DateFix

Keep your Palm working after 31 December 2031.

Palm OS stops its calendar on 31 December 2031, 23:59:59. After that the clock resets, the Calendar cannot go forward, and appointments in 2032 crash applications. DateFix moves the start of Palm OS's date counting from 1904 to a year you choose (default 1932), so a Palm keeps a real, working calendar and clock for another 128 years (1932 – 2059).

Status: beta. Verified on a Tungsten T3, a Palm m515 and in emulators; see Tested devices and Known limitations. Please read Before you start.

Download: DateFix-2.0.0-beta.5.prc  |  Article with photos, the measurements and every dead end: DateFix: Keeping a Palm Alive After December 31st, 2031

The idea, and credit

Palm OS stores a date in a 7-bit year (1904 + 0…127) and counts the clock in seconds since 1 January 1904. The hardware clock keeps running past 2031, only the conversion to a date stops.

The basic trick is not new: run the Palm's clock some decades in the past and add the offset whenever a year is shown. NaivePalmdayMitigation by Tavisco (2024, Palm OS 3.5 - 4.x, for HackMaster/X-Master) does it with an offset of 56 years, by hand. DateFix takes the same idea and automates and extends it:

• it moves the clock itself, as if the Palm had been shipped with the counter starting in 1932, so the clock stays below the limit for 128 years and survives a reset;
• the stored dates (appointments, tasks, birthdays, expenses) are converted once, with a backup;
• it patches more of the date API (the weekday and all the year formatting functions, the date picker) and runs on Palm OS 5 as well as 3.5 - 4.x;
• applications see an ordinary, gap-free calendar of "internal" years 1904…2031; only what differs from reality is patched: the weekday and the year shown to the user.

The limits are the same as for any such fix: the packed date keeps its 7-bit year (the window is 128 years), and applications that draw the year themselves, instead of calling the system, need patches of their own (see Known limitations).

The start year can be any of 1904, 1908, … 1972 (steps of four, so leap years stay aligned). The default 1932 gives 1932 – 2059. It is 28 years after 1904, and 28 years are 10,227 days, exactly 1,461 weeks (the leap-year pattern of 1901 – 2099 repeats every 28 years), so every date has the same weekday internally and in reality, and DateFix's weekday patches become no-ops. An application doing its own day arithmetic is then right without any patch; only the year it shows remains. 1960 (offset 56, like Tavisco's) has the same property.

Before you start

• Make a HotSync backup and, if the device has a card slot, insert an SD card: DateFix copies the databases it is about to change to /PALM/DateFix on the card first.
• Enabling converts your stored dates (every year moves by start year − 1904). Dates before the start year cannot be represented and are set to its first year (DateFix tells you how many). Birthdays or appointments before 1932 are affected.
• Emergency exit: a soft reset while holding the navigator up button (a "no notify" reset) starts the Palm without DateFix. Then open DateFix and tap Disable, or delete it.
• Palm OS below 3.5 is not supported. DateFix checks this before it converts anything.

Usage

1. Install DateFix.prc (HotSync or card).
2. Start DateFix, choose the start year and tap Enable. DateFix counts the dates to convert and asks; tap Convert.
3. Test runs a self test. The Clock check under the buttons shows what Palm OS displays next to DateFix's own calculation, with OK or MISMATCH.
4. DateFix installs itself again after every reset while it is enabled. You can leave it alone from now on.

Button / menu	What it does
Enable / Disable	Enable: convert data, install the patch, move the clock. Disable: the same in reverse. Disable is refused while the clock is after 2031; entries after 2031 are set to 31 Dec 2031 after you confirm.
Test	Self test of the patched functions.
New Year / Back	Sets the clock to 31 Dec 2031 23:59:50 to watch the rollover; Back returns to the real time.
Options → Prepare Update	Takes the patch out without converting anything back, so HotSync can replace DateFix with a new version. The new version switches itself on again after the HotSync. Use this instead of Disable for updates.
Options → Show Trace	Shows what applications passed to the date functions. For bug reports.

What is converted

Stored dates of the built-in applications are moved with the epoch, one record at a time, in a copy that is written back in one piece (records are not marked as changed, so the next HotSync does not re-send them):

Application	Converted
Date Book / Calendar	date, repeat end date, exceptions
To Do / Tasks	due date, completion date, repeat start and end
Address / Contacts	birthday and anniversary
Expense	date
all databases in RAM	creation, modification and backup date

The original databases are not touched on the card; /PALM/DateFix holds copies made before converting. A reset in the middle of a conversion is reported at the next start.

Applications that draw the year themselves

Some applications do not ask the system to format the year, they compute year + 1904 and draw the result themselves (Date Book+: week, two-week and year view). They show the internal year. DateFix has a small table of such applications (so far Date Book+ 3.0H, and TimeCopy 1.4, whose HotSync sets the clock from the desktop's Unix time): it writes the start year into the year constant of their stored code, so they compute the real year. The sites were found with tools/yearfinder; Test shows apps: n (sites patched), other: n (another version of a known application, not touched) and locked: n (database that cannot be written). Disable takes the patch out again.

The table is data, not code: apps/apps.txt lists every application and site, and the build turns it into a resource of DateFix. make apps turns the same file into DateFixApps.pdb: installed like an application, it replaces the built-in table if its version is higher, so a new application version needs no new DateFix. A damaged or older DateFixApps is ignored. Options → Show Trace shows which table is in use (Table 2026100201 (built in) or (DateFixApps)). New sites come from tools/yearfinder --table NAME CREATOR, which prints them as lines for apps.txt (check each one in the application before adding it).

An application in ROM cannot be patched, and a RAM copy of the same name and creator does not take over from it (tried on a Handspring Visor). The way around is a copy under its own creator: tools/ramcopy/make_ram_copy.py makes it from the application's .prc (name DateBk3x, creator HsDR, launcher name "DB+ (RAM)"; the table already has an entry for it). It shows up as a second icon, runs from RAM, patched, and uses the same appointments. The hardware button and alarms still start the ROM version. DateFix does not contain Date Book+ and this repository has no copy of it; you need the .prc of version 3.0H yourself. Applications and versions that are not in the table are not changed.

Tested devices

Device	Palm OS	Result
Tungsten T3	5.2.1	works: rollover 2031 → 2032, Calendar both ways, date picker, reset
Palm m515	4.1	works: conversion, soft reset keeps the patch
Tungsten E2 (emulator)	5.4	works
Palm m515 (emulator)	4.1	works
Handspring Visor	3.5.2H3	Date Book works; Date Book+ 3.0H: the ROM version shows the internal year in week, two-week and year view; a RAM copy under its own creator (launcher entry "DB+ (RAM)", see tools/ramcopy) shows the right year in every view (confirmed by the owner of the device)

Help wanted: T5, TX, LifeDrive, Zire, Clié and everything else is expected to work (the export table entries are located by decoding the ROM, nothing is hard-coded; DateFix patches nothing if it cannot find them), but it is not confirmed. If you try it, please report: device, Palm OS version, the self test line, the clock check line and Show Trace.

Known limitations

• Applications that draw the year themselves (not through the system's date functions) show the internal year, unless DateFix knows them. DateFix has a small table of such applications and versions (so far Date Book+ 3.0H, found with tools/yearfinder): it writes the start year into the year constant of their stored code, so the week, two-week and year view show the real year (checked on a Palm m515 in the emulator; Test shows apps: n). Disable takes it out. An application in ROM (the Visor's own Date Book+) cannot be changed and keeps showing the internal year, as does every application and version that is not in the table. A RAM copy of the same name and creator does not take over from the ROM version (Visor, 2026-10-01); a copy under its own creator does (tools/ramcopy), but then Date Book+ has to be started from its own launcher icon. Date Book+ 3.0H (Handspring build) does not run on Palm OS 5 at all. The standard Date Book is right in every view.
• HotSync with a desktop transfers the internal dates. Conduits and the desktop software know nothing about the moved epoch.
• The window is 128 years (the year field has 7 bits). Dates outside it cannot be stored.
• Databases of other applications (third-party calendars, Note Pad, Voice Memo) are not converted; their record formats are not known. Date Book+ 3.0H keeps appointments, floating events, journal entries, templates and To Dos in the standard Date Book and To Do databases, which are converted; its own database Datebk3HDB stayed empty in every test (see fix log, section 27).
• Palm OS 3.5 and 4.x: the date picker is replaced by DateFix's own (SelectDay is patched through the trap table). On Palm OS 5 the system picker is patched instead (see fix log, sections 11 and 15).
• Not supported: Palm OS below 3.5 (Palm III with 3.0/3.3, Palm V with 3.1).

How it works

On Palm OS 5 the system is native ARM code and 68k applications run in the PACE emulator. A 68k trap leads to a small stub, through a shim, to a veneer that reads the function from the export table of a system module in RAM. Every caller - 68k applications and native modules - goes through that table, so DateFix replaces the entries (TimSecondsToDateTime, DayOfWeek, DayOfMonth, DateToAscii, DateToDOWDMFormat, DateTemplateToAscii, and for the date picker SelectDay and StrIToA while it runs) with its own position-independent ARM code. The table index of every function is decoded from the shim at run time; nothing is patched unless every instruction matches.

On Palm OS 3.5 – 4.x the functions are 68k code and their traps are replaced directly with SysSetTrapAddress.

Internal and real years have the same leap years (the offset is a multiple of four and the window stays below 2100), so month lengths and day counts need no change. The article explains it step by step, with photos; the fix log documents the whole investigation, including dead ends; docs/plan-epoch.md the design.

Building

Requires the palmdev-macos toolchain (prc-tools-remix, arm-palmos-gcc 3.3.1) and pilrc 3.2.

make            # build/DateFix.prc
make apps       # build/DateFixApps.pdb, the application table on its own
make test       # host tests: calendar arithmetic, record conversion, application patches and table

The version is in VERSION; Options → About shows it. Every push runs the host tests and builds DateFix.prc on GitHub Actions with the same, pinned toolchain (workflow); the DateFix.prc of a release is the one built there. The launcher icons in src/icon/ are generated by tools/icon/ and committed, so building needs no extra tools. tools/emulator/ builds CloudpilotEmu with a writable real-time clock (upstream ignores clock writes), the test emulator used for this project.

Project layout

src/	the application (datefix.c), the native ARM code for Palm OS 5 (datefix_arm.c), the 68k wrappers for Palm OS 3.5 - 4 (m68k.c), the date picker (selectday.c), record conversion (convert.c), calendar arithmetic (calendar.c)
apps/	the application table: applications that draw the year themselves and where DateFix patches them
tests/	host tests: the arithmetic for every day and start year, the record conversion, the application patches and table
tools/	build checks, icon generator, the test emulator patch, diagnostic probes (see tools/README.md)
docs/	fix log (the whole investigation), design
ROADMAP.md	what is open

Reporting a problem

Open an issue: there are forms for a device report (DateFix on a device that is not in the table above, working or not) and a bug report. They ask for device and Palm OS version, DateFix version (Options → About), the Test line, the Clock check lines and Show Trace (which also names the application table). Do not attach your database files.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Palm OS is a trademark of its owners; this project is not affiliated with them.