ED: Complaint about Sony

This is an interim post editorial (ED). There will probably be a bunch of these coming up.

EDitorial posts are going to be like an editorial comment, rather than a step in learning to code. But it may give you insight occassionally to something I'm thinking about, or some of the problems I'm working on in advance of the next blog posts.

Today I am writing this blog entry because I'm a bit exasperated. I just tried to upload my ROM to the Palm POSE emulator. It didn't work, so I figured I'd Google for "Sony POSE" to find alternate ways to get the ROM. It led me to the Sony developers site. So far so good.

But when I tried to download the ROM (for the SJ33 machine I own, no less) it required a registration/login. Okay, I don't mind too much. I've been doing a lot of registrations and downloads since I started this project and one more is no big deal. Well the page for registrations indicates (on http://www.cliedeveloper.com/develop_info/index.html) the following:

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Dear Developers,

As a follow up to Sony's recent decision to reassess the direction of the conventional PDA market, it has closed the CLIÉ Developer Support Site registration system to new members. Existing registered developers may continue to use the tools and services on the CLIÉ Developer Support Site at this time subject to the Membership and License Agreements contained therein.

Sincerely,
The CLIÉ Developer Support Desk
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This is a frustrating development. I guess I'll just keep using the Palm IIIc device, which I think is close to mine. Hopefully the fonts will work out okay. Or maybe I'll try to find something with a closer match on the screen. I just have this sinking feeling it won't really work because Sony HiRes OS4.1 seems to be a special animal all it's own when it comes to fonts and display.

If I don't find a way to get hold of the SJ33 ROM image (even better with a debug version) then I suppose the best solution is to buy a Palm device, and just write code for the emulator until I get one. Bummer.

One thing's for sure. I realize now that you have to be a little bit crazy to want to inflict all this on yourself just to write a silly little program... so call me crazy!