AOL email on your REX. (From Jack)
"Bizarre, but true. Start with these two ingredients:
- Outlook
- MailosaurusREX
or REXmail...either one is fine, although
mREX has a custom folder feature, while the other does not.
- Add an equal amount of eNetBot Mail (www.enetbot.com
[Allows you to send and receive AOL™ Mail from any standard email program])
- Stir and synch.
In theory, eNetBot should work with damn near any kind
of PDA, but YMMV. Seems to work well on the REX though, using the above
method.
Well, I'm off to figure out what the hell Meert's website
is about. Night, y'all."
Battery update from down under. (From Christopher)
"As far as I can tell, this is the CR2016 status in
Australia:
- CR2016 Energizers (80 mAh) are available in single blister
packs from Dick Smith Electronics for about $4 AUD (see www.dse.com.au
for store locations)
- CR2016 Vartas (90 mAh) are available from Battery AllSorts
- email Mark on either [email protected]
or [email protected]
. They are $1.50 AUD each for a lot of 50, or $2.00 AUD each for orders
under 50 pcs (orders come in boxes of 10). Note: it may take them a couple
of days to answer your email - but be patient, as delivery is Free!
- You used to be able to get CR2016 Panasonics (90 mAh)
for $1 AUD each from Battery Master in Melbourne (I'm not sure if delivery
is free), but they haven't been answering their 'phone recently: (03)
9563 8460"
Developer news: New and updated programming libraries
released. (From Graham)
Graham continues to provide some really cool "toys"
to the developer community.
"I have just released new versions of my libraries
plus a new one.
Dynlink V0.3. This adds a new FarCall mechanism, not using
the mechanism provided in the Rexdk. This allows for variable length argument
lists and for returning short or long values, eliminating "helper routines".
It is also re-entrant, allowing one library to call another. Note: I am
not claiming this is better than the new mechanism in the latest Rexdk --
I haven't had a chance to look at that yet. Hopefully I can throw away my
own mechanism.
- GRCLIB V1.1. This adds some functions to do with finding
memos, in particular grc_choose_memo.
- Registry V0.2. This adds a shareable library and also
import from and export to Memos (like REGEDITs .reg files).
- The new library is MemoIO V0.1. This implements Memo
reading and writing routines based on the standard C file reading and
writing routines (stdio.h). They are not identical but are similar.
As always:
This code was written for my own use but it is released
under the GPL and others are welcome to use it or the ideas contained in
it. I am always interested to hear of anyone using
the code or finding (or fixing) bugs or just comments!
More information is on http://www.cobb.uk.net/Rex"
More battery options in the Netherlands. (From JT)
"For all the Dutch people, this is just about cheap
batteries:
Voor iedereen die opzoek is naar CR2016 voor de Rex kan
ze naar mijn idee goedkoop krijgen bij Tapes, ik heb voor jullie even de
prijs opgevraagd en kreeg de volgende reatie van Hans Touw van Tapes:
Maxell CR2016 batterij
Prijs bij afname van minimaal 10 stuks (minder dan 10 is niet mogelijk)
is euro 0,90 netto per stuk exclusief BTW, inclusief verwijderingsbijdrage.
Levering uitsluitend op bestelling in ca. 6 werkdagen. Levering af magazijn,
betaling contant. Bij afname van 100 stuks ontvangt u 10% korting.
Hans Touw
TAPES Rotterdam BV
Schiedamsedijk 77
3011 EM Rotterdam
Tel: 010-214 1220
Fax: 010-411 5404
[email protected]
www.tapes.nl
Laatste keer dat ik daar besteld heb, hebben ze onder
rembours geleverd, daarvoor kwamen er natuurlijk wel extra kosten bij. Tapes
zit buiten Rotterdam o.a. ook in Hilversum.Ik hoop
dat iemand wat heeft aan deze informatie."
Boggle word puzzle add-in released! (From Paul)
"For anyone else who's interested, the add-in is
a "Boggle" type game in which you try to spell words from a grid within
the two-minute limit."
Paul's first add-in, Battle, found some a very dedicated
audience. His next should do the same...find Paul's Boggle add-in on Myles'
excellent Rex Extras site.
DS2 case order update: Oh baby, they are coming - finally!
(From Zmcnulty)
Some welcome news from "Z" - our man in Japan:
"Hey Dana, I got the order today. I opened the package
to confirm that the order was filled completely, and it was."
Zmcnulty has been very patient with delays on this side
of the Pacific that made getting the money into his hands a long and painful
process. Thanks to his patience and persistence with Citizen (who did a
great job filling the order once we got it to them) we are finally getting
to the point where we'll be putting cases in your hands.
I know a lot of you were beginning to wonder if this would
never happen - thanks for your patience. Cases need to be shipped from Japan
to the various parts of the world and then shipped to individuals, but we're
getting very close now.
By the way - if you volunteered to assist w/shipping in
a country/region and have any second thoughts we
need to know NOW!
Developer news: Rexdk updates for floating point and farcall.
(From Danie)
"Hi all, Ok, a couple of good
news for developers...
Dominic has done some impressive work on the floating point
part. Nearly all floating point functions are now separated in the genmath
lib. So only the functions which are really needed are linked in. Also the
compiler floating point part should work now (with some small inaccuarcies).
So no need to specify -doublestr.
I've rewritten the whole farcall logic, which is now nearly
totally transparent to the developer. There is no need to pass parameters
with Write/ReadPar, you can pass them like to normal functions. I've written
a small c program which adds a 3-letter signature to an addin, which can
then be used to dynamically "link" to it. Use the FindLibrary
function to search for the lib page from another addin. To call functions
in the library addin you just need to define the correct function definitions.
I've included two projects to explain this. If you need to return doubles
use farcalld, otherwise simply farcall (see the samples). To build a library
addin use the makelib batch file.
If you do not use float vars in your project it is likely
that the size of the .bin/.rex file is slightly larger than before. If you
define the _NOFLOAT_ flag with the compiler ( -D_NOFLOAT_ ), the .bin/.rex
file size is reduced about 60 bytes. I've linked in the math library per
default, so there's no need to link it in separately in the make batch file.
For some reason parts of the floating point logic don't
work yet correctly. I didn't have the time to track down the problem, but
it will be fixed in the next release. That's why the last part of the sample
doesn't work yet.
BTW, there is a new rex emulator available with a working
database, but with an early firmware version. It comes from an anonymous
donor..."
Myles' chess add-in now provides the opponent! (From Myles)
"New 1 player chess addin on www.rexextras.net.
You can play against the rex. Compared to the 2 player
version I had to drop choice of pawn upgrade (defaults to Queen) and en
passent (which seemed fairly obscure) in order to get it to fit in 8k.
The King and Queen now start on the corrected squares and
there is a warning displayed when check situation exists (it doesn't spot
check-mate).
It plays enough to make you have to think but it's relatively
easy to beat. I think to make it significantly smarter would require writing
it in assembler to get more code into the available space. I'd
welcome any feedback."
REX Dictionary add-in progress report. (From John)
"PHASE ZERO IS COMPLETE. This is the foundation of
the dictionary I am planning. What is it? So far it is basically a MERGE
OF MEMOCAT AND CMEMO. I got the CMEMO code from Chris Harris's site. This
is a PROTOTYPE so deal with the funky way some things work!!!
When you press SHOW MEMO, basically a 5 line CMEMO opens
up on the bottom half of the screen. Then you can only use the CMEMO finger-keys
to page up and down and press the return key to go back to MEMOCAT Functions.
YOU CAN ALSO USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION OF CMEMO! (starting
to sound like a dictionary!) Note after the search, the MEMOCAT screen is
erased. Don't worry it will re-appear when you exit the CMEMO. (and will
be fixed in a real release)
The BOOKMARK feature of CMEMO is not included.
As a refresher, here are the CMEMO keypresses:
Return ARROW KEY -> go back
to MEMOCAT function
CIRCLE/DOT KEY -> Do a Search
UP ARROW / DOWN ARROW -> Page
up and down.
Check it out if you are interested. Get
the file at the site:
http:/www.geocities.com/jdelferro/rex
NOTE: THIS IS NOT A TRUE RELEASE, SO DON't WASTE YOUR TIME
IF YOU THINK THIS IS A FINAL VERSION OF A DICTIONARY!
The source will be available next weekend. This version
looks like a train wreck between Cmemo and MemoCat. But it is essentially
a proof of concept. Try it with any dictionary files you have and get a
feel for what it will become."
Update on the Eudora-Outlook-Intellisync conflict. (From
Joe)
See the original story below on the 25th. Joe responds
quickly with a fix that allows Eudora and Outlook to co-exist peacefully
with Intellisync!
"I found that the problem Phil described is not
with Eudora itself; it is with how Eudora uses MAPI. To fix it; in Tools,
Options, MAPI, the first choice is when to "Use the Eudora MAPI Server".
Choose: Never I then had no further difficulties with Outlook. I do not
know whether it is Microsoft or Qualcomm who is at fault."
Phil confirms victory!
"I just can't believe it. It worked. I re-installed
my eudora and changed the setting, and what do you think happened? It
worked!!"
Batteries in the Netherlands. (From Martijn)
I live in the Netherlands and found some
additional battery brands that I haven't seen on your site (nor on Greg's)
yet. The brands are: Philips, Kinetic and König.
Can you or anyone in the REX community
find out what mAh's these brands do? (Well, can we?!?)
Here's some information that might be interesting
for REX-users living in Holland: I've been doing some investigations on
cr2016 battery brands and prices (only in my little village) and have come
up with the following prices (in dutch guilders - divide by 2.20371 to get
the price in Euro; starting Jan 1, 2002 ;-)):
| Brand |
Shop |
Price (fl) |
| VARTA |
n/a |
8,95 |
| DURACELL |
V&D |
9,98 |
| PHILIPS |
Expert |
8,95 |
| KINETIC |
EP (Electronic Partner) |
7,50 |
| KöNIG |
Elektro World |
7,95 |
| TUDelft |
unknown |
4,50 (Students and university employees
only) |
I hope this info will be usefull to anyone
and that someone can find out those specs on the "new" brands."
And still more batteries from the Netherlands! (From Richard)
"I wanted you to know I found another
battery vendor in the Netherlands. It
is HEUTS Car Equipments (www.heuts.nl)
Heuts is only located in:
Hoensbroek
Kerkrade
Maastricht 1
Maastricht 2
Roermond
Sittard
Echt
Panningen
Venray
Venlo
Helmond
R2016
KNOOPBATTERIJ CR2016
Euro 1.36
NLG 3.00"
Oops.
The recent story on the two new chess add-ins
mistakenly attributed one of them to the wrong person. (My bad.) Just to
set things straight, Chris (of Adder and Calpatch
fame) and Myles (webmaster of the excellent REX
Extras site) are the developers of the two chess add-ins released.
Chess add-in updated.
Myles has updated his Chess add-in. There
are new graphics for the king and queen, white is now assigned the first
move, and the game recognizes when one side has lost the king. See the "Games
: Puzzle" section of his
site.
Outlook-Eudora-Intellisync conflict
identified. (From Phil)
Phil was experiencing a persistent error
when trying to sync. After installing Intellisync he was only able to sync
until he shut down and restarted:
"Everything works fine as long as
I am running the computer. The momment I turn it off and re-start it.
Outlook 2000 give my a message "that a recently install program may cause
Outlook or your e-mail program not to function properly. It gives you
2 option Yes to correct the problem. Which I did. Outlook comes back and
tells you it could not correct the problem and that I need to re-start
the machine. If I answer NO nothing happens."
The standard troubleshooting steps didn't
help at all. Luckily, Phil tracked down the source of the problem:
"Hi Again, I just wanted to let
you I finally figured out what was going on. I
Re-formated my Hard Drive and only installed Windows 98SE, Office 2000
and Intellisync using the method you mentioned. The Rex worked great.
Then I started to install one program at a time....and the winner is Eudora.
Everytime I would install Eudora (version 4.33 or 5.1), Outllook would
give that wierd message and Intellisync would not work. I would get the
missing DLL message. I uninstalled Eudora and made sure it was out of
the resgitry. Now everything actually works great. I guess that Microsoft
doesn't want any competion on the same computer."
Syncing with Goldmine. (from Dominic)
"Just a tip I've got after playing with my new REX.
To sync from Goldmine, as there is no PIM, Goldmine has a fully functional
sync option for Outlook, and hence from there to the REX. Hey presto, hundreds
of contacts and diary items, even alarmed tasks. You can even select only
the contacts you have tasks and/or history with."
REX 6000 beauty treatment, part two. (From Drew)
See original story below in Jan 23. Looks pretty slick,
eh?
UK's method: "I actually used a the green part of
a sponge dish cleaner, it has a wire wool type grain but not as harsh. To
get close to the logos i placed a ruler over them then rubbed away."
Drew's method: "My approach on refinishing my Rex
(below) was to use 0000 steel wool. It removes the paint and puts a shine
on the underlying stainless steel. I put scotch tape on the screen and buttons
to keep from damaging those surfaces."
Battle add-in updated. (From Paul)
"Here's an updated version
of the Battle add-in. There is only
one minor change: the "Take It" and "Leave It" button
locations are switched. A few people on the rumor page made suggestion,
and I thought it made sense."
REX 6000 beauty treatment. (From UK)
"Hi All. Havn't contributed
for some time now but have kept an eye on the board. . .
I have had my Rex for a year now and it was looking very
shaby, the silver paint has come off on the metal and the plastic making
it look cheap and nasty. So I thoughjt what have
I got to lose if I use wire wool and gently remove the rest of the paint.
I covered the screen,buttons and logos(Xircom & Rex)
with tape and removed the paint.
I now have a shiney aluminium cased REX framed by white
which matches the silk buttons perfectly. I left the back of the Rex as
is. I must say that it now looks better than a mini
ipaq. I have received more comments in 1wk than I have in the last 6mts.
Best thing I ever did. Just thought
I would share that with you all. Has anyone else
done this?"
Two new Chess add-ins released! It never rains, but it
pours!
Truly a milestone in REX development - two, count 'em,
two chess add-ins released today! Put your thinking cap on and enjoy the
challenge. . . for now you'll need a partner to play, as neither provides
a computer player in this first release.
From Chris:
"Hi all, I've posted a simple
chess
board addin. No computer player (yet) or even checking for valid moves
or checkmate, but does save your game for you - thanks to Graham for excellent
(and fast!) "Registry" routines.
To install it:
- download Chess.zip to your PC & unzip it.
- use RexTools to load Chess.rex & ChessFnt.rex on your Rex
- Run ChessFont on your Rex, just once. Be sure your batteries show "GOOD"
status before doing this, and do not try to put ChessFnt in Adder. After
it runs successfully, you may delete it.
- Chess addin will now be operational; load to Adder if desired.
Questions, comments: [email protected]"
And another released by Myles. (From Antmelnat):
"Another Chess
addin with valid move checker."
(Note - image is from Myle's
REX site, the best place to review the available add-ins for your
REX. Myles provides screen shots of each add-in he lists!)
New two-player version of Othello add-in. (From Antmelnat)
Myles has updated his Othello add-in:
"A new 2 player version of Othello
available."
Updates to rex.mamy.to and related websync tools. (From
Meert)
It's been a while since we've reported in any detail on
Marek's rex.mamy.to
web sync site. Last year (in September!?) Marek set up his rex.mamy.to
REX web sync website, and it has become the only "replacement site"
for the original rex.net websync service that Xircom formerly provided for
the REX 6000.
Over time he has added features and he and his many users
have added content available for download. Currently there are dozens of
selections from around the world:
Category Name
(Type of content) |
Number of contents |
| Weather |
115 |
| News |
44 |
| Horoscope |
13 |
| Entertainment |
26 |
| E-books |
19 |
| Private |
0 |
| Other |
11 |
| Test |
18 |
Syncing with Marek's site can be accomplished quickly and
easily using the "REX.net sync" selection on the "Preferences"
menu in Intellisync, once you have run a simple registry update to adjust
your sync settings (provided by Marek). (You can also use VREX.NET
to point to Marek's site for web sync.) Marek has upgrading his site lately,
and (for those of us who want to select our own content to make available
for download from Marek't site) Meert has refined his content grabbing tools
that are designed to be used with Marek's site. Mans provides an excellent
summary of what's new:
"Hello All! I don't know
if it has been mentioned here before but I've got some really impressive
news about Majek's site (just in case you guys just plug your Rex in and
synch daily without looking up rex.mamy.to anymore). Actually, two really
wonderful news:
1. Rex.Mamy
has online, real-time chat feature now!
~ just go to MainPage [after logging in] and click on
the Chat:-) Link below the the message board link. Got to chat with a
couple of rex users/developers there and really helped me out a lot with
my configuring grabber scripts by Meert (Meert assisted me step-by-step
actually, and eventually changed the settings himself!) I met two other
Rex users there who quite apparently never post here at Rex Rumor (mike
and jane).
2. Meert's Grabber scripts are fully operational and
tested!
~ remember those times when we were whining about how
good it would be if we could only just choose the "portions"
of the webpage to synch with? Well, Meert has finally solved that for
us. He's providing a user-friendly grabber page where you can indicate
the Start Code and the End code [i.e., indicate the specific points where
you want to start and stop grabbing content from a web page] -- the results?
: very much cleaner downloaded pages from rex.mamy (no more garbage),
smaller files, thus faster synch times with rex.mamy. In the venerable
words of old: IT'S ALL GOOD!!! Visit Meert's grabber page at
http://meert.kicks-ass.net/rex/wml
and see for yourself.
That's all and keep on REXin!"
Rex.mamy.to
even has it's own discussion board to post questions about the site if you
need help!
Web2Rex 1.3 released - new features and fixes! (From Laurent)
Note: If you downloaded Web2Rex
1.3 before 3:45 PM Pacific Standard Time, please download the file again
to get the updated template for driving directions. If you aren't downloading
driving directions using Web2Rex, no need to update.
"Rexers, thanks for your support
and ideas. But as everyone can imagine there is no limit of what you could
imagine to download in Rex from the web (your specific web pages, your country,
music news, etc) ... but in practice it takes time, efforts and anyway:
at the end there are always compromises.
So because I do not have enough spare time to release updates
of Web2Rex every two days (it's not like I don't want to, but I have a life
beside REX you know... ;o), I plan to come later with a more flexible/customizable
version of Web2Rex (let's say a version 2.0) but this will not happened
before one month from now. Hope you'll be patient and won't get ride of
you REX for big Palm ;o)
To keep you waiting, here
is the version 1.3 update with one new feature:
- you can add several itinaries for the "Direction"
category either in USA or in France.
and 2 bugs corrected:
- non expected message "please enter a zodiac sign
for Astro" when Astro is not selected
- display error (overlap of icons) when 5 icons.
PS: it's highly recomanded you select the setting option
"delete previous web downloads" otherwise you may have the overlap
of icon display bug on the REX (no big deal, but it's not nice)."
More thoughts on HTML to WML conversion. (From Alvin)
"Just a comment on the WAPTool software to convert
from HTML to WML. Rather than using a compiled convertor, it might be easier
to modify an XSL stylesheet to spit out VRexNet compatible XML. What might
be even better is XSL that directly converts HTML to Rex WML for direct
upload to the Rex (not that we have a tool to do that yet).
http://webcab.de/wclsource.htm."
WAPTool to convert HTML to WML. (From Erik)
"I found an interesting piece of software, It's
called WapTool and it converts HTML into WML. It has some nice features
and is really easy to use. Best of all it free. You can get it at;
http://www.argogroup.com/waptool"
Marek (who provides the rex.mamy.to
web sync service for the REX) also released an HTML-WML
converter a while back.
Dictionary project rolling on (we hope). (From John)
"OK. If you are interested
in working on the Dictionary Project, go to my web site and read what I've
written so far.
http://www.geocities.com/jdelferro/rex
(Left Column, click on DICTIONARY PROJECT)
Basically, If we go through with this it becomes GROUP
AUTHORSHIP and FULLY PUBLIC SOURCE CODE.
If you are interested and have ideas, please post on the
discussion board at my site."
New eBook site up and running, ah, typing. (From Mans)
"Hey All! Found some time yesterday and this morning
to put up a website. It's nothing fancy, it'll cater mostly to e-books fans
like Tubalips (think ebooks, think Tubalips :-) Anyways the address is:
http://rex.xrs.net
Please be warned that you "may" find my method
(a bit of copyright infringement here and there) or some of the content
despicable. Couldn't help it though. I write publicly for free, I think
I should also be reading for free :-) Lame excuse.
For any ebook requests, please just post them here. My
ebook collection is quite extensive already (about a couple of hundred titles)
and I'm thinking about adding about 5-10 titles to my website daily. Feel
free to visit."
Web2Rex 1.2d released. (From Laurent)
"Version 1.2d
update contains:
- a fix for the overlap of icons when more than 4 icons
(also can prevent to the transfer to REX)
- does not ask for information if not required (e.g., will not ask for Stock
information if Stocks are selected for download)
- a "clear" all addresses button for directions"
Plotter, mathematical add-in released. (From Vitaliy)
"Here is the new add-in, Plotter
0.3 which draws plots of specified mathematical functions. . . I've
attached small archive with .rex file itself and .txt instructions how to
use."
Really cool things coming from our developer community!
As you know, there is a developer's mailing list that our
technically minded REX developers use to share information and ideas. It's
been great watching as they work together to expand the potential of the
REX.
Recently there has been a lot of work going on to implement
libraries and enable linking to them dynamically from add-ins. Libraries
are sets of code stored on the REX that other add-ins can use. Libraries
allow common functions to be stored once on the REX and used by any add-in,
allowing for more custom functions and features in the add-in itself! (See
stories below on January 15th, January
5th, and December 27th.) Waleed, Marc, Daniel,
Dom, Graham and others have been instrumental in forging ahead in this move
to a more sophisticated and powerful REX development environment. From Chris
on Graham's work:
"I finally got a chance to browse Graham's very
professional contributions, and all I can say is WOW!!! ... He has done
an excellent job of creating what we have needed for a long time - a well
written & documented Rex-6000 shared library package."
Graham's work includes the following libraries recently
released:
"REGISTRY is a library of routines to store data
similarly to the MS Windows registry. This is designed to avoid having
to clutter the user's memos with INI files. This is version 0.2 which
seems to work but there are some important things that still need doing:
1) a REGEDIT-style program to export and import registry
values (e.g. so that users can import a memo with initial values and
then delete the memo);
2) create a shareable library version of it so
that you don't need to link all the registry code into your addin.
GRCLIB is a library of "useful" routines,
which I use in most of my software. This is version 1.0 and comes in staticly
linked and dynamicly linked versions.
The developers are working on ways of storing these libraries
in "holes" in the REX firmware, so they can have access to them
on the REX without using up any of the 24 add-in slots provided by adder.
Excellent work which should result in better and more interesting
things to come for the REX 6000!
Web2Rex 1.2b released
- significant update! (From Laurent)
Updated to version 1.2b after original
post - download again and update your version!
"Hi, as promised, this version includes much more
features:
1) weather forecast: USA and Europe (in English, French,
German, Italian or Spanish language).
2) News: 3 categories of news in english or french
3) Movies: in USA or in France
4) Stocks and exchange rates
5) Driving direction: limited to the USA
6) Astrology: the horoscopes of the day (in english)
And dont forget to read the release notes for more info
and FAQ. Enjoy."
REX6000.org gets an icon. (From Meert)
"I dn't know if you're familiar with the concept
of favicons? If you unzip this attachment and put the ico file in the
root of your website (http://www.rex6000.org) people will get this icon
in their bookmarks when they bookmark your site with IE5 or above."
Thanks, Meert - icon inserted and ready for use! Bookmark
this site (again, if necessary) to see the icon on your favorites list.
More info on Datasync card coming from Citizen (in Japan
only, so far!) (From Antmelnat)
"DataSync Card...colors,colors,colors and a flip cover
too.
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/news/2001/11/06/09.html
http://ascii24.com/news/i/topi/article/2001/11/07/631059-000.html
(Click to enlarge images)
Battle add-in game released! (From
Paul)
Battle is a text-based adventure game.
From the readme.txt file:
"The object of the game is to defeat
a dragon. To do this, earn points by attacking and defeating lesser monsters...
Now how can you resist that?! Find Battle
here, but look for courage within your
own heart.