One more visit to the fried Palms controversy: I arranged to speak with a senior technology expert at Palm Inc. about my problems with blown-out serial ports.
The story from their side is this--yes, there have been reported problems, but no, they do not think they are Palm problems. Rather, the issue is the design of serial ports themselves. Basically, you have a metal port connecting to a metal terminal on a metal wire cable, connected at the other end to more metal contacts for the Palm and its cradle, or any other device. In the absence of heavy-duty grounding, when you bring a static electric charge into contact with any of that metal, it's likely to cook something--and that something most likely is the interface between the serial port and the motherboard.
While I agree with Palm's explanation that this can happen with almost any serial device, I would note that most serial devices-- external modems, for instance--are designed to be connected once and usually just left connected. Palm organizers, however, are designed to be repeatedly pulled in and out of the cradle to be synchronized or recharged. So perhaps the company could have done a little bit more in the grounding department.
In any case, there is a relatively simple solution. Don't use the serial port.
Palm makes a USB converter, which will work in Windows 98 (and
they promise drivers eventually for Windows 2000). Or--my
solution--Belkin (among others) makes USB hubs that include
serial ports. My Belkin hub is Windows 2000 capable (download the
Windows 2000 drivers from Belkin's web site; don't use the
Windows 98 drivers shipped with the hub). In use, the Belkin
device's ports are indistinguishable from a system serial port,
which allows any serial device to work in Windows 2000.
Check out all of Belkin's solutions here:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/309/tr.cgi?palm1
The Belkin F5U012 USB Express BUS Plus Multi Port Hub at Amazon:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/309/tr.cgi?palm2
USB is designed for hot-swapping and heavier current loads than serial connections. Besides, my theory is that the next errant static electric discharge will have to cook the USB hub before it can get to my motherboard.
Or so I hope.
