Bug when waking up from flashcard sleep on E2

[redpixel]

Hi!

I seem to have discovered a weird bug! Searching the forums it seems that many people have reported things similar to this, however not exactly the same. My problem is that if I turn my Palm off in the middle of a flashcard session I am not able to turn it back on again (using the power buttton). The only thing that works is soft resetting or (for some reason) removing the SD card. This is very reproducable on both mine and a friend's E2. If it makes any difference I'm using flashcard lists with some words from my user dictionary.

Thanks in advance!

/Martin

 

[mikelove]

Jim in TJ just reported this same issue in another thread - has anyone experienced this problem with anything other than an E2? We don't currently have one of those around for testing (since architecturally they're pretty much identical to several other Palm models) but as we've thus far failed to reproduce this on any other model it certainly might be something E2-specific (perhaps a bug in Palm OS that was fixed in the T5 / Treo 650 firmware updates but wasn't fixed on the E2 due to the fact that Palm hasn't released a firmware update for the E2 yet).

 

[redpixel]

Ah, for some reason I had missed Jim in TJ's post. Glad to see that somebody else is experiencing it too

Yes, I guess it might be E2-specific, since the users complaining about the Palm not turning off by itself or not turning off at all while in a flashcard session would likely have found this bug too otherwise... None of them seemed to report this though. I have no idea what could be causing it. If you press the power button repeatedly it sometimes turns on for a few milliseconds but then turns black again. And, as I said, removing the SD card causes it to wake up to Pleco again, but inserting the card again takes you back to the "main" applications menu (standard behaviour I guess).

Is it possible that this bug is somehow caused by the fix for the "not shutting down (automatically)" bug, but only appears on the E2 (since E2 did not seem to have that bug to start with)?

 

[mikelove]

Well there almost has to be some sort of a bug in the Palm OS involved here, neither PlecoDict nor any other program has the ability to prevent a Palm from turning back on from sleep by itself, but the no-auto-shutdown issue is certainly the place to start looking. Pretty much all of these power-related issues relate to the flashcard hardware button system, so as a short-term fix we may simply offer a checkbox in Preferences that completely disables that (clearing all of your button selections doesn't actually do so) - might be less annoying than the power issues at least.

 

[redpixel]

Hmm, OK. I regularly use the hardware buttons so I guess I'll just always try to shut down a flashcard session before I put the Palm aside.

Palm's hard-/software really seems 不怎么样 to me Crashes on the software side and the terrible whine on the hardware side... Dunno if you all have it or not but my friend's E2 has a terrible whine coming from the screen It almost goes away when overclocking but I guess it's not a good long-term solution since it might crash more often.

Thanks for your reply and help!

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, Palm hardware/software isn't all that reliable, but sadly neither is Pocket PC - both OSes are buggy and badly-designed, and I have yet to see a Palm or Pocket PC hardware company with a decent quality control operation. There was a lot of talk about display whine recently with Apple's MacBook Pro models - it's a common problem with LCD displays, part of the issue seems to be that different people have different hearing ranges (as people grow older they tend to hear less and less very-high-frequency sound) so an annoying display whine for one person can be completely inaudible for another. Not only does this make testing for the problem difficult, it also provides an incentive for companies to simply ignore it, since most of their customers probably won't notice the whine and the ones that do will assume it's a defective unit rather than a basic design flaw.

 

[redpixel]

I guess in the case of E2's it varies a lot from unit to unit. With my unit I have no complaints whatsoever (on the hardware side), the whine is there but not audible unless you place your ear within 10cm of the screen. With my friend's unit it's _horrible_ though, and audible from more than a meter away

What you said about Pocket PC is probably true, I've never used one but I can imagine Windows 95 all over again