Do You mean that the base date is OS dependent (I guess HotSync dependent)? Can this be taken as a rule? The word "typically" is like allways, but not allways.
I couched my reply vaguely, since I no longer remember the conditions under which each base date is used. For example, Palm Desktop, PalmDebugger, and Palm OS Emulator can all transfer databases from a device and save the results in a .pdb file. However, while I think Palm OS Emulator consistently uses 1904 as the base date, and Palm Desktop uses 1904 or 1970 as a base date, I no longer remember for sure. Some of my haziness comes from being pretty sure that there was also .pdb creation facility that used 1900 as the base date, but not remembering what it was (it could very well be the Mac version of Palm Desktop, now that I think about it some more).
To make matters worse, you'll sometimes end up with a .pdb with a mixed set of dates. For instance, a .pdb created on the Mac, loaded to a device, modified, and then downloaded to a PC will end up with a 1904-based creation date, and a 1970-based modification date. And then, to add insult to injury, Palm Desktop will (or used to, as of a few years ago when I ran across this) refuse to upload that .pdb file back to a device, complaining that the modification date was older than the creation date!
My app will run also in Unix/Linux, do you know the behavior here? (I am not sure if HotSync exists for this OS).
HotSync does not exist on Unix. Most people use pilot-link on that platform. I don't know what it uses as a base date.
-- Keith Rollin -- Palm OS Emulator engineer
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