News archive - April 15-30 2001

REX 6000 Help Page News Archive

April 15 - 30, 2001

April 30, 2001

Hitting the limit on contacts.

One user may have discovered the limit on contacts for the REX 6000. He was able to sync 4,211 contacts to his REX, with minimal calendar and no notes entries. See the update in the General Questions section of the REX FAQ for details. (Thanks, Murat.)

April 28-29, 2001

New add-in from Mr. Idogawa!

Mr. Idogawa has offered a new add-in, 3D Tic-Tac-Toe. Truly a step forwards in complexity and challenge, with play vs. computer or a friend. Check it out! Mr. Idogawa's site URL is on our Add-in page in the "English-Language add-ins section.

Today is REX Day!

"Tomorow it is Queen's Day (koniginnedag) in Holland (30 april) So you have to make make it also a REX-day for hole the world! Greetings. Chris from Holland".

Sounds good to me - April 30th is here-by declared to be REX Day around the world.

April 27, 2001

The REX 6000 is currently not available from the Xircom online store.

If you go to Xircom's site and enter the shopping area for the REX 6000, you will find the following message next to the REX 6000:

"Currently unavailable for purchase on the Shop Xircom store. Please click here to purchase from a Reseller partner."

April 25-26, 2001

The author of the new card game add-ins has changed their archive format to ZIP and added an english read-me for the Couples game.

"I made an add-in "Couple" for REX and "ReadMe.txt" in English. And I uploaded them to my homepage. . . There are ZIP "Couple" and "Pyramid" on my homepage."

The initial page is all in Japanese. You can find the download page by clicking on the daisy icon placed at near the bottom-right of the page. The add-ins are on the bottom-right of the download page and have titles in English. Thanks very much to Tanizaki-san for the updates!

New sync program available to sync email to the REX. (Thanks, Chris.)

"Rexmail enables the user to sync. emails between the Rex6000 and Outlook. Still in its early stages, it does work and allows offline reading and writing of emails to be transferred when Intellisync is run. Check it out at http://www.fitze.com/rexmail."

Updated Price Information: There is a $10 registration fee if you want to keep using the program after 30 days.

Movie listings are gone, maybe forever, from REX NET.

This arrived today from Xircom:

"Dear Valued Customer, Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Movie channel content is no longer available. We are unable to determine future availability of the Movie channel, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The Movie channel will be removed from the website in about a week's time. For those who have "opted-out", please note that we are sending this email as a one-time only message that concerns your account status. Sincerely, The REX.net Team"

What the heck does "Due to circumstances beyond our control..." mean?! Was there an earthquake in Movie-land? Come on, Xircom!! If you care about this REX NET feature send an email to [email protected] and let them know you want the movie listings back!

More cool stuff from the underground REX 6000 SDK team. (Thanks, Di!)

"All: I found one very nice utility that opens a way to create PC programs talking to Rex (database, add-in, web, ...). Please check: http://www.dimitriy.com/REX6000/main.htm."

From SciFiGuy: "Di: That command line utility is really great news! Maybe this is a doorway to implementing web sync capability, so we don't have to rely on rex.net. I'd really like to have a utility that reads in a list of URLs from a file, and transfers text from those pages into the REX. It would lack formatting, but would be a great way to grab some web zine articles for reading later."

See Di's site for more information!

New Add-ins are on John's quick add-in download page.

If you are looking for the new add-ins (two card-games that are fun and work on the REX 6000 and a DS2 only add-in that isn't really usable on the REX), they have been added John's quick add-in download page. The link to John's site is on our Add-in page. The new card-game add-ins are "Couple Solitaire" and "Pyramid."

April 24, 2001

New add-ins quick download.

Several users have reported problems working with the archive type used by the programmer who created the three new add-ins announced below. As a temporary work-around, here is a standard zip file with all three add-ins and the English-language readme for the Pyramid add-in.

April 23, 2001

New REX Add-ins! (Thanks, Mr. Idogawa!)

Mr. Idogawa, the first DS2 add-in developer to discover that DS2 add-ins could be made to run on the REX has found another add-in developer who is creating both DS2 and REX add-ins.

"The 4th (as far as I know) developer of add-ins for DS2 has appeared. The person (she?) made 3 DS2 add-ins:

Omikuji (oracle)

Couple (solitaire card game)

Pyramid (another solitaire)

While the former 2 add-ins use Japanese characters and may not be executable on REX, the latter one is designed to work also on Rex according to the author. From the BBS of CITIZEN:

'My name is Froggy. I made a game software "Pyramid" for REX6000. But I don’t have a REX6000. So I can’t test it. Do you have a REX6000? Would you test it on REX6000? Then tell me how is it, please. You can download it from "Download" page in my homepage.'

The page is here: http://homepage1.nifty.com/froggyHP/. The page is all written in Japanese, but I think you can find download page (click the daisy-look icon placed at near the right-bottom of the page), in which the add-ins are uploaded (also at near the bottom).

Things to note:

Froggy uses LZH compression in his archives. From Winzip help:

"To access LZH files the LHA.EXE program from Haruyasu Yoshizaki is required. You can download LHA.EXE from most bulletin boards. The latest version is distributed in the self-extracting LZH file LHA213.EXE. WinZip has been tested with LHA 2.13 and will not work with earlier versions (in particular, it will not function with LHARC, the predecessor to LHA)."

All of his/her add-in files have the same name - "addin.ds2." So after you extract them, rename the DS2 files so you know which is which.

"Couple" and Pyramid both display in English, and there is an English readme for Pyramid. Omikuji (Oracle) is all Japanese, and will require translation to be used effectively.

Translation of DS2 add-ins via Hex editors viable. (Thanks, Daan.)

A suggestion for translating DS2 add-ins if you have a HEX editor (easy to find freeware and shareware), familiarity with Japanese, and some time on your hands. . . some have already used this process to rename add-ins so that their title on the REX is in English.

"I am currently working on translating the Japanese add-ins for the REX. With translating I mean a *complete* translation, not only the texts that are visible in the EXTRAS screen of the REX, but also the texts that are used in the program. I am making progress! I already translated SNAKE successfully, it is now playable and you can actually see what settings you make at startup. I use a HEX editor called XVI32, this is a freeware very simple HEX editor. With this HEX editor I get to the bottom of the program. This is where all strings are stored. You are not allowed to insert OR delete characters from the string. All variables are "hard stored" this means that in the beginning of the programm there is a line that says int1 is stored at + 100, so if you change the length of a variable, the programm won't work anymore. All strings are stored NULL-terminated, so you can easily see the correct length of the string. I hope this information can contribute to your site! I think we should not wait for an English SDK, or wait for a free SDK. We should concentrate on translating the available add-ins, so we can play them in a decent way!"

April 20-22, 2001

Lotus Notes sync w/REX 6000 - multi-step, but do-able. (From Schlanger.)

"I have been synching to Lotus Notes with my R6K for 4 months now. Unfortunately its a fiddly process. First Synch R6K to MS Outlook using Intellisynch Then MS Outlook to Lotus Notes using Truesynch plus. Then finally MS Outlook to R6K using Intellisynch. I also have an ericsson phone synch at the same time. It sounds like a long process, but takes less than 5 minutes from start to finish.

Yep - upgraded from old old Rex. The disadvantage of setting up trusync pro in order that you can synch as I described preiously, is that you need to have a Rex or Rex pro installed to set it up. I think there is probably a registry workaround for that challenge. "

Comparison of Japanese DataSlim2 and REX 6000 web site completed! (Thanks, Zmcnulty.)

"Hi everyone. I've done the website, as promised. http://ds2translate.clanpages.com.

Still no PC synch though. I'm getting my cell phone tomorrow. Any questions, comments, etc...you know my email. take it easy. [email protected]."

How to get email and other items on your REX for reading later. (From B(2).)

"You could also experiment with a technique I use to keep up with some of the e-mail newsletters, alerts, reports, and tips that I get. I created a rule in Outlook to automatically move those particular e-mail messages to Outlook notes as they are received. Then I read them and save or delete them when I have a moment on the REX. You could do the same thing with any kind of news-by-email subscriptions that you might set up. Hope that helps."

April 19, 2001

Syncing to Lotus Notes

For those of you trying to sync Lotus Notes to the REX 6000, there's a great summary of one users' varied and creative attempts on our Sync Options page. Unfortunately, the author wasn't ulitmately successful. Any ideas? If so, contact us!

Quick recovery of your sync settings and REX setup after initializing. (Thanks, Tubalips.)

"I had my computer freeze during a synch which corrupted some of my memo files on the R6K and resulted in an error whenever I tried to even look at them in the memo listing. Talking with Xircom Support verified my suspicions that I would have to reinitialize the R6K using REXTools. However, having done this before, I wanted to minimize the "configure time" it takes when you sync the first time after an initialization. I actually guessed right the first time and came up with this very simple solution."

See the "General Questions and Troubleshooting" section of our REX FAQ for Tubalips solution.

REX discussion group in Spanish established (Thanks, Luis.)

"Hola, Mis disculpas por escribir este mensaje en Español, puedo leer inglés con dificultad pero no escribir. El 11 de abril compré mi Rex6000 y tengo la sensación de que soy el primero en Argentina que la tiene :)). Quería felicitarte por tu sitio!!! Muy bueno! Impresionante la cantidad de datos! También aprovecho la oportunidad para contarte que acabo de crear un grupo de discusión en ESPAÑOL sobre la REX6000: www.yahoogroups.com/group/rex6000 Muchas Gracias por todo y sigue así!!"

Without speaking Spanish it's hard to be sure, but it appears that there is a Spanish REX discussion group available at the address above! See our Internet Resources page for more information on Internet discussion groups.

April 18, 2001

For those early adopters among us who are thinking about playing with Outlook XP. (From Andres.)

"IntelliSync for REX version 1.01 works fine with Outlook XP (aka Outlook 2002, aka Outlook version 10) that comes with Office XP. Xircom's readme says:

"PIMS: -The REX 6000 supports the following PIMS: Intellisync Mobile Desktop and MS Outlook 97, 98, 2000. No other PIMS are supported."

While Outlook XP/2002/version 10 may not be "supported", at least it works."

April 16, 2001

Longest reported battery life! (Thanks, Sclanger.)

"I can't complain too much as I have managed to squeeze 4 months out of the batteries that were supplied with the R6K. Is this a record I wonder?"

As far as we know that is indeed a record!

Another source of cheap CR2016 batteries. (Thanks, SciFiGuy)

This looks like one of the lowest prices we've seen for low quantities.

"Digi-Key Corp sells Panasonic CR2016 90mAh lithium cells for $0.55 each in < 10 quantities, and $0.495 each in 10-200 quantities. If you order 51 of them for $25.25, you satisfy their $25 minimum to avoid a $5 handling fee. If 51 is too much to buy at one time, I suggest finding some other electronic goody to boost your order total over $25. They collect sales tax only in Minnesota. The Digi-Key part number for these is P138-ND."

The way things might have been . . .

We've had some requests to see what accessories Xircom originally planned to sell with the REX 6000. Thanks to Bob for these scans.

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