PDB conversion error

halftone · Yesterday, 06:31 AM

Hello,

I am not a prolific e-book reader, preferring paper where possible. But I like to carry a few books on my phone, for when I get stuck somewhere with a long wait.

I have a small collection of PDB books from Palmpilot days of the last century, and was delighted to find Caliber which proceeded to convert all of them to Epub - except one.

That consistently fails with the last line of the log:

struct.error: unpack requires a buffer of 2 bytes

This appears to be a Python error, discussed in this [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzKSt1YgL9M"]You Tube link[/URL

I'm a kindergarten level coder, so this is quite possibly my error, or
my problem .pdb file is malformed, but I felt I should report it anyway.

Regards / Tony

Quoth · Yesterday, 09:13 AM

There is more than one format of "pdb" ebook as pdb = Palm Data Base file. Some apps on the Palm OS can read more than one format.

Some might have DRM?

I remember friends having Palm PDAs before smartphones, so only a couple of years ago I bought a Palm Z22 (which came out this Century but was obsolete already) and found a Sync program for Linux and a website with old PalmOS apps, so I experimented with converting epub ebooks to the two different pdb formats that Calibre supports. Unsurprisingly smart quotes and Scandinavian characters didn't work, even though all of that was a solved problem before Palm OS, or certainly before the Z22. Actually I changed from Eudora to Thunderbird email on the PC due to poor character/language support and abandoned a "classic" Wordstar clone in the mid 1990s as it only did 7 bit ASCII.

Yesterday, 06:31 AM	#1
halftone Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2025 Device: Google Pixel 9 Pro XL	PDB conversion error Hello, I am not a prolific e-book reader, preferring paper where possible. But I like to carry a few books on my phone, for when I get stuck somewhere with a long wait. I have a small collection of PDB books from Palmpilot days of the last century, and was delighted to find Caliber which proceeded to convert all of them to Epub - except one. That consistently fails with the last line of the log: struct.error: unpack requires a buffer of 2 bytes This appears to be a Python error, discussed in this [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzKSt1YgL9M"]You Tube link[/URL I'm a kindergarten level coder, so this is quite possibly my error, or my problem .pdb file is malformed, but I felt I should report it anyway. Regards / Tony

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Yesterday, 09:13 AM	#2
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,547 Karma: 108666825 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	There is more than one format of "pdb" ebook as pdb = Palm Data Base file. Some apps on the Palm OS can read more than one format. Some might have DRM? I remember friends having Palm PDAs before smartphones, so only a couple of years ago I bought a Palm Z22 (which came out this Century but was obsolete already) and found a Sync program for Linux and a website with old PalmOS apps, so I experimented with converting epub ebooks to the two different pdb formats that Calibre supports. Unsurprisingly smart quotes and Scandinavian characters didn't work, even though all of that was a solved problem before Palm OS, or certainly before the Z22. Actually I changed from Eudora to Thunderbird email on the PC due to poor character/language support and abandoned a "classic" Wordstar clone in the mid 1990s as it only did 7 bit ASCII.

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