My dad is cleaning out the garage for a move, and told me that I can keep some of the technology if i can find a use for it. So, the first gadget I’ll be documenting is the HP iPAQ PocketPC 2002!
This is a discontinued Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) from a line of Pocket PCs that started in 2000. They use the Windows Mobile interface but can also (unsurprisingly) run some Linux distros. These guys were intended for use as office assistants, but can also be used as portable media player thanks to the (mini) headphone jack and ability to play media imported from Windows Media Player. As of 10-8-23, you can still download the ActiveSync software from Microsoft that was used to store and transfer things from your PC to Pocket PC. There is also a surprise infrared port on the side to (i assume) communicate with other devices!
All this information makes the Pocket PC look like a useful tool for its time. However, none of the email sharing/buisness functionality have any use to me right now, even if they did work. So my current plan is to turn this into a little media player and have my music saved on SD cards in the device to carry around with me! There are two issues with that plan though.
Both of these problems cost money to fix, which i’m not too keen on spending right now thanks to my recent PSP purchase. So whenever I make some progress on this project I’ll put an update here!
My teacher brought to my attention today that I could hardwire a battery instead of looking for scarce replacements. I will do more research on this eventually.