# AlphaSmart Dana fun 
### Entered on AlphaSmart Dana 
### 20181223

I located some Dana software today^1. SiEd, CardTxt, and
UniCMD^2. I will cover each in turn.

[1](gopher://1436.ninja/1/Palm/AlphaSmart_Dana)
[2](gopher://1436.ninja/1/Palm)

SiEd Dana is excellent. It is a gpl licensed full blown
text editor. It has six font choices, autosaves if you exit
the app, and can open two files at once in split view. This
last item -- split view -- is very cool. It is allowing me
to have a 60 column ruler displaying under my file that
does not scroll. (NOTE: if you're reading this on the web,
it does not sound like a big deal, but when formatting for
gopher this is pretty rad)

CardTxt Dana is also excellent. You need to change the
preferences in the app to save files without a .txt
extention. You can choose DOS or UNIX EOL. There are three
choices of fonts. Over all it is a very capable editor.

Out of the two, I am rather a bit more impressed with
SiEd Dana. The font choices and the split view are killer
features. The deal breaker is beaming. CardTxt does this
correctly and SiEd _does not_. This makes CardTxt the
winner.

UniCMD is a file manager. A very capable file manager.
It does encryption. It does compression, it does secure
deletion, it does file association, it does backup of
the device, there is a ton of stuff it does. The only
thing I can't seem to figure out is how to make it the
default launcher. I suppose that's okay. It beats FileZ,
but not Resco Explorer (the ftp functionality on the PEG-
UX50 is super useful). On the Dana it is looking to be
indispensible.

The other thing I want to add is the Dana battery hack^3.
This is pretty simple to perform, but a game changer. The
Dana came originally with a NiMH battery pack, or you could
unplug that and use 3 AA batteries. The battery pack, if you
have it is now 16 plus years old. Dead for sure. The hack
is to follow the wire from the positive battery terminal to
the motherboard, desolder it, then cut the positive wire
going to the plug for the battery pack that goes to the
NiMH terminal on the motherboard and solder the positive
you removed for the AA positive to that NiMH wire. This
connects the recharging circuit directly to the AA battery
terminals (ground is common and doesn't need to be touched).
The result is you can then pop in 3 NiMH AA rechargable
batteries and charge them via the USB A port on the back. I
have batteries on order for this hack and will mention it
once completed.

[3](http://vancefry.com/alphasmartian/alphasmart-dana-power-hack/)