Finally a forum about Palmtops

Everything about vintage DOS based Palmtops goes in here...
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Kyodai
Site Admin
Posts: 232
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 7:33 pm

Finally a forum about Palmtops

Post by Kyodai »

...then again i have a feeling that I'm gonna stay pretty lonely here. Or are there other people who still use or collect these ancient toys?
striegel
Regular user
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:54 pm
Favorite Palmtop: HP-200LX

Re: Finally a forum about Palmtops

Post by striegel »

Oh, I still use mine and kind of collect them as well. Over the years I have worn out quite a few keyboards, developed a number of screen problems and held onto all of the old ones.

Altogether, I have eight of them: HP 95LX, 100LX, and 200LX models. Some of these are upgraded 8MB, doublespeed units. Some are 200LX models transplanted into 100LX cases.

Alan
Kyodai
Site Admin
Posts: 232
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 7:33 pm

Re: Finally a forum about Palmtops

Post by Kyodai »

Good to hear there's another HP Enthusiast. I always like the HP product line for the small size.

Just being curious about your Upgrades. I have seen RAM Upgrades and doublespeed hacks quite often in Japan where the HP series has kinda cult following, but outside of Japan These were pretty rare i think.

For me personally the RAM upgrade didn't make much sense since when i got my first HP 100LX i already had a 128MB CF Card, so space was never an issue. And i must admit I don't know any program that woulöd make use for the additional RAM if not simply as file storage.

So I am curious to hear how you use (or used?) the additional RAM.

Also the double Speed upgrade is pretty interesting - so which appz or games benefit from this?

What i would really love to have would be the backlight upgrade, i always thought that would have made the HP 200LX so versatile.
striegel
Regular user
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:54 pm
Favorite Palmtop: HP-200LX

Re: Finally a forum about Palmtops

Post by striegel »

Kyodai wrote: ...
Just being curious about your Upgrades. I have seen RAM Upgrades and doublespeed hacks quite often in Japan where the HP series has kinda cult following, but outside of Japan These were pretty rare i think.
There was a commercial offering by Mack Baggette through his web site Times2Tech.com (no longer the same site today). I would think quite a number of 200LX systems were upgraded by him. Both clock speed and memory upgrades were offered for several years.

Do you know about the HPLX-L mailing list? I joined the list in late 1997 and the list is still active today!
http://mail.eberl.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hplx

It was from other members of the mail list that I first heard about the double speed and RAM upgrades. In fact, I won my first one through a contest conducted for list members.
Kyodai wrote: ...
For me personally the RAM upgrade didn't make much sense since when i got my first HP 100LX i already had a 128MB CF Card, so space was never an issue. And i must admit I don't know any program that woulöd make use for the additional RAM if not simply as file storage.
Disk space was not the only issue, but anybody who had the ethernet PCMCIA card would have needed to really squeeze things onto drive C: if they didn't have the RAM upgrade.
Kyodai wrote: ...
Also the double Speed upgrade is pretty interesting - so which appz or games benefit from this?
Every database would benefit from the speed upgrade, as well as any processor-intensive task, such as compilers and large spreadsheet recalculations.
Kyodai wrote: ...
What i would really love to have would be the backlight upgrade, i always thought that would have made the HP 200LX so versatile.
It was definitely a nice option and I got to actually hold one for a couple of days. I could never justify the cost of that upgrade and it also killed battery life, so I passed.

Alan
Kyodai
Site Admin
Posts: 232
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 7:33 pm

Re: Finally a forum about Palmtops

Post by Kyodai »

Thanks for the detailed explanations. Maybe imma put some of this info in the 100LX/200LX articles.

Ah yeah, i always wanted to have an ethernet card for the HP, even though i already know I'd prolly just spend a few minutes with it as a toy.
The places i visit that have ethernet sockets barely justify to bring a HP 200LX.


I always thought it would be cool to have a wifi card for it, but i doubt that there's a wifi card that can cope with the power consumption limit and bring DOS drivers...

Well i already have an HP 700LX - so i know how it is to be online with it. But yeah besides (text) e-mails it made limited use for me. I guess I am more of a collector than a power user although i did program a few little gadgets for these (Like the fake WIndows XP bootup simulation and such).

I must admit i never really used any databases or such on mine, I mainly used my HP for taking notes and playing DOS games.
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