HP iPAQ 4150 or Axim 3i with TT2?(newbie)

antonhs · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 30, 2003 Posts: 3

I am looking in purchasing either a HP iPAQ4150 or Dell Axim 3i - to use within the office/home and also to use with Tom Tom 2 software.

The 4150 has Bluetooth & Wireless installed with also a SD/MMC slot.

The Dell Axim 3i has wireless and a SD slot too.

From my NEWBIE research can someone please confirm that I am correct in saying

1. The HP 4150 will be able to use a TT Bluetooth solution?
2. The Dell Axim 3i wont be able to use TT at all? (OR does anyone know otherwise)
3. If I purchased the wired option then does this fit into the SD slot?
4. Would you recommend purchasing any further memory for either model.

MANY THANKS for your time in answering these questions.
M Auton

lbendlin · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 8:15 pm Post subject:

Antonhs,

welcome to the forum.

1. yes
2. the 3i may not have BlueTooth integrated but you could get a SD Bluetooth card. However that conflicts with 4
3. The wired version goes into the serial port connector at the bottom of the device, not into the SD slot
4. Definitely. Get as big as a card as you can afford (careful with SanDisk SD cards though) - you need that for all the map data.
_________________
Lutz

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wizy · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 26, 2003 Posts: 14

Antonhs,

I have a 4150 with TT2 (Bluetoothed to Rikaline X7) iPaq is amazing!.

lbendlin - whats wrong with sandisk SD? I have one. Its a little bit slow, but seems to work ok with TT2 (I have installed the maps on the SD card, but the program is on main memory).

antonhs · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 30, 2003 Posts: 3

thanks for the replies!

may I ask what " (Bluetoothed to Rikaline X7)" means when the unit already has Bluetooth on it?

thanks for the help!!

lbendlin · Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2003 5:17 pm Post subject:

antonhs · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 30, 2003 Posts: 3

Ok after further investgigation and looking at your posts im tending towards the IPAQ 4150. But one last question with regards to the TomTom.

A reply mentioned :

"The wired version(of TomTom) goes into the serial port connector at the bottom of the device, not into the SD slot"

what slot is this actually called then? On descriptions of the iPAQ 4150 it has a SDIO,SD,MMC slot - so has it a serial slot?

If not I take it I WILL have to go with the BT version of TomTom - which is another £75 or so! Sad

many thanks for your help and time.

lbendlin · Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2003 6:03 pm Post subject:

Don't know how it is called correctly. Maybe "ActiveSync Connector"? It's the thingie at the bottom of the 4150 where you connect it to the cradle or to another serial or USB device.
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davewave1 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 09, 2004 Posts: 40

If as seems likely the X3i is selling well then its probable that the TomTom2 sw will be ported to it and they will provide a car cradle of some sort. The question is how long is it likely to be ?

The iPAQ 4150 which seem to come out about the same time has already been included in the latest sw update but not the X3i; strange!

lbendlin · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 6:45 pm Post subject:

There is no need to port the TomTom software to the X3i. It will simply work there. Your problem is rather to get the right connector for your receiver (or a cradle that can attach to your receiver as well). So it's rather hardware related.
_________________
Lutz

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davewave1 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 09, 2004 Posts: 40

Lutz, thanks for the update. Do you know of any 3rd party working on a custom cradle as Leadtek don't even list a cable yet ? Alternatively is there any info on the X3i connector mapping ?

davewave1 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 09, 2004 Posts: 40

A further thought...... would a Leadtek RJ11 to USB cable connected to the Dell supplied USB to X3 connector work ?

DavidW · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 3:32 pm Post subject:

I write here from a position of ignorance - but have Dell really used a different base connector on the X3 series to the X5? If not, then existing wired GPS solutions for the X5 should work on the X3.

That said, the Axim X5 has an odd serial port, because the UART is built in but the level shifting hardware needed to get to 'real' serial port voltage levels is not.

It looks, sadly, as if Dell may indeed have changed the serial port on the X3 - though what I can find using Google isn't terribly clear on the matter.

What I did dig up is that Pharos have come out with a wired GPS / Ostia software bundle for the X3 - so hopefully wired GPS is likely to be available as a stand alone product or bundled with other software even if it's not yet. See http://www.pharosgps.com/products/dell/c_dell_aximx3.htm. The different part number to the same product for the Axim X5 pretty much confirms that the serial port on the X3 is different.

David

davewave1 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 09, 2004 Posts: 40

DavidW, thanks for the research. To confirm your thoughts the X5 has a 40 way connector and the X3 has a 28 way connector. I did wonder if Dell had changed it to be compatible with any other PDA makers.

DavidW · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 4:41 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately it looks more like Dell inventing another (non-)standard.

The most common type of connector is a 22 way one, but even that exists in at least two and possibly three or even more variants. All iPAQs (apart from the early 3100, 3600 and 3700 series) use this connector in a standard pin-out (in the 1900 series the serial pins are not connected, and the port is 'turned over' to signify the lack of a serial port). The XDA and XDA 2 use the same physical connector, but the pin-out of the serial port is different. The Medion PDA in the Aldi and Halfords bundle also uses the same connector - in this case, the pin out isn't the iPAQ one, but whether it's the same as the XDA and XDA 2, I don't know.

When ordering anything for that bottom port on a Pocket PC, it seems that the best advice is to check that what you're ordering is compatible with the model of Pocket PC you have - and don't assume unless you've specifically checked compatibility with another model on the list.

One thing I can tell you is that the chances of being able to use a USB cable are very low. Most Pocket PCs don't have USB host capabilities; the USB capabilities built into the PXA250 and PXA255 XScale processors are slave (client) only - I don't know whether this is different in the PXA26x processors that some Pocket PCs are now using, or the upcoming new generation of XScales that Intel are gradually releasing details of. The USB slave capability allows synchronisation over USB - the desktop computer is providing the host capabilities.

There are some Pocket PCs that have USB host capabilities - the support chip in the iPAQ 545x and 555x has two USB ports, used to interface to the fingerprint chip and the 802.11b chip - but the USB host capabilities are not exposed externally nor are there any ways to add extra ports or devices. It's just that designing USB host capabilities into the support chip allowed the use of off the shelf components to provide internal features - and for the interface to those components to use a low number of wires!

The exception here is many Toshiba models - they have USB host capabilities on the bottom port rather than a serial port. Serial 'cables' for those models include a USB to serial chip - often a Prolific PL-2303 (which is used in many USB GPSes as well - it's a very popular choice as it's a single chip solution, no external support components being required). The problem is that unlike Windows, I believe there's no standard USB API in Windows CE / Pocket PC, and that means that the very limited number of available USB drivers have to be written specially for each USB host setup.

There are also USB host CompactFlash cards available - but again they're limited by drivers. The main application of those cards are devices that will work OK with generic HID drivers, such as keyboards, and devices that will work with generic mass-storage drivers, such as many card readers and USB hard disks. I don't know whether there's a PL-2303 driver in existance for these cards.

David

davewave1 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 09, 2004 Posts: 40

Answer from TomTom to this question that a friend asked......
_____________________________________________
Subject: Do you supply a car cradle or cable for the X3I ?...
Product: Tom Tom Navigator
Wired GPS
Category: Product information
PDA manufacturer: Dell
PDA OS version : 03
GPS type: TomTom wired
Submitted: 19/01/2004 08:45 PM
Last Updated: 20/01/2004 11:27 AM
Status: Solved
_____________________________________________
Response (Marc Winthagen) 20/01/2004 11:27 AM
Dear Mr Reyne,

We will probably release a car kit with cabel at the end of february. Please watch our site for new releases.

We hope to have answered your question to your satisfaction.
With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

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