I haven't heard about burned out serial ports, but it reminds me that when I hought a Palm IIIc a few years back, it wouldn't sync with my PC until I hacked up a serial cable with one of the pins disconnected. I can't remember which pin, but if I just used a straight cable with all 9 pins connected through, it didn't work.
I can't even remember how I worked that out, because I know that Palm support didn't have an answer for me at the time.
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Geoff
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Mk1 Blue - was 4GB, now 16GB
Mk2 Red - was 12GB, now 60GB