XDA II and TomTom Wired Car Kit

delboy · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 14, 2003 Posts: 1

Please be warned Tomtom car kit for XDA will not work with XDA II even if Cradle is heated and reshaped to fit having broken the Serial connector
in two units without forcing it home i might add (good Luck to all who try).

Dave · Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 6:31 pm Post subject:

Yes, the actual serial/sync port on the bottom is identical, but the cradles are different due to the shaping, and this is one thing others have found going between the XDA and XDAII. I hate it when manufacturers do this. I'm sure they're doing it for what they believe is the good, but they should stipulate quite clearly that you can't use older cradles.

Compaq did the same thing when changing from the 3600 to 3800, a few extra pins were added to the connector. People only found out after casualties were had.

DavidW · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 3:46 pm Post subject:

At least once Compaq had switched, after the 3100/3600/3700 series, to the new 22-pin connector in the 3800 series, they've stuck with the same connector and the same pin-out ever since. That pin-out is even officially documented by HP. (The 19xx iPAQs don't have a serial port - certainly in the 1910 and possibly in the rest this is signified by the connector being turned over; the USB and power pins are the same as other iPAQs).

It does seem rather silly, though, that with what is arguably at least a semi de-facto standard in the iPAQ 3800 series onwards that manufacturers keep inventing their own standards. The XDA, XDA 2 and the Medion (in the Aldi package) use the same 22 pin connector as the iPAQ but with different pin-outs. This has caught at least one forum user out.

Even more baffling is that some research I just did for a post in another thread indicates that the connector is probably different between the Dell Axim X5 and the Axim X3 series! They're both current products from Dell.

It's a shame that we can't have an industry standard for these connectors. I realise Pocket PCs are going to be different physical shapes, but it would mean that items like wired GPSes and even possibly foldable keyboards (which are far from cheap) would become more standard.

David

Dave · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 4:28 pm Post subject:

I think it would be great to have an industry standard connector, but I doubt we'll ever get to that because it means people won't be buying replacement accessories each time a new model comes out. I guess pretty much like the mobile phone business.

DavidW · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 4:41 pm Post subject:

Sadly, I have to agree with you Dave. The best we have is that some manufacturers do standardise connectors on their mobile phones for a period of time (just as Nokia have with Pop-port), but there is no standardisation between manufacturers.

I suspect Bluetooth will gradually take over in many areas - apparently a Bluetooth foldable keyboard is already being worked on by at least one company. At that point, we'll just have a multiplicity of different chargers to deal with!

David

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