Treo 650 Hacks

Treo 650

I found my old Treo 650 in the bottom of one of my drawers. It was one of the first smart phones that actually worked well, and had useful apps. I tried to do something fun with it. Turns out you can transform it into a small serial terminal, and even run Linux on it (kinda sorta).

The Treo 650 as a terminal

Made a serial cable adapter and turned it into a Mini Serial Terminal. Here it talks to a MarcDuino! I will post more details when I find my notes on this project.

The Treo 650 runs Linux

Turns out a bunch of crackpots found the drivers and made a version of Linux that can run on the Treo, including booting in graphics mode. Just because I could... Also more details when I find my old notes.



In this demo, we go through a complex process to recreate a new copy of the original IBM 1401 FORTRAN II compiler tape, and run it to successfully compile the two short program examples from the manual.

See the main page about the IBM 1401 mainfraime.