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Re: Start Hotsync using the desktop

On 2006-04-25, Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Is there a software ou resource where I can start the Hotsync process
>> by the desktop computer ?
>
> I believe that the USB cradle (assumed here) acts as a 'master' whereas the
> computer is a 'slave'.

 Actually, with USB, the PC is (just short of always) the master, and
other devices are slaves. (Intel designed the spec this way, unlike
Firewire which is truly peer-to-peer.)

> I asked a similar question in the past and I believe
> it is not possible to invoke the operation from the desktop.

 That's true. This is due to the design of Palms and the HotSync
protocol. There's nothing on the Palm that sits in the background
and waits for a connection. For one thing, such a process would
inevitably consume power, reducing battery life. The more frequently it
checked, the worse the power drain. For another, the Palm OS is not
multi-tasking[1] so you could either do work, or sit and wait for a
sync, but not both.

> This, for example, is why the physical HotSync button needs to be
> pressed in order for the computer to detect the device at setup time.

 Sort of. The Palm syncs over USB basically as a USB serial port.
(There's a whole spec for serial-over-USB behavior.) Again, for power
reasons, the USB system isn't even powered up until the Palm needs to
sync. The button shorts out some pins and tells the Palm to start
syncing.

[1] Technically, there *are* threads, even in OS4 and below, but they
are hidden from users and not available to applications. I'm not sure
what's 'under the hood' in OS5 but they appear to have kept basically
the same structure, just moved things over to the ARM hardware.

-- 
 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                  (313) 227-2317

  "Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part
 that is good is not original and the part that is original
             is not good." -- Samuel Johnson

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