Originally posted by rwalsh3711 The Thera's were pretty cheap is about the only reason. And I might be able to find use for the CF modem cards too, so I figured what the heck. At the time I ordered, I didn't even know about the Maestro's either, otherwise I might have considered it. I Just needed a new toy to play with.
I got mine for $100. You can't beat that. If you turn off the radio switch, you get "just a PDA", and at that point, it lasts quite a while on the internal battery, even on medium or bright frontlight. Yank the modem out, and If the slot works for CF 802.11, then I think you're all set!
Please let me know how well this works. There's times I could care less if my Thera had phone ability if it meant WiFi was an option. I would probably pick up a dummy case or broken thera and hack the case so I could easily swap the modem out with WiFi.
The Thera is my third "CE" family PDA. CE seems to handle hot swapping of PCMCIA and CF devices with ease. Has anyone tried to yank the SB555 out while the thing is running (Watcher disabled, of course)?
Well, I'm in a bummer of a state...haven't gotten my Thera's in yet, but I started doing some searching around in preparation. The SB modem card in the CF slot in the Thera is a type III and I'm not able to find a type III wireless CF card in existance so far. If anyone has ever heard of one let me know so I can continue to cling onto a little hope here. Thanks all!
__________________
No man is complete until he gets married....then he's finished.
Yup...got mine in and busted into it. Some pressure 40-pin connector. I'll have to see what I can do about doing a little contortioning work and get an 802.11 solution. I think a CF card could be modded looking at the pinouts for the connector in the Thera. If anyone else wants to give this a try and doesn't have the pinouts for the 40-pin connector let me know and I can get em to ya.
__________________
No man is complete until he gets married....then he's finished.
Hey every1 its been a long time been busy with other stuff but wanted to check back and see whats goin on here.
Well first of ide like to say to odell_s that I would love any sort of contributions that can be made to this project and am very appreciative of ur efforts. I mainly need a data cable for my thera as I can use my power cable from my e805 for charging purposes, but any hardweare donations are very welcome!!
ok now, rwalsh3711 I think that yes u could take the SB555 out and insert a 802.11 card and I think it should work fine, the Type III scenerio might hold us back but I doubt it. Its funny some people wanna take out the modem and use something else in its place but I wanna take hte modem out and use it in another PocketPC heh.
ax0n I havent tried to take the SB555 out while its running but im sure it would not make a bit of diffrence it is just the cf slot in a diffrent connection package.
Does any1 have any idea what that onboard connector is thats inside of the thera where the sb555 is connected ? I need to get another one of those cause I dont wanna **** my thera up when im testing, its some sort of proriatary connector im sure but it must be ubtanable, I see alot of connectors like these inside laptops but havent found one for that specific size
rwalsh3711 not sure but just cause the modem is CF III dosent mean the unit wont support say cf II, its really whatever the thera supports not what the existing card is.
yes ax0n every1 has that propriatary connection inside there unit but it is just the CF slot converted into an internal environment.
rwalsh3711 I have the pinouts for the SB555 but I dont believe I have the pinouts for the CF slot inside the thera I may have them with all my thera BS but none of it is organized its like download to desktop and kinda throw it all into a dir so its hard to say what I have and dont have, heh.
sorry for the messy post its been a while so I tried to respond to everything new. I went 1 post at a time so thats why this is in such disarray. If I missed anything let me know and ill be back to check in soon gl to every1 until then.
I'm very new to this Thera thing, just got mine off the Computer Geeks store, and haven't activated w/ verizon yet. As I understand, I should be able to do dialup on the phone for the cost of the minute, and that service is free(right?). And I think most people here trying to get Thera to act as a modem, so they can do dialup from the laptop. I just have one question though.
em, instead of trying to get Thera work as a modem, wouldn't it be easier for someone to write a software for PPC to make the PDA act as a router, so you can have Thera do the dialup and a router, so your laptop can surf also?
Good luck with the modem efforts, guys. Let me know when you've fashioned a sprint modem I can put in my CF slot.
Also, right quick-- I'm trying to get my fax software on my 2032 to recognize (and use ) the modem. Am I misssing something? Should I slidr the radio button to the "off" position, and if not, how do I keep the pcs dialer program from always launching (even after I close it)?
I'm finding this thread very interesting. In my search for the serial IO pinouts of the 26 pin sync connector on the Thera, I found this site that has a copy of the maintenance manual for the E570. http://lesswire.info/downloads/e570Maintenance.zip
It has the block diagram of the E570, which the Thera is derived from. Referring to the block diagram in the manual, there is a reference to a PDA Phone/LCD controller chip. Interesting.
Now, with reference to the guessing that's been going on in this thread regarding the connector that the SB555 is connected to and whether or not it's a CF connector, my guess at this time, is that it is NOT a CF connector. Why do I say that? Because Toshiba designed the ASICs to interface to the SB555, (which uses two serial interfaces - one controller and one data, as well as handle 4 status lines and 3 audio lines). The normal CF interface does not have audio lines going to it. The standard CF slot is a subset of the PCMCIA slot on PCs and it's a 50 pin connector. Take away the audio lines from the 40 pin connector that SB555 is plugged into and I don't think there are enough signal lines left for CF. Ideally, I'd love to get my hands on an E570 for a few hours to map out the CF pins and then do the same with the Thera.
In any case, enjoy the manual - you may want to get a copy before it disappears (the first link at this site was dead already).
Oh, and if anyone has the serial pinouts for the Thera/Maestro/E570 hotsync connector, could they please post them or PM me.
Good stuff I had the pinouts but not the entire service manual. I do have the hotsync cable cradle whatever pinouts someone made a hack to charge the thera off of USB instead of the wall adapter and it had all the pinouts. My collection of hacking thera stuff is a mess, im going to go thru it and ill post whatever I have. Its my bday today so ill definently get to it tomorrow at the latest. Thanks every1 and thanks bigbop for the new piece of info. The service manual looks promising.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TWIST!! Have a good one (or two or three or...)
Please note - It's not a 'service' manual but rather it's a 'maintenance' manual.
I work 2 blocks away from Toshiba's head office in Canada. Their sales staff referred me to their technical support line who couldn't help and referred me to their (independant) service centres. There are two close by. The first guy said sorry, no info on PDAs - talk to tech support. The second guy said they send broken PDAs back to Toshiba's factory for repair. sigh
If you don't have the info, I'll have to write a program to toggle the serial lines and I'll just scope them.
Also, note that the interface for the CF card is basically a decoded buffer on the Processor bus. If you want to see how they're interfaced, go the the Sandisk website and lookup the technical info on their CF cards. They have sample circuits.
What's really piqued my interest is the custom LCD controller chip. Even though this block diagram is for the E570, it has a label referring to a phone control function, which also has pins on the cradle connector. So maybe Toshiba planned on making the Thera all along using the E570 as the base platform. If that's the case, then the CF interface should still be present (somewhere), but not as the 40 pin modem connector.
And lastly, several members of this forum wanted to make a PCB to mount a CF device. The easiest way to do this is to purchase a PCMCIA to CF adapter, open it up, trim it down and wire it into the PDA (when we get the circuit figured out).
I still havent found all my thera hacking stuff I've collected. I just got a new dvd burner so I can start going thru my HD's and cleaning stuff up and ill come across it. So u dont think the modem inside the thera is CF based u think its PCMCIA ? I remmeber when I was looking at some pinouts for the other SB cards like the CF one that it looks very similar but PCMCIA is very possible as well.
The connector inside, appears to me (because I have no idea what it is ) propriatary, if I could find a proper female connector like the one inside on the thera board itsself. I believe using the other avail drivers make an adapter to use that SB555 inside another PPC, like my toshiba e805 for instance
Then thoreticalley we could activate our thera and then take out the modem card inside and use it in another pocketpc. I really think it can be done and the carrier would have no idea.
I had some other stuff on my mind I wanted to post about this but its like 7 am here and its fleeted from my mind. Thanks Again be back soon.
The SB555 modem is definitely NOT PCMCIA OR CF. CF pinouts are a subset of PCMCIA. Just tear apart a PCMCIA to CF adapter. There are no electronics inside. Just connections from the PCMCIA connector to the CF connector. The SB555 modem uses 2 serial I/O ports, which are present on that 40 pin connector in the Thera. Serial ports must be decoded and there will be FIFOs and other circuitry present. The CF interface on the other hand, just needs address decoding, as it basically sits right on the Processor bus.
If I could get a schematic of any PDA with a CF card slot, I could use it as an example.
Lastly, I've been trying to figure out the connections for the serial pinouts of the cradle connector. After looking at the picture of the cradle's PCB from another thread, it looks like the same PCb is used for both serial and USB. just the specific areas are populated with parts depending on what is used. I'll have to pull my cradle apart to confirm. If that's the case, reverse engineering it is a snap (and I'll have my serial pinouts )
I just pulled apart the USB cradle and discovered that there is only one interface PCB for both the USB and SERIAL versions! The 26 pin connector on the E570/Thera only provides for 0-3.3 volt signal levels, so the cradle PCB has a spot for a TTL to RS232 level converter IC along with associated components. There is also a spot for the 9 pin serial connector (CN2).
There are 2 PCBs in the cradle. One holds the 26 pin PDA connector. It is connected via wires to another PCB that contains the TTL to RS232 IC and the connector holes for both the USB and Serial cables. I'm thinking that you can use both at the same time (for different uses of course).
It appears that Toshiba left off all serial interface related components. I'll just have to reverse engineer what parts are supposed to be there and create a schematic. I can also use this to trace back to the 26 pin connector so I can figure out what the pin functions are.
And for those of you who were pissed at Toshiba because of the price of their serial interface cable ($100US), it's because the cable has the TTL to RS232 interface circuit built into it in a small pod half way along the length of the cable.
OK, so give me a week and I should be able to post all of my new-found information.
As for the E570's FAIRY chip (see the block diagram in the Maint Manual (URL in previous post), it supports PDC and CDMA phone interfaces through the 26 pin cradle connector. So Toshiba DID plan on using the E570 PDA to control a cellphone all along.
The E570 controlled a cell phone through it's serial interface on the 26 pin connector. I'm guessing here that those connections were moved from the cradle connector up to that 40 pin connector that the SB555 plugs into. So what's now connected to that 26 pin connector in it's place? I guess I'll soon find out.
I've reverse-engineered the cradle and in doing so, got most of the pinouts for the hotsync connector on the Thera. All I need to do now is to create an electronic schematic from my hand written notes.
There are about 5 pins on the PDA's connector that I can't trace (from the cradle end). Once I post the info, readers with the proper skills will be able to make their own serial interface for the phone. For this, I've already purchased a USB power/sync cable from Ebay for $5. Hopefully when I get it, the connector will have all 26 pins, not just the USB and power connections. If it does, it will be a VERY inexpensive way to get a connector/cable assembly.
EDIT: Updated pinout doc - see new post further on in thread...
Here is the (MS Wordpad) document I created with the reverse-engineered pinouts for the Toshiba E570/Audiovox Thera 26-pin sync connector.
I will be creating a schematic later.
DISCLAIMER: if you don't know anything about electronics, get someone (not me) who knows how to build you a cable/interface. I cannot be held responsible for anything YOU do with this information. A good experimenter will always verify information before they use it.
A note about the RS232 spec: RS232 is an electrical signal definition. It defines specific voltages used for one type of serial data line.
These voltages are specified to be between +/-3v -> +/-12v . Note that they go negative. This means you cannot just connect the PDA to your computer's RS232 interface without the level converter. There are several modifications to the original RS232 spec. One common change is where the spec is for 0-5V and is used on some GPS units. You need to obtain all interface information for whatever you will be working with to avoid damaging your equipment.
I have listed reference URLs in the document. I have no connection to these sites or vendors other than I have purchased product from them or used them for reference material.
Enjoy!
EDIT: Updated pinout doc - see new post further on in thread...
)
Login
Panel
