# Handspring Visor, USB, and KPilot

## sbanwart

I've been fooling around with this setup for a couple hours now, and I am getting very frustrated.  I have a Handspring Visor Deluxe.  It syncs wonderfully with a serial cradle and KPilot.  However, it refuses to play nice with the USB cradle and KPilot.  I do have my kernel set up correctly.  When I press the HotSync button, the cradle shows up in /proc/bus/usb/devices, and the devFS entries appear in /dev/usb/tts/.  I can even interact with the USB Visor using the programs in the pilot-link package.  This is driving me crazy!  I'm using KDE 3.1, KPilot 4.3.6.  (which allegedly supports USB Visor cradles)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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## krt

be sure that you're using /dev/usb/tts/1, and not 0.  That drove me bonkers for a while with my handspring.

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## sbanwart

I think I figured it out.  Apparently, my laptop doesn't put out enough juice from the USB controller to properly run the USB cradle.  I tried it later with my desktop + powered USB hub, both running Gentoo, and it works fine.  At some point I'll try combining the laptop and the hub to see if that works.  For the time being, I'll just use my serial cradle with the laptop.

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## TwoSlick

I've tried getting mine to work in the past with USB.  Every time I try, I end up getting so frustrated, I start pulling out my hair.  I decided to stop trying to get it working until someone came out with a good faq. -hint - hint -   :Wink: 

- TwoSlick

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## undrwater

OK...embarrassed to ask but....where is kpilot?

i've emerged kde and kdeapps....how do i find kpilot?

Thanks

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## Hackeron

I'm not entirely sure.. but kde-pim... although there is a chance it is in kde-addons... try both  :Smile: 

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## Pergamon

 *undrwater wrote:*   

> OK...embarrassed to ask but....where is kpilot?
> 
> i've emerged kde and kdeapps....how do i find kpilot?
> 
> Thanks

 

make sure that you have

```
emerge pilot-link malsync
```

before kdepim. kdepim (3.2) builds kpilot support if those two packages are installed.

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## adamsjw2

Hi all,

I too pulled my hair out trying to get my Visor Platinum to work. This link had me up and going in minutes

http://www.linuxpda.com/visor/howto/current/index.html

This is the only place I found that PDAs won't sync on any other port than USB1

Also, don't forget to before the sync to

install-user -p /dev/pilot (having been symlinked to USB1) - u "John Doe" -i  1234 (or some other unique identifier for your PDA/

Also, KPilot has some significant problems, more often than not, it will hang on sync and you can't kill the process.  Most folks who use their PDAs with Linux use Evolution with Gnome-Pilot or JPilot. The former is almost identical to Outlook and the latter to Palm Desktop.

I hope this helps some,

Jim

Maysville KY USA

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## yippy

Jpilot and Kpilot both always worked great for me.  I've never gotten gpilot/evolution to do anything at all with my Palm, on any system, with any Palm device.

Maybe it's just me.  Scanning the forums, it seems like most people have the same experience as me, and ones who actually Evolution working aren't sure why it works.

Gpilot and Kpilot should both take lessons from Jpilot.  It's just silly that it's this difficult.

Joejoejoe

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## chenel

Thanks to adamsjw2's link, I got my Palm Zire 21 syncing to Evolution without too much difficulty.

It does work!  I don't know what's giving people so much trouble, but visit that how-to and it should get you going.

-Jeremy

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