Update: Malfunctioning Atlas SD319i Arabic to English

Key Map (Thanks Test Mode?)

E-A = 16

Calc = 15

More = 26

Menu = 14

[Volume] = 0D

Find = 11

New = 09

Ins = 08
Edit = 10
[Up Shader] = 01
[Down Shader] = 0E
1 = 2D
2 = 05
3 = 3D
4 = 0C
5 = 2C
6 = 04
7 = 06
8 = 3E
9 = 2E
0 = 36
. = 34
Q = 1D
W = 1C
E = 3B
R = 33
T = 1B
Y = 23
U = 2B
I = 13
O = 3B
P = 03
Esc = 3C
A = 25
S = 3A
D = 32
F = 2A
G = 1A
H = 22
J = 12
K = 0A
L = 02
Shift = 03
Del = 38
Z = 35
X = 24
C = 39
V = 31
B = 29
N = 21
M = 19
Lang = 28
Space = 20
Enter = 18

As you can see, there are significant differences between this table and the ASCII table. Maybe this will gave clues as to what's inside this thing before I open it up.

[At this point the screen was filled with characters, and I reset it, but I can't seem to get it back into the mode, but I don't mind, because I pressed enough random buttons to get it reset correctly]

Welcome readers, to the Atlas SD319i. It's been a ride:

The device is interesting in it's functional state, but now that I've gotten a taste of the wild side I can't go back. I'm going to start attacking this little guy on the software side to see what I can figure out about it's inner workings.

A mystery: A Malfunctioning Atlas SD319i

Getting some background out of the way. I went thrifiting the other day and saw a mini computer I couldn't resist, the Atlas SD319i. It translates arabic to english, but it has an arabic or and eglish mode. I don't know much about it, it has a few applications, but I bought it because it was $3.50 and real cool. So I realized it had no batteries and I'd have to wait a day to figure out if it worked.

Picked up some AAA's, got it started up, and it gave me this screen. Figured it was some sort of greeting from the previous owner, reset it.



The screen didn't leave me though, it stayed like this no matter how many times I reset it. At this point I was getting a bit frantic, I was pressing all of the right buttons and nothing in the manual prepared me for this. Even stranger was the greeting. Now, I don't speak arabic, but from what I could find, it says "Brother: 5 -8 [ I think and a few other numbers]."

At this point, my impatience gets the best of me, and I just start hitting random keys, which is how I ended up here.



What's happening in the image is the hex values for the keys are being printed to the screen whenever I type them in. I've entered some sort of test mode, or maybe the machine is reverting back to a feral state. I don't know. Now I have  a mystery on my hands, and I intend to solve it. Wish me luck!

A Jornada on the World Wide Web

                Getting my HP Jornada 690 onto the internet was a challenging but fun project. Here are some of the steps I went through to get from a dream of connectivity to 2 adapters and a Windows XP Professional VM, to Wireless Fidelity, and my future vision.

1. 
2. The second I got my hands on this little windows beauty, I was excited to get it connected to the world wide web. I initially decided that the best way to go about this was purchasing a PCMCIA wifi card compatible with the device. I settled on what I initially thought was an Lynksys WPC11 ver.3.1, but may or may not have been some sort of clone with an older version of the firmware based on my linux testing.
3.  Initially, I tried the wifi module on the linux partition I had created on the Jornada (more on that in a later post) with great success. I was able to get it running and connected to an open wireless network I created with my phone. It was unable to handle the WPA standard, as I had anticipated.  
4.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get the device driver for the WPC11 working in windows, which may have been on me, or may just be further proof that it was not a legitimate device. Take that how you will, I took it rather poorly and bought another wifi card.
5. I was also unable to get this wifi card working, due to what I would later learn was me forgetting to assign a DNS server and some lazy programming on the driver producer's side. They were throwing up a "could not assign address" error for everything.
6. After abandoning the project for a few months and coming back to it, I decided to go for the janky approach. Initially I thought about using my Raspberry Pi and a 56K USB fax modem to emulate dialup for the jornada's onboard modem, but I abandoned that idea pretty quickly. I purchased a USB to Serial converter, and tried to install the necessary software to tunnel internet through the fake serial port to the device. Unfortunately, try as I might, I could only get the software to work inside of a VM running Windows XP Pro. I was still elated, however, to finally get my device on the world wide web.
7. The setup had major problems, however. Because of how sync timing operated, I was only able to surf the web for about 5 minutes before resyncing. A few passes through the registry on the device to search for a fix didn't work, consulting the HPC Factor forums got me nowhere, so I decided to take a final stab at wifi.
8. I pulled out the newer wifi card again, discovered the DNS error after a few hours of poking around on the device, got an open wifi network started up on my phone again, and finally, my device was on the internet!

                           My future plan for wireless internet on the Jornada is standing up a router and starting a WEP hotspot for the little guy, security issues be damned.