The Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 were the first generations of

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting poly ...

s produced by

Palm Computing Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 60 ...

(then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics). It was introduced in March 1996. The Pilot uses a Motorola 68328 processor at 16 MHz, and had 128 kB (Pilot 1000) or 512 kB (Pilot 5000) built in

Random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to b ...

. The PDA has a plastic case (various colors). Its dimensions are 120x80x18 mm and weight is 160 grams. The Pilot has a 160x160 pixel monochrome LCD tactile panel, with a "

Graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

input zone" presented in the bottom third of the screen. Underneath the screen sits a green on/off button, four applications buttons (Date Book, Address Book, To Do List, and Memo Pad) and two scroll buttons. At left, contrast control. At right top, stylus slot. On the back of the device there is a Memory Slot door, Reset button, battery compartment (held two AAA batteries) and Serial Port (for use with the PalmPilot Cradle). Memory is kept in a "memory slot" under a plastic cover at the back top of the PDA. A 512 kB ROM chip stores the

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

1.0 and resident applications. RAM is available in 128 kB, 512 kB or 1 MB; with a

PalmPilot The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing Pal ...

Professional memory card, up to 2 MB of RAM. Hardware limit is 12 MB of

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and 4 MB of

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

. After a calibration test presented during the initial power up, the Pilot would

boot A boot is a type of footwear. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf. Some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is cle ...

and be ready for use and synchronization. Connecting and synchronizing the PDA was initially done through a utility called Pilot Desktop. For the PC, Pilot Desktop was distributed either on 3½ inch disk or on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

(according to an original floppy disk set, v1.0 was for

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

and included a tutorial disk and two

win32s Win32s is a 32-bit application runtime environment for the Microsoft Windows 3.1 and 3.11 operating systems. It allowed some 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit operating system using call thunks. A beta version of Win32s was available in Oct ...

disks for

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

; v2.0 was for Windows 95 and

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

). A version of Pilot Desktop (renamed to

Palm Desktop Palm Desktop is a personal information manager computer program for Microsoft Windows or Mac OS/Mac OS X, and can be used alone or in combination with a Palm OS personal digital assistant. Features Palm Desktop contains four main modules which cor ...

) now exists for use with the Mac platform and open source support exists for use on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

distributions (one of the preferred development platforms for Palm OS), as well.

Lawsuits

Palm, Inc. was sued by the Pilot pen company for using the name "Pilot". Palm was later involved in a legal battle where

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

filed suit for David Goldberg's "Unistroke" patent.

References

3Com Palm Pilot Hardware Book
(PDF)
3Com Mac Desktop Handbook
(PDF)

External links

Palm Pilot 1000 Retrospective (from 2006)

Pilot Desktop 1.0
{{Palm Devices Palm OS devices Computer-related introductions in 1996 Products introduced in 1996 68k-based mobile devices

Lawsuits

See also

References

External links