Hi everyone.

I've had nothing but trouble in trying to interface my Tungsten T5 with
a Bluetooth GPS receiver.  Nearly all the software I've tried
frequently loses the Bluetooth connection to the receiver.  I heard
lots of rumors (like if the Treo 650 or Tungsten T5 was too "busy",
this sort of thing sometimes happened), but as a programmer by trade I
wanted to get to the root of the problem.  I hadn't programmed for the
Palm before, but fortunately since I've programmed in C for the past 20
years or so, it wasn't that hard to put together a little test program
to try and isolate the problem.

Unless I've done something wrong, it looks like if the serial receive
buffer on my T5 ever fills up, the Bluetooth connection is lost.
Obviously, I would expect data to be lost, but I was quite surprised to
find that the connection is lost overall.  My Bluetooth GPS is
constantly sending data at a rate of about 430 bytes/second, and if
more than a second goes by before the data is pulled from the buffer
(default size of 512 bytes), it fills up.  Once this happens, I can
read the 512 bytes out of the buffer, but after that no further data is
received unless I disconnect and reconnect.

Obviously, in my own programs, this can be avoided by allocating a
larger-than-standard buffer and/or ensuring that I read data quickly
enough that the buffer never fills up.  But this doesn't work when
using other people's software - apparently, this kind of behavior
appears to be isolated to the T5, and perhaps the Treo 650, since the
Bluetooth connection is remaining stable for everyone else.  I even
tried replacing my T5 at the store I bought it from to see if it was a
specific glitch in the unit I had, but both have behaved the same.

Can anyone confirm that this is a problem?  Or, for some reason I
haven't fathomed, is it "supposed to be this way"?  If not, any chance
of Palm providing a firmware update for the T5 that helps to resolve
the issue?  Who would I contact at Palm to bring this to their
attention?

My new T5 is working great in all aspects but this - and unfortunately,
interfacing with a Bluetooth GPS receiver is the primary reason I got
it in the first place...

Thanks for any help or suggestions that anyone can provide!

Dan
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Syzygy Research & Technology
Box 83, Legal, AB  T0G 1L0 Canada
Phone: 780-961-2213


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