Syncing with m500 (serial cradle) ends abruptly

[D Canfield <canfield uindy edu>]

I have a palm m500 and a serial cradle.  Syncing only half works.  The
synchronization starts, runs a random amount of time and then stops. 
The palm unit does not report a failed sync, but the applet window just
disappears after the first few conduits.  Basically, each time I hit the
sync button, it gets a bit further along in the synchronization process.

Running gpilotd from the command line I see that just before the sync
ends, it displays a number of "Weird Packet" messages, and usually one
of the conduits reports "Wrote x of X records, which is BAD", then there
is a complaint about the next conduit being "Unable to open conduit!".

I'm willing to help debug this if someone can tell me what I need to
do.  I'm guessing the m500/m505 must send a set of packets that are
slightly different than other palms, and I suppose there haven't been
many complaints since the USB cradle that normally comes with the m500
doesn't work with pilot-sync anyway.   

Thanks

DC