Palmcricket Frequently Asked Questions

But I don't have a printer with an infra-red port. What do I do now?

There are two possibilities:

Various workarounds are available to print from the handheld to printers that do not support infra-red printing, either in serial mode via the hot-synch serial port or in parallel mode via parallel to infra-red converters. Try the following links for more information: Stevens Creek Software or Palm Gear.

For printing from a desktop, one can use Palmcricket viewer, a free supplement to Palmcricket that works within Windows operating systems. Each time one executes a hotsynch procedure, archived score-sheets on the handheld will be transferred to a folder on the desktop, from where they can be viewed or printed using the viewer. The steps to achieve this are as follows:

Make sure the Palm Desktop software is installed on a Windows-based desktop, laptop or notebook computer. If not, install the software using the CD that came with the handheld. After the first hotsynch operation with the handheld, the Palm Desktop would have registered the Palm User Name of one's choice on the handheld and on the desktop. All data transfers during hotsynchs are done by Palm User Name. The Palm Desktop software creates a folder for each Palm User Name that it recognises and backs up handheld files to this folder during hotsynch operations. This can be found under:

C:\Program Files\Palm\XXX\Backup

or perhaps

C:\Palm\XXX\Backup on older Palm models.

or even

C:\Program Files\PalmOne\XXX\Backup on more recent (eg Tungsten E2) models.

(XXX is an abbreviated form of the Palm User Name, for example, if the Palm User Name is Joe Soap, then the folder will be called C:\Program Files\Palm\SoapJoe\Backup)

Download and install P-viewer software (or copy and paste P-Viewer.exe from the Palmcricket CD) to a suitable folder on the C drive. Call this folder C:\CricketResults, say.

Use the Windows Explorer (or navigate via My Computer) to look in the folder created by the Palm desktop software, i.e. C:\Program Files\Palm\SoapJoe\Backup

One should now be able to recognise all the archived palmcricket score sheets. For example, the 2003 world cup final will show as 2003_World_Cup_Final.PDB

Copy and paste these score-sheets to the same folder where P-Viewer was installed, i.e. C:\CricketResults. There may already be a copy of the sample match in the folder, but new matches scored should all have different names, as allocated during archiving on the handheld.

Navigate to the folder where P-Viewer was installed. Double click on the Palmcricket viewer software P-viewer.exe (recognised by an icon with three green stumps and a red ball). Then open one of the score-sheets, for viewing or printing, as explained in the P-Viewer on-line manual.

Every time a match is scored on the handheld, it must be transferred to the desktop via the hotsynch. One can then copy it from the Palm backup folder to the CricketResults folder, for viewing, printing or exporting.

The notes above are recommended guidelines only. One can, of course, tailor the procedures to fit one's own style and level of computer literacy. For example, it is possible to run the P-Viewer software directly from a Palmcricket CD and then from within P-Viewer, navigate one's way through to the Palm backup folder to view, print or export score sheets, without all the copying and pasting rigmarole explained above.

Unfortunately the P-Viewer software does not work on other operating systems such as Linux, AppleMac etc., so these notes refer only to operation on Windows-based desktop computers. P-Viewer seems to work to a degree on Linux under Wine, but one would need to install the right fonts, and use other tricks. There may be Windows emulators available for running under AppleMac. Definitely some research required here, any volunteers out there?