[kristopolous]

I assume at least one engineer aggressively argued for DB9 serial along with a Windows and Mac app instead and lost.

It was clear that the longevity of the installations would far outstrip the longevity of the Palm pilot

If I was in the room I'd even argue for DOS. As a target it had stopped moving, was ubiquitous, not going anywhere and is in enough important places that it would even survive the demise of Microsoft if they were to collapse in the future

[raverbashing]

Yes but does it fit the form factor?

For all we know the palm is also sending serial commands?

[kristopolous]

Let me play the role.

"Yes, there's plenty of Windows CE and DOS palmtops. You can make a palmpilot application if you want but that should be a port, just like to BeOS.

The pure serial binary option is fine but this is infrastructure. Like the bridges that run on 5 1/4" disks, this will outlive both us and Palm if we do it right. Hell, if this is still running when our grandchildren are old and grey, this will be one of our greatest achievements as a team.

When I walk down the street and I see a masonry stamp on the sidewalk from a contracting company that installed it 100 years ago, I appreciate the fine work they did that I'm still using a century later.

Let's hope people will feel the same way about what we decide to do in this room today.

We need to at least provide documentation on the protocol.

It has to be made so competent people in the future can easily make this system accessible to the computers of the future as well. That will Not best be handled by a binary blob on a palmpilot"

[Closi]

Saying it should have been Windows CE is just survivorship bias IMO - and we don’t know that they didn’t write documentation on the protocol or that it’s poorly understood - it might just have been easier and safer to emulate an app that everyone is happy with rather than rewrite it (these film projectors might be more in “keep them alive” mode rather than “improve” mode while digital is growing for them).

I’ve put a dos application running in an emulator on an android device for a project to roll out new hardware because that took a few hours to configure rather than a year of development.

[psychphysic]

O Captain! My Captain!