worked. I can imagine that the Jornada uses a similar system.
 
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Say, why do you need this USB support? You can use large size CF cards with this device, and copy all the files you need. For other data, just sync with your computer with data transfer cable or infrared.

Well... What I was initially worried about was that I have only one Compact Flash card (64 MB) and what if either the Jornada or my Mac do not want to handle it correctly? I was hoping for another method to transfer files back and forth. I have a few small USB memory sticks (<=1 GB) that I can use.

Anyway. I got the Jornada today, and at present, my fear is true. The Jornada recognizes the Compact Flash card and asks to initialize it. I say OK, and everything looks good. But, when I then try to read the Compact Flash card on my Mac, nothing shows up on my desktop, and the Disk Utility indicates that I have an unknown storage device that is all used up and no free space. If I initialize the Compact Flash card on my Mac with a FAT file system, then when I put it back into the Jornada, it is seen as not yet initialized again.

I'm not going to be able to transfer files from my Mac into the Jornada if the Jornada wants to initialize the Compact Flash card every time I plug it in...

Oh, well, off to do some more experimenting.

smp
 
My main worries about this device would be the battery -

Looks like the battery in your unit is very much alive, so it may not be a problem, at least for some time...

Yes, the battery seems to be in good shape right now. It came to me with 58% power, and I am charging it in the Jornada now. Hopefully, it will last me for a while.

Is the Jornada able to operate with a dead battery and the charger plugged in?

Thanks,
smp
 
Yes, the battery seems to be in good shape right now. It came to me with 58% power, and I am charging it in the Jornada now. Hopefully, it will last me for a while.

Is the Jornada able to operate with a dead battery and the charger plugged in?

Thanks,
smp

Yes, it will work, however, you will loose all portability, and you should never disconnect it from charger - it will start to drain backup battery, and when it's dead, you will loose all installed software on a Jornada itself (CF data will remain, of course).

As for software - you can easily use larger CF card on this device, it should work perfectly. (At least 1 GB works with no problems). As for file system itself, Jornada shouold recognize FAT32 file system with no problems. I never tried compatibility with Mac computer though - these computers were made to be synced with PC, not Mac. In your caese I would use any other PC, copy data there, and then copy via USB flash card reader to CF card to be used in Jornada.

If you do not have any PC yourself, you can at least find one to use for data transfer. One more possibility - damaged CF card itself - did you try to copy and read daa from it, at least on a Mac?
 
Yes, it will work, however, you will loose all portability, and you should never disconnect it from charger - it will start to drain backup battery, and when it's dead, you will loose all installed software on a Jornada itself (CF data will remain, of course).

Thanks. That's what I thought.

I have not looked at what power comes off of the charger unit. Might it be possible to construct a separate battery box of some sort to power the Jornada via the charger connection? Just a thought.

If you do not have any PC yourself, you can at least find one to use for data transfer. One more possibility - damaged CF card itself - did you try to copy and read daa from it, at least on a Mac?

Yes, I can initialize the CF as FAT, write and read back properly on the Mac. And, I can initialize, write and read back when the CF is installed in the Jornada. My only problem is that after the Jornada does its initialization, then the CF becomes unreadable on my Mac.

I suppose a different CF card might simply work. It's hard to tell with a sample of one.

I have a PC laptop that I use as a terminal for my other vintage machines, and I have an adapter to plug the CF card into so I can plug it into a USB port (that's what I've been using on my Mac). My next step will be to plug the CF card into that laptop PC and see if it will be able to read and write the Jornada initialized CF card. If that goes OK, then I'll be in business for getting files onto and off of the Jornada.
 
SMP, a good site for support on Windows CE devices like the Jornada 820 would be http://www.hpcfactor.com/

The 820 has both USB host and client, so should be able to read a thumb drive, though based on this thread, you'll need the Iomega Clik! driver first, which is available on the site. I used the same setup in an NEC MobilePro 880, and was able to recognize a 500 GB hard drive (though it needed to be formatted in FAT32).

As for the CF card, I'd definitely try it in a Windows machine, and see if there are any issues. I've used 4 GB in my MobilePro, and a 2 GB CF card in my older HP 620LX with the CE 2.11 (HPC Pro) upgrade without issue.
 
SMP, a good site for support on Windows CE devices like the Jornada 820 would be http://www.hpcfactor.com/

Thanks very much for the pointer.

As for the CF card, I'd definitely try it in a Windows machine, and see if there are any issues. I've used 4 GB in my MobilePro, and a 2 GB CF card in my older HP 620LX with the CE 2.11 (HPC Pro) upgrade without issue.

Yes, I tried the CF card in my laptop PC this evening. The PC recognized a memory device being plugged in, but then reported it as unusable. Sigh.

So, I have only one CF card and it's recognized by each of my machines but only to the point that each wants to initialize it, then after the initialization by either the Mac or PC, the Jornada will not want to use it until it initialized it again. Is this some sort of fault in the CF card, do you think? The CF card is not a name brand. Perhaps I need to spend for a good San Disk CF card?

Your thoughts are welcome.

smp
 
If you have installed the ClikZip driver, it should allow you to attach a newer card reader to the USB port. Can the CF card be read in an external reader after being formatted by PC?

I know there were some changes to the Compact Flash structure such that not all cards work with all readers.
 
That reminds me of an old NEC laptop. They had a circuit board in the battery ("intelligent battery") that also included a little fuse which was very delicate. So in theory if any of the cells was dead the fuse would blow and prevent further charging. Obviously they were scared of cells exploding or burning from overcharge. The dumb thing was that this even happened when any (or all) cell was simply deeply discharged. So obviously even after replacing the cells it wouldn't work because of the blown fuse. For the NEC we just gave a s**t and bridged the fuse. That actually worked. I can imagine that the Jornada uses a similar system.

Well, I opened the case of Jornada 820 battery. Here you can see the charging circuit, and four batteries, two of them leaking and heavily damaged. An interesting note - batteries with "Sony Energytec" label look fine and even have some voltage left. Batteries with plain "G" label are completely wasted. An interesting approach itself, to use batteries from different manufacturers in one battery case...

-1813856.sized.jpg


That is interesting, I thought to myself, and decided to open another battery pack. On opening I was greeted with a strong chemical smell, and there was a reason for it. This time all four cells were "G" labeled, all four heavily leaked and dead, even charging circuit is damaged.

-1813859.sized.jpg


What really surprises me is the condition of the batteries - I have seen much older one's in much better shape inside. I think, the HP engineers knew what they were doing after all. Made very smart charging system to compensate for crappy batteries they put inside, to prevent fires, explosions and possible lawsuits. My guess is that all currently working Jornada 820 batteries were made by Sony...

To think about the time when unit was made, it is easy to understand why someone would make them with cheaper parts. This was not a real PC, this was not even an ultraportable laptop. It was made for people, who could not really afford to purchase "normal laptop", even ultraportable ones were available at the end of 90-ties. However, the battery pack quality is one of the worst I have seen, not really good for a respectable computer manufacturer.
 
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If you have installed the ClikZip driver, it should allow you to attach a newer card reader to the USB port. Can the CF card be read in an external reader after being formatted by PC?

I know there were some changes to the Compact Flash structure such that not all cards work with all readers.

Hi again,

My problem is how to get the CAB file into my Jornada. I thought that this one 64MB CF card that I have would do the trick, but since every machine I have wants to initialize it first, and will not work with one of the other machine's initialization, I cannot get the CAB file into my Jornada in the first place.

If I have to go and purchase a new CF card, I may as well go for a 512MB one from San Disk for something like $15. Of course, with that, I probably will no longer need to use the USB port for anything.

Thanks again for yout attention and advice!

smp
 
Well, I opened the case of Jornada 820 battery. Here you can see the charging circuit, and four batteries, two of them leaking and heavily damaged. An interesting note - batteries with "Sony Energytec" label look fine and even have some voltage left. Batteries with plain "G" label are completely wasted. An interesting approach itself, to use batteries from different manufacturers in one battery case...

<...snip...>

That is interesting, I thought to myself, and decided to open another battery pack. On opening I was greeted with a strong chemical smell, and there was a reason for it. This time all four cells were "G" labeled, all four heavily leaked and dead, even charging circuit is damaged.

<...snip...>

What really surprises me is the condition of the batteries - I have seen much older one's in much better shape inside. I think, the HP engineers knew what they were doing after all. Made very smart charging system to compensate for crappy batteries they put inside, to prevent fires, explosions and possible lawsuits. My guess is that all currently working Jornada 820 batteries were made by Sony...

To think about the time when unit was made, it is easy to understand why someone would make them with cheaper parts. This was not a real PC, this was not even an ultraportable laptop. It was made for people, who could not really afford to purchase "normal laptop", even ultraportable ones were available at the end of 90-ties. However, the battery pack quality is one of the worst I have seen, not really good for a respectable computer manufacturer.

WHEW! Thanks very much for that tutorial. I hope what you posit is true - that maybe I have all Sony cells in my battery pack.

FYI, my battery charged overnight to show the green LED in the morning. I removed the charger unit, did not start up the Jornada, and went off to work for the day. That evening, when I took a look, the system says the battery is at 86%. And, with the occasional check over the past days, it has stayed there. So, it appears to me that I may have a reasonable chance at some battery life still ahead. Probably not 10 hours per charge, but hopefully 3-4 hours of use. I'll post back when I have more to tell.

BTW, on the battery charging circuit card, can you identify anything that appears to ba a fuse, like was mentioned before?

Thanks,
smp
 
Well, I opened the case of Jornada 820 battery. Here you can see the charging circuit, and four batteries, two of them leaking and heavily damaged. An interesting note - batteries with "Sony Energytec" label look fine and even have some voltage left. Batteries with plain "G" label are completely wasted. An interesting approach itself, to use batteries from different manufacturers in one battery case...

-1813856.sized.jpg


That is interesting, I thought to myself, and decided to open another battery pack. On opening I was greeted with a strong chemical smell, and there was a reason for it. This time all four cells were "G" labeled, all four heavily leaked and dead, even charging circuit is damaged.

-1813859.sized.jpg


What really surprises me is the condition of the batteries - I have seen much older one's in much better shape inside. I think, the HP engineers knew what they were doing after all. Made very smart charging system to compensate for crappy batteries they put inside, to prevent fires, explosions and possible lawsuits. My guess is that all currently working Jornada 820 batteries were made by Sony...

To think about the time when unit was made, it is easy to understand why someone would make them with cheaper parts. This was not a real PC, this was not even an ultraportable laptop. It was made for people, who could not really afford to purchase "normal laptop", even ultraportable ones were available at the end of 90-ties. However, the battery pack quality is one of the worst I have seen, not really good for a respectable computer manufacturer.


How exceptionally weird. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, but i think that NEC laptop used exactly the same type of Sony batteries (Well not the "G" type though).

The circuit board looks different, but definitely another approach for a "smart" battery, normally you'd prefer "dumb" batteries for this type of device, letting the laptop do the charging logic.

Also surprising how one pack had the Sony and "G" batteries mixed and the other one only had the (obviously cheaper) "G" batteries in it. Even the circuit boards look different.

I can't see any distinctive fuse on this board, but also the pictures are pretty small. But i think it might be the same type of fuse as on the NEC battery. So if my guess is correct you only need to replace the dead batteries and replace or bridge the fuse (maybe even several) and the battery pack should be fine again.
 
Well, I think Kyodai might be able to point where the fuse might be located - I'm not so strong in electronics, this must be something really tiny, since no "normal size" fuses here...
 
Hi again,

My problem is how to get the CAB file into my Jornada. I thought that this one 64MB CF card that I have would do the trick, but since every machine I have wants to initialize it first, and will not work with one of the other machine's initialization, I cannot get the CAB file into my Jornada in the first place.

If I have to go and purchase a new CF card, I may as well go for a 512MB one from San Disk for something like $15. Of course, with that, I probably will no longer need to use the USB port for anything.

Thanks again for yout attention and advice!

smp

I received my brand new SanDisk 512 MB Compact Flash card yesterday. All is now right with the world for me and my Jornada 820.

I now have major non-volatile storage that is readable and writable by my Jornada, my Mac, and my laptop PC. I've been able to load the ClikUSB driver, and that works well. I've also been able to load the driver I found for my Ethernet PCMCIA card. I now also have NSBasic (I've not yet tried that), Pocket Scheme, and ZTerm (I've not yet tried that yet, either). Great stuff. Lots to experiment with.

During the meantime, I have confirmed that the RS-232 port (Yes, I have the correct cable!) for connection to a PC to use ActiveSync, also works just fine as a terminal for my other vintage computers with the Windows CE Terminal program. It took a gender-changer and a null-modem connector, but it works great. Now I need to try ZTerm. Hopefully, I will be able to perform some rudimentary file transfers with my other vintage computers.

I'm happy with this purchase. It looks like I have another vintage machine to play around with for a while.

Thanks for listening.

smp
 
I now also have NSBasic (I've not yet tried that), ...

Rats! The NSBasic .cab file I found is only the "runtime" portion. It does not support writing programs in Basic on the Jornada. Does anyone have a pointer to a Basic that I can run on Windows CE (H/PC Pro, Arm processor)?

Thanks,

smp
 
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