Pilot 1000
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Personal digital assistants |
| Founded | March 1996 |
| Parent | U.S. Robotics |
The Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 marked the initial personal digital assistants released by Palm Computing, a division of U.S. Robotics, debuting in March 1996.
Equipped with a Motorola 68328 CPU running at 16 MHz, these devices offered built-in RAM capacities of 128 kB for the Pilot 1000 and 512 kB for the Pilot 5000. The unit featured a compact plastic casing measuring 120x80x18 mm and weighed approximately 160 grams. Its display was a 160x160 pixel monochrome touchscreen, incorporating a "Graffiti input area" occupying the lower third of the screen. Physical interface elements included a green power switch, four dedicated application buttons (Date Book, Address Book, To Do List, Memo Pad), two scrolling buttons, contrast adjustment controls, and a compartment for the stylus.
Memory could be expanded through a slot located beneath a rear cover, supporting hardware upgrades up to 12 MB RAM and 4 MB ROM. The device operated on Palm OS 1.0, stored on a 512 kB ROM chip alongside built-in applications. RAM configurations ranged from 128 kB to 1 MB and could be extended to 2 MB via the PalmPilot Professional memory card.
The initial device configuration required calibration and system startup, followed by synchronization using Pilot Desktop software. This software was distributed on floppy disk or CD-ROM compatible with Windows platforms such as Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT. Subsequently, Pilot Desktop was developed into Palm Desktop for Mac OS, while open-source alternatives emerged for Linux—recognized as one of the favored development platforms for Palm OS.
Lawsuits
Among legal disputes involving Palm, Inc. were a trademark conflict with Pilot Pen over the use of "Pilot" and a patent infringement case with Xerox concerning David Goldberg's "Unistroke" patent.