{"id":1939,"date":"2026-04-22T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T17:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2026-09-24T14:08:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T18:08:26","slug":"palm-sunday-raising-a-2005-pda-from-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/22\/palm-sunday-raising-a-2005-pda-from-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Palm Sunday: Raising a 2005 PDA From the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some people rescue dogs. I rescue personal digital assistants from the trash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
2005 called. They want their tech back.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks ago I trash-picked a PalmOne Tungsten E2. For those of you under 30, a PDA was what we carried before smartphones ate the world \u2014 a little pocket computer for calendars, notes, and (if you were fancy) Bejeweled. The E2 came out around 2005. It has a 200MHz processor and a 320×320 color screen, which was genuinely impressive at the time. My phone now has more pixels than I have problems, and I use most of them to look at pictures of sandwiches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why did I drag it home? Honestly? Because it was THERE, and because somewhere in the back of my lizard brain a little voice said “I bet I could make that work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out, I can!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surgery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The battery was deader than disco. So I did what any reasonable adult does: I took the whole thing apart on my desk and started poking at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
PalmOne is ALIVE!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now, a word about something this old: if your back and joints start wearing out after 20 years, imagine what happens to cheap plastic coatings. Those things get brittle, and one wrong move turns your restoration project into a parts donor. I treated everything in here like a bomb wire. (Blue wire? Orange wire? Don’t pull too hard!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got the battery sorted, hit the power button, and the screen lit up with “1\/1\/05.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Yes, I said it out loud. Yes, my wife has heard worse coming from the computer room.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, but… why?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fair question. Here’s what a 2005 PDA can actually do in 2026:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Distraction-free writing.<\/strong> No notifications, no doomscrolling, just you and a little keyboard. Hemingway would’ve loved it. Probably. If he didn’t destroy the device trying to ‘type’ with Palm’s Jot Graffiti.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Retro gaming.<\/strong> The Palm library is enormous, and yes, somebody ported Doom to it. Running Doom on a 200MHz PDA is not a good experience. It is, however, a GREAT experience.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Universal remote.<\/strong> It’s got an infrared port, so with the right ancient software it can run your TV. Your TV remote wishes it had this kind of range anxiety.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. The real plan: a pocket AI terminal.<\/strong> This is where it gets fun.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Here’s the thing \u2014 the E2 speaks serial and ancient Bluetooth. It has no idea what WiFi is without an incredibly expensive add-on card (even in 2005), and it can’t do any modern encryption. But I’m a controls tech with a drawer full of ESP32s and a home server running local AI. The plan: wire a tiny ESP32 to the Palm’s serial port, let the ESP32 handle the WiFi and do the translating, and suddenly this 2005 pocket computer is chatting with my home lab. A cyberpunk pocket assistant with no cloud, no subscription, and it fits in a shirt pocket (which alone makes it better than my gigantic iPhone Pro).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Will it be practical? No. Will it be awesome? Yes! Definitely yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Sky’s the limit (time permitting)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Advances in AI and vibe coding are really what makes this all possible for a tinkerer with an addiction to disassembly. With AI doing the heavy lifting on code, the only real constraint on a project like this is time. Although time is the one thing that, with two kids and a full-time job, I have the LEAST of. But that’s fine. The Palm isn’t going anywhere. It’s waited 20 years; it can wait for me to finish the ESP32 bridge on a weekend winter afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There’s something deeply satisfying about pulling a piece of tech out of the trash and giving it a second life. It’s the opposite of everything our disposable-gadget culture wants us to do. Nobody’s getting rich off a Tungsten E2 in 2026. And that’s kind of the point. This piece of technology WORKS; I know because I made it work, and there’s no reason to keep it in the trash to rot!<\/p>\n

    Current Mood:<\/b> mad scientist<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Some people rescue dogs. I rescue personal digital assistants from the trash. A few weeks ago I trash-picked a PalmOne Tungsten E2. For those of you under 30, a PDA was what we carried before smartphones ate the world \u2014 a little pocket computer for calendars, notes, and (if you were fancy) Bejeweled. The E2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,21,17],"tags":[45,30],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-entertainment","category-techy","tag-ai-assisted","tag-neo-lj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}